career – Page 12 – Nick Grant

Nick Grant

Tag: career

  • Stamina

    This is a story about persistence…

    Marathon rubbish

    How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time etc. etc. There are plenty of contrived platitudes about persistence, perseverance, dedication, determination, tenacity, doggedness, pertinacity and all of the many other synonyms that get lightly banded around, generally by people who’ve led lives of ease, comfort and contentment.

    Tomorrow I have to prove myself all over again with a new team, a new boss, a new company, a new project; new challenges and lots of new things to learn.

    In the last 12 months, I’ll have moved home 4 times, worked for 4 different organisations and tried to string it all together into some form of continuity to allow myself to avoid death, destitution, bankruptcy, career failure, madness, being permanently committed to the loony bin and generally being consigned to the scrap-heap. The number of air miles I’ve clocked up probably doesn’t set any records – not even a personal best – but the number of different beds I’ve slept in certainly must be some kind of world record; at least indicating just how little stability I’ve had in something most of us take for granted: where I lay my head to rest at night.

    I need to pack a bag for the working week. Tomorrow I need to drive to a new office; a new city; a hotel I’ve never stayed in before.

    One foot in front of the other. One step at a time. One day at a time. The platitudes rain down on my head and they feel like insults: easier said than done.

    The money flows in but it must flow out too – I’ve got to speculate to accumulate. I don’t feel well enough to be working, but work I must otherwise I’ll fritter away the gains I’ve made: I’ve got to run just to stand still.

    The needle creeps into the red “danger zone” on the anxiety meter. I’m not sure how I’m going to cope; I don’t feel like I am coping.

    The demands are relentless.

     

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  • On The Road Again

    This is a story about a nomadic lifestyle…

    Packed bags

    In theory a digital nomad should be able to work from wherever they want, provided there’s a decent WiFi signal and somewhere to charge your laptop battery. Why not work from the beach in a hot country? In practice, bosses want bums on seats. I suppose it’d be hard to justify the high income I’ve come to expect if I was living amongst equally intelligent and capable people, who just happen to have a less desirable nationality on their CV.

    I’m washing and drying a whole bunch of shirts, ready for the working week ahead. I’m trying to prepare myself mentally for the Monday to Friday 9 to 5 routine. I’m trying to psych myself up for another period of kipping my mouth shut, my head down and generally trying not to let on that I’m crazy; I’m unwell.

    Is it deceitful to pretend to my colleagues that I’m not sick and mentally unstable? Is it dishonest not to declare my mental illness up-front? I don’t think it is.

    It’s my personal life that causes me most of my difficulties, which do unfortunately overspill into office hours sometimes, but I’m more than capable of doing everything that’s asked of me and more, provided I have a little leeway on particularly bad days. I don’t get paid for the time I take off sick and as long as the work’s getting done, I don’t see what the problem is.

    If I can figure out how to get the support I need – some social fabric in my life – then I’m much more stable and reliable. Perhaps I need to get into the routine of phoning friends more often. I hardly ever speak to anybody except in a work capacity, and at work I’m always presenting a façade of cool, calm, controlled professionalism, no matter what inner turmoil I’m suffering.

    Through economic necessity, I’ve made a choice that is a particularly bad one for my mental health. Living out of a suitcase and going to a place I’ve never been to and don’t know anybody is going to have fairly predictable results: stress, suffering, loneliness, misery.

    “You’re doing so well” and “you’ve made such a lot of progress” and “keep going” are the kinds of things that friends say, and I guess they’re not wrong. If I can keep going – even just for a few months more – then I’ll be cementing a period of progress which has turned my life around, although not yet managed to put me in a financially secure position, yet. Call me impatient if you like, but the suffering I’ve endured on the journey is not to be taken lightly.

    6 or 7 months ago my biggest worry was cashflow – I was so close to bankruptcy. Now my biggest worry is feeling lonely and isolated in a strange new town. It’s progress, of a sort.

    My lifestyle is a strange one. I can’t particularly let my guard down at work. I really don’t think my work colleagues could wrap their heads around the journey I’ve been on during the last 12 months… at least, not until they get to know me better in a work capacity and can see that I’m quite capable of doing a good job. It does however mean that I can never really get close to anybody and confide in them about how I’m really feeling: for that I must look to my friends and my blog.

    The danger, of course, is that I try to cope independently. I often forget that I can pick up the phone and try to speak to a friend. Instead, I turn to alcohol, sedatives, tranquillisers and sleeping pills, as I attempt to blot out as much of my consciousness as I can… the less reality that seeps into my brain, because it’s numbed by chemicals, the less the horrendous isolation and loneliness robs me of every bit of happiness and contentment.

    Obviously, my choices look dangerous and unhealthy; the risks are massive. Economic necessity drives me to act out of desperation.

    It would be good if I could find healthy coping mechanisms. Maybe I should stay in a hotel with a gym and a swimming pool, and exhaust myself physically each evening while getting fit, rather than squandering the time watching serious documentaries on TV. As I said before, it would be good if I could develop the habit of phoning a friend, as opposed to reaching for a glass of wine or a tablet.

    We’ll see what happens.

     

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  • Recovering Regularity

    This is a story about rhythm and routine…

    No hands clock

    I’ve had a shaky couple of months with a breakup and a work project finishing. My life of simple domestic bliss was smashed to smithereens. My routine was shattered and my life had become chaotic; it looked like I was on collision course with total disaster.

    I wouldn’t say that disaster is averted. I now need to get into a completely different and quite uncomfortable routine than the one that I was enjoying a couple of months ago. Already, I’m lacking any routine social contact, love, care or affection. Getting back to work will at least give me some social contact from Monday to Friday. As far as domestic bliss goes, that’s gone out of the window: I shall be living out of a suitcase again, living in hotels and AirBnBs until I figure out how long I’m going to be working away from “home”.

    As I’ve written at length, I don’t really know where to call home. Estranged from most of my family, having made perhaps only one or two local friends, having no other local connection other than the bizarre circumstances that brought me here, having had two unpleasant periods of conflict which have been distressing and upsetting, I’m left feeling generally unwelcome in the area… unwelcome anywhere perhaps. It’s always me who’s the odd one out; the weirdo; the freak; the outsider.

    All I can do is try to force myself to comply with a very unpleasant routine, which will leave me feeling even more unsettled, but will at least keep the cash rolling in. I have this unshakeable belief that if I concentrate on achieving financial security and freedom, then I can dare to dream about where I really want to be, and what I really want to be doing. At the moment, there’s no point tormenting myself with unattainable dreams.

    Early Monday mornings and Friday evenings are going to be spent bumper-to-bumper on the motorway, along with every other poor soul who can’t find a local job. I’ll be hoping I have packed everything I need for the working week. I’ll be throwing myself into the new job, immersing myself in the work, but what will I do in the evenings? Watching TV and movies in a hotel room on my own, I expect. What will I be looking forward to? The weekends? There’s not a lot of excitement in returning to a place where you don’t really have any friends or family. Think of the money and count down the days, weeks and months until I’m free: that’s all I can really do.

    It’s an exercise in clock-watching, much more akin to serving a prison sentence than waiting for the end of your working day.

    What is it you look forward to at the end of your working day? Seeing your loved ones? Seeing your pet(s)? Relaxing in the comfort of your own home? Eating a home-cooked meal?

    What if you have none of those things to look forward to?

    Watch the clock.

    Count the money.

    Count down the days.

    Inch along at snail’s pace.

    Painful.

     

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  • One Week to Get Fit to Work

    This is a story about being ready to roll…

    Living out of a suitcase

    My car’s not road legal, the hotel isn’t booked, my shirts and other work clothes aren’t washed and ironed. I managed a few days without tranquillisers, but I still guzzled 2/3rds of a bottle of red wine and used a sleeping pill to get to sleep last night. My hair’s grown long and I need a shave. I spend more time thinking about setting my affairs in order and killing myself, than I do about the practical steps necessary to prolong my suffering: another town; another job and yet more isolation and loneliness.

    There’s a huge gap between where I am in my mental state and where I need to be, if I’m going to go and make a good first impression, and keep up the charade until the work is done; until I can finally collapse in a crumpled heap.

    There are important pieces of a liveable sustainable pleasant life which are simply missing; absent. Family, friends, community, social support network; a partner or best buddy. Can you imagine spending 28 days in complete isolation, except for a few messages exchanged via social media? Can you imagine spending a couple of years working your arse off trying to get to the point where you felt financially secure — no longer on the brink of bankruptcy and destitution — but seemingly never making any progress?

    Yes, we’ve all experienced moving house, breakups, making new friends, starting new jobs, going to new unfamiliar places, having to somewhat re-establish ourselves. So what? You did it, it was stressful, and now you’re relaxed and all settled in nicely. The bad memories fade quickly and the good ones dont: you can almost look back and laugh at all those unsettled times you’ve been through. For me, the unsettled times are so frequent that the bad memories never fade. I’m caught up in a never-ending series of very stressful events.

    Out of economic necessity, I need to ready myself to re-enter the workplace one week from now. I need to look well presented, I need to be on the ball and I need to sustain a certain degree of professionalism until the work is done… I’ll need to be able to get through week after week of hiding the fact I’m sick and struggling. I’ll need to be able to cling on and hopefully make it through to the other side, before I hit the wall.

    One day I’ll wake up and say “I just can’t do it anymore” and I won’t be faking it; I won’t be making a fuss about nothing – I really will have nothing left to give. Whether that’s day 1 or day 101, or whether it’s sufficiently far into the future that it doesn’t affect the charade, I can’t say. Obviously I worry that my health will fail me too soon; my energy will be used up and I’ll be of no use to anybody, which means letting people down; no more pretending to be OK.

    Having a week to prepare yourself for a period of effort that you don’t feel in any fit state to face is not a nice prospect. Even if I could just sleep for the next week, I don’t think that would be enough. There are practical preparations. There are things that are really toxic to my mental health – like living out of a suitcase – that look pretty unavoidable. There’s the futility of going to a place where I have no intention of staying, beyond a few months, so why make friends there? Why put down roots? Why make myself comfortable; settled?

    So, I continue to be unsettled. I continue to live without anywhere I really call ‘home’.

    It’s a week to get myself into some kind of bare minimum state so I can go and get some more money, but no matter how much I earn, it all seems to just disappear… an exercise in futility; exhausting futility… except maybe for the banks and the landlords, who profit handsomely from my efforts, while not labouring at all themselves.

    That the only reason for any of this stress is purely to service loans, pay rent and pay bills, hardly has me jumping for joy; it’s hardly a big motivator. There’s seemingly no light at the end of the tunnel.

    So, as I try to sort my practical matters, rest, live healthily, and generally prepare myself for another stint at the coal face, I’m struggling to find much meaning in it; much reason to live.

     

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  • Out of the Frying Pan

    This is a story about isolation and loneliness…

    Volcano crater

    “What’s the meaning of life?” I was asked, to which I instantly instinctively answered “spooning”. Whether it’s your kids, your sweetheart, your pet or some other living thing – such as a pet – the state of cuddling seems to be the one where I feel most content and at peace; most relaxed and comfortable.

    I seem to be getting further and further away from that soothing state, and becoming more and more isolated. I seem to be facing a period of isolation, which could feel very prolonged and unpleasant indeed.

    Already, I live somewhere where I feel there are far more people who hate me and would like to do me harm, than the handful who like me and would like to see me thrive and be happy. Now, I’m faced with a stark choice: stay and watch my meagre pot of money dwindle to nothing, or go somewhere new temporarily… with temporary being the watchword. If it’s temporary, how do I survive without those cuddles; that social network; that sense of belonging?

    If I go back to London, I could expect that I could rebuild my social network and it’d be worth investing in new relationships. If I went back to London, I expect I could manage to stay there for as long as I needed and wanted to. I feel like I belong in London.

    Now I’m faced with the economic necessity of going somewhere as soon as I can, to get the cash flowing again, but what’s it going to cost me? Living out of a suitcase is not pleasant. Staying somewhere temporarily goes against everything I feel I need, to be happy and content. It really could be a case of jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire.

    Economic necessity will drive me to do things which are incredibly toxic to my mental health. I feel like I’ve got a gun to my head. No choice.

    What should I do? Rationally, I tell myself that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, and this bird in my hand is particularly economically valuable. Rationally, I tell myself that the discomfort is only temporary: “it’s only 6 months” I say to myself. “It’ll be over before you know it” I tell myself. My emotions scream “NOOOOOO” really loudly though. “NOOOO DON’T DO IT” says my heart.

    Desperate people will do desperate things. I have a feeling that I’ll over-rule my heart, because of economic necessity and my desperation for cold hard cash.

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  • Mercy

    This is a story about nth chances…

    Reception

    Is the UK so short of people with the technical skills and experience that I possess, that I would suffer no career setbacks even if I literally curled out a turd on the table in front of the entire board of directors, having waltzed into the boardroom, leapt onto the boardroom table, lowered my trousers and squatted?

    I’ve been doing more-or-less the same job for 21+ years, and every single enterprise CRUD app for a large organisation is exactly the same as the rest. Yes, I switched from one programming language to another. Yes, I switched from one kind of way of managing a project to another. Yes, I learned a load of technologies that do a lot of ‘magic’ for me, so my job is 95% plugging things together, and only 5% ‘programming’. It’s not even programming any more… that 5% is just renaming stuff that you’ve copied and pasted, so it’s not so obvious that you copy-pasted it, and then sorting out a bit of rewiring and configuration.

    The last couple of projects I worked on, I got so bored and I had so much spare time, that I was able to do things properly for once – I did things which are hard, so most people don’t bother; I was thorough. I didn’t cut any corners. When I found the inevitable complex technical problems which defeat most people, I didn’t kludge round those problems… I spent those days and whole weeks, tearing my hair out with frustration, to arrive at a “textbook” solution. I should write a frigging book: “How to write nice elegant software in a horrible corporate environment where nothing works like it’s supposed to”. I guess the title could be a bit shorter.

    The main project I worked on last year involved a lot of conversations like this:

    • CEO: I want the app to look like this
    • Me: I’ll make an app that has the essential features, but it’ll be ugly, then I’ll work on the other 70% of stuff that needs doing
    • CEO: Yes, but the app needs to look and work exactly like this
    • Me: Ideally, in a year or so, it could do yes, but right now you’ve only got me, so if you want to launch something in a couple of months, I need to do lots of other things as well as make a pretty app
    • CEO: OK, but it’ll look like this, right? The design is 100% complete
    • Me: It won’t look like that because the design includes things that are impossible
    • CEO: OK, but it’ll look almost like this?
    • Me: I think you’re getting too hung up on the app. There’s lots of other stuff to do too.
    • CEO: But it’s important that the app looks like the designs we’ve produced
    • Me: I think you should hire somebody else who can tweak what I produce to make it look the way you want it to look, and I’ll get on and finish all the other essential bits
    • CEO: We already had 6 different freelancers from 6 different countries produce 6 different apps, and each one looks nothing like the design I want. Can you re-use any of their code?
    • Me: No
    • CEO: OK, well, I’m sure you’ll have it all done in 2 months

    So, I worked on the thing that I usually wouldn’t bother doing, because it’s not my core skill, which was to faithfully reproduce the design that the CEO wanted. I spent a lot of time making a really really pretty app. I learned a lot. I stopped being so afraid of UI/UX work. I started to feel quite confident building attractive and complex user interfaces; pretty apps.

    Then, onto my bread-and-butter: take a load of data, convert it and store it somewhere, create some means of retrieving it, and create some means of users interacting with it, plus gathering loads of data and analytics on who they are and what they’re up to.

    Only, almost all my time had been wasted making a stupid pretty app, and when I came to look at the source data which has supposedly been analysed, it turned out that the analysis was total BS. Half the data which the pretty app was going to display to the users quite simply didn’t exist – it was fiction; fantasy. “We’ll scrape that data together ourselves” said the CEO. The price of a pint in 120 towns and cities. The average rent in 120 towns and cities. The total number of students in 120 towns and cities. The number of nightclubs in 120 towns and cities. Lunatic.

    So, I’ve had occasion to become somewhat obstreperous. Rather than just plod along and ignore the lunacy, and waste my time on wild goose chases and impossible tasks, I’ve gotten stroppy; I’ve let my frustration be known loudly and clearly. I stop doing what I’m asked to do – because it’s lunacy – and start working towards a finished product.

    I wonder how many times I’ve left a project, and the CEO or whoever has been thinking “thank God we got rid of that guy who gave us a complete working application, and who told us in precise and concise detail all the problems that we were going to face if we continued on our chosen path, which we’ve repeatedly refused to deviate from”. It’s actually interesting to see the pretty app that I developed, live in the App Store, exactly how I left it – none of the impossible lunatic things are there, unsurprisingly

    Given that each of the 6 previous freelancers had looked at the previous developer’s code and thought “nah, this is rubbish, I’m going to throw it away and start again” but whoever it was who took over the complete and working system that I left behind, decided that it was actually exactly what they wanted and needed, so they released it to the App Store.

    On another note, I keep getting sick. I work very hard, I try very hard, and I immerse myself it what I’m doing – I live and breathe the projects I get involved in; I care. It’s the caring part that’s the problem. When you care too much, you get upset and then you start to get frustrated, which is exhausting and it makes me sick. I literally get sick: I get too unwell to work.

    I bust my balls, then I get sick. When I get sick, all kinds of bad stuff happens. I might end up in hospital. I might end up in trouble with the police. I might end up falling out with friends. I might end up running out of money. I might end up homeless… who knows? It’s anybody’s guess how bad things are going to get when I get sick. I’ve attempted suicide 3 times already.

    So far though, nobody seems to have gone out of their way to do life-changing damage to me: to black-ball me from ever being able to work again, to punish me, to give me black marks against my name that would exclude me from civilised society. Nobody seems that keen to see me dumped on the enormous pile of humans who we’ve decided serve no useful purpose. Nobody seems that keen to prevent me from ever having another chance.

    The last couple of projects, I didn’t get obstreperous and I didn’t get so sick that everything got badly messed up. The last couple of projects, I gave the client exactly what they asked for, more or less… I just ignored the lunacy, and built useful high-quality working software and ignored all the questions like “where’s that [impossible/useless] feature I asked for?” and sure enough, they forgot all about it in the end, and they were happy.

    In my personal life, I don’t know why my misbehaviour when unwell hasn’t landed me in more trouble than it has, and ejected me from civilised society and consigned me to a life that a great many of our “unwanted” and “unwelcome” members of society suffer, because they’ve caused trouble and they’re now permanently branded as “trash”. It must seem very unjust to those who have been branded as “human trash” to know that the rules and regulations of life are supposed to be applied fairly and evenly, but evidently they are not. Maybe it’s because I can pretend to do a posh accent. Maybe it’s because I try to remember to say please and thank you lots. Maybe it’s just because I’ve been lucky up to now, but luck won’t last forever.

    I know people have found my blog and they know that my visible tattoo advertises that I’ve got problems, but nobody ever says anything, except for the occasional “do you wear contact lenses?” or other hint that they’ve seen my bespectacled profile picture: my alter ego.

    My plan is to try and get myself onto page one of Google (I’m on page 2 at the moment I think) but the truth is, I don’t think people – the decision makers – actually care that much, when they find somebody with the skills that are apparently in such short supply that a person like me can limp along and suffer the horrible manic highs and depressed lows in full view of my office colleagues, when economic circumstances force me back into that environment.

    Ideally, I’d like to send out my CV and have my email address as nick@manicgrant.com and list my website, as well as including details about exactly what’s happened in my life since I got sick. I’ll just write a summary of my life and career to date – good and bad – rather than the corporate friendly horses**t nonsense that conforms to the expected standard.

    At the moment, do I require mercy? Yes, a little. I’m in a precarious situation. There are a few people who could choose to bring the full force of the blows raining down on my head, but they’ve been merciful, so far.

    At the moment, do I require an nth chance? Yes of course. I always feel like I’m on the back foot; I always feel like an imposter or a fraudster, even when I’ve just finished a big project and the client’s really happy. I always feel like my not-so-secret website and the stuff that’s happened in the recent past – which would usually be confidential – somehow disqualifies me from doing the job that 21+ years of evidence shows I’m very capable of doing to a high standard.

    For the first 11 years of my career, I had an unspoken agreement with my bosses: they’d let me have days off sick or come in late when I was depressed, because they knew I’d be so productive when I was manic. It was a system that worked well. The trouble is, with short projects, it’s so much harder to establish the trust in that relationship and accept that a member of your team is not a regular 9 to 5 Monday to Friday mediocre plodding drone who doesn’t give a f**k.

    It would be arrogant and unreasonable of me to expect special treatment in the workplace, or indeed in society in general. I don’t know why I keep getting more chances. Do you think it’s fair?

     

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  • Good Job

    This is a story about decay…

    Decaying plant

    Here is a photo-diary which records the decay and decomposition of my little local life. It’s the perfect metaphor.

    The plant was a gift, meant to cheer me up when I was unhappy in London. Soon after receiving this gift I got a local job – a “good job” – and I kept the plant on my desk.

    You can see that by the third picture in the sequence (bottom left) that my plant was struggling; unhealthy. I tried to revive it by putting it on some wet tissue paper, so that it could suck up some much needed moisture.

    I think the combination of air conditioning and no natural light eventually killed my plant, just like it drained all the life out of me, just like it killed my local relationship and just like it somehow killed my “good job”.

    I now have neither the relationship, the plant or the “good job”.

    Somebody should chuck me on the compost heap.

     

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  • Mourning Loss

    This is a story about processing emotions…

    Modern art

    My premonition was right. I knew things were too good to last. My hope and optimism were misplaced. My fears proved to be well founded. My instincts were correct.

    The one thing which remains mostly intact is my home, but yet I feel completely differently about it versus a month or so ago. I’d started to imagine a pleasant summer spent living and working by the seaside, but instead the reality is that I’m having a sink or swim moment. If I stay where I am I’ll sink, and to survive I will have to swim like crazy to get back to London. My home doesn’t feel like home – I don’t know why I came here; I don’t know why I am here; I’m not happy to be here.

    It feels like I’ve violently swung from crisis to salvation; boom and bust. My life has been a jagged saw-tooth of highs and lows, which briefly started trending upwards, but I know from bitter experience how quickly and easily the trend can nosedive.

    For the briefest moment, I connected with a lot of unprocessed emotion; I cried. Then the tears dried up and I went back to my more usual state of torment: PTSD flashbacks.

    It’s all piling up… the stuff I haven’t dealt with properly. There’s a huge mound of grief. How could I possibly start to process all that mess while I’m still in the middle of dealing with the non-stop crisis? The task of finding somewhere to live and work and getting myself on an even keel financially sounds simple and easy enough, but you’d be surprised: you need a run of good luck if you want to succeed.

    The places, the friends, the companies, the colleagues, the projects… so many have come and gone and I’ve retained practically nothing. Money runs through my fingers like fine dry sand: there’s been plenty, but of course it’s all frittered away just staying alive. It’s expensive, staying alive: the rent and the bills and the food and the drink, let alone the cost of transport and clothing and everything else that constitutes part of normal existence.

    To mourn money is foolish, but the relationships I’ve developed with people and places shouldn’t be dismissed lightly. Even the tiny city-centre apartment where I tried to kill myself in Manchester, I had developed some emotional attachment to; the city itself – although alien to me – was growing on me slowly. It’s rather tragic how I’ve fallen out of love with my current home town. I’m sure I’ll feel differently, in time.

    Tomorrow’s the last day when anything makes any sense at all. My income comes to an abrupt and early end, which is arguably unexpected and no fault of my own. Why am I here?

    13 years ago a picked a seaside town and I imagined the life I wanted to build there. I did it. I got everything I wanted.

    Then everything collapsed.

    All I knew was that I wanted to get away. I wanted a clean break. I wanted to go back to the only other place I knew and where I’d been happy before: London. I went back to London because I was trying to get away from something, someone… everything that reminded me that my dream had been ruined; sabotaged.

    That’s been my life for 5 years, more or less: trying to get away from dreadful things. Trying to get away from divorce. Trying to get away from the past. Trying to get away from the sadness and the sense of failure. Trying to get away from the grief.

    I’ve been running for so very long, and the grief has piled up unprocessed. I need to stop and mourn my losses, but I can’t because I have to run so damn fast just to stand still.

    Where now? What next? I have no idea. Away, away… always away.

    It seems easy to blame myself: how much have I self-sabotaged? In truth though, how hard have I worked to give things their very best possible chance of success? If you want me to blame myself, fine, but I don’t see how I could’ve done any more to tip the odds in my favour, and try to make things work. Yes, I’ve made bad choices and done regrettable things, but without a steady supply of paid work everything else falls apart.

    Maybe I could succumb to ‘magical thinking’ and imagine that things would have been different if I’d approached life with more positive mental attitude. Maybe if I hadn’t pre-empted disaster, the disaster would never have happened. It’s folly: of course the bad things that were going to happen were always going to happen.

    So I guess if there’s one over-riding feeling at the moment, it must be a sense of loss. I’m sad that another potential nice pleasant life fell to pieces, and I’m left wondering where the hell it all went wrong.

     

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  • Where Did It All Go Wrong?

    This is a story about dead ends…

    Sinclair A-bike

    Sir Clive Sinclair is a very clever man. So also is Hermann Hauser. So is Dr. Robert Sansom. So are the fellow members of my cohort who were lucky enough to be chosen from a very great number of hopeful applicants for an opportunity to fraternise with Cambridge’s tech elite. We were destined for greatness.

    The pinnacle – the apogee – of an entrepreneurial career in tech would be the moment when you have the undivided attention of a packed auditorium with a total net worth of tens of billions of pounds. Even if only for 5 or 10 minutes, all eyes are on you. It’s your 5 minutes of fame, insofar as any geek can ever expect to have in their lifetime.

    With offensive dismissiveness, the egotistical front man who would claim credit for the meeting of these minds, said my co-founder “was last seen with twins around his ankles” (he actually has 3 young children) and that I had returned to my former career with my tail between my legs.

    Whatever I do, I think I do it with dedication and I achieve results. I obsess over my goals and I work tirelessly to reach them.

    However, I feel old, unwell and somewhat burnt-out; spent.

    If intellect was a good predictor of wealth, we’d see a much stronger correlation between the top exam grades, first-class degrees, doctorates and those who have been lucky enough to earn their fortunes, such that they have the financial means to retire early. If you think that a high IQ and studying hard at school and university is going to help you get ahead in life, you’re sadly mistaken: you’ll be a wage-slave in the rat race, just like everybody else.

    I thought momentarily that I had found a tolerable compromise: a way to enjoy the lifestyle of the trust-fund endowed sons and daughters who can rely on family wealth to bankroll their carefree existence, while only sacrificing a small amount of my time each week to rather boring, menial, unethical and demeaning labour. I struck a deal with the devil, as it were.

    Realising, however, that I was cash rich and time poor, I started work on projects which far predated websites like taskrabbit.com and mybuilder.com. My dot com – getajobdone.com – might not have been a world-class brand, but this was soon enough after the dot com boom [and crash] that I can claim some bragging rights.

    I was too young and inexperienced to profit from the dot com boom, but I was at the very forefront of the iPhone app craze.

    But where did it all go wrong?

    How did I end up back in my old career, as Jon Bradford so astutely [and offensively] observed?

    Fuck you. That’s why: fuck you.

    I make simple plans which seem fairly achievable, like having a nice little apartment with sea views and a yacht in the marina. Simple plans like having a job where I can drive to work in less than 15 minutes and enjoy a 6-figure salary. Then, it all goes to shit, so fuck you. I have it, then I lose it. I get a taste of it, then it’s snatched away.

    Where did it go wrong? Fucking everywhere, that’s where. Everywhere from breakups to losing jobs – through no fault of my own – to the fact that the world is just a crazy competitive dog-eat-dog awful cut-throat world.

    I live a charmed existence, by all accounts, but you should never forget the sacrifices I’ve made. While the rest of you have been creating clones of yourselves and lining the pockets of the banks with your mortgage interest payments, I’ve been cut loose in a world which views a man with no family ties with suspicion. In fact, having no family ties and no local connection to anywhere puts me at risk of destitution; total abandonment – I’m one of society’s unwanted members. No safety net exists for me.

    In 25 hours I’m hoping to be reunited with an old friend whose path through life might see him [incorrectly] labeled as an “overnight success” story. What a world apart, the last 6 or 7 years of our lives have been. How could we ever reconcile the differences in our experiences? Him the millionaire and me the pauper.

    To divine where it all went wrong is an impossible task.

    All I know is that I’m exhausted and I’ve got nothing to show for my efforts.

    I’m not bitter though, I think. I cherish my experiences, no matter how harrowing and traumatic they’ve been.

     

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  • I’m Sick of Moving

    This is a story about putting down roots…

    Cardboard boxes

    It looks like the smartest short-term decision for me right now is to go back to London. Third time lucky, maybe.

    London was amazing the first time, so I guess third time lucky is not really accurate.

    London was pretty amazing when I went back, but my damn acrimonious divorce and evil ex-wife conspired to disrupt and destroy my chances of re-establishing myself back in the capital. I’d reconnected with lots of old friends, incorporated a company and had started doing business. The last thing I needed was the distraction of the divorce, so I went and sold my house to a cash buyer – I had the sale organised within a few hours, and should have completed with cash in the bank in about 6 weeks…. except my evil ex-wife sabotaged the whole thing and put it back on the market with the worst estate agent she could find, and accepted an offer – for the same amount as I’d already agreed with the cash buyer – from some clueless idiots who were part of some horrible chain.

    Said same evil ex-wife then tried to screw me over with the division of the house sale proceeds, which was a more than fair and reasonable 50:50 split. The contracts had been exchanged and the deposit had been paid. I was quite happy to have us both get sued if she wanted to drag things on any longer… she’d already delayed everything by 3 or 4 months. My final signature was needed for completion and if I didn’t give it, we’d have breached our contract. So, I didn’t give it until I had it in writing that she’d take her 50% and let me get the hell on with my life. She’s an idiot, because I’d have gladly paid more if she’d just let me get on with rebuilding my life in London.

    So, that changed the complexion of my second jaunt back to the capital completely. Gone was the momentum of my new business. Gone was my new girlfriend. Gone was a holiday I’d been planning on treating myself to. Gone was every bit of optimism and energy, wasted on worrying about cashflow and legal wranglings with one of the most thoroughly unpleasant individuals I’ve ever had the misfortune of dealing with.

    I never quite caught up. You need a lot of money behind you if you’re going to get ahead in London. If you haven’t got the working capital – the comfortable financial cushion – you’ll never be able to handle the challenges of the city AND fret about money.

    Out of pride and stubbornness, I tried and failed and tried and failed again. I kept almost but not quite reaching the point where I was financially comfortable, only for the stress and effort of it all to finally scupper me, plus some bad luck too. I lost a contract simply because I refused to kiss the arse of one guy who thought he was indispensable. They terminated my contract, and then the guy who did it got the sack for getting rid of me. Another time, I was just too exhausted from living in a hostel while working on one of the most demanding projects – and indeed important projects – I’ve ever worked on in my life. I got myself out of the hostel and into my own apartment, but the stress and exhaustion of it made me very unwell. I tried to get myself sacked while I was on holiday in San Francisco, so I could stay for longer, but they didn’t take the bait – I got sacked as soon as I walked back into the office, which I knew I would.

    I took a shitty contract in a shitty part of Greater London. That was awful, but I did it out of necessity.

    Finally, I got a great contract, great team, great project, great company… then my kidneys failed and I was on emergency dialysis on a high dependency ward for weeks. DVT in my leg. Nerve damage. Unbelievable pain.

    That was me done for. Broke. Game over. I was lucky to escape bankruptcy.

    Now, I’ve had a little taste of small town provincial life, and it’s OK. I liked it when I could drive to work and walk to my girlfriend’s house. I liked it when my income was 20 times as much as my rent, and I was living like a king… or at least I’d have been able to if the gravy train had continued to run on it’s scheduled timetable.

    There’s no opportunities here. It’s a small place. I was lucky to have a few months when I had it all, but I always knew that when it came to an end, there wouldn’t be anything else here for me that’s comparable.

    No girlfriend. No job.

    Gone off the place a bit.

    I had a look at what London has to offer and I’ll be increasing my already obscene income by 50% if I go back there. Make hay while the sun shines. Get rich quick, or die trying. The number of jobs I’d be a perfect match for was quite staggering… so reassuring to know that I’ve got the right skills that still command such high remuneration.

    There’s nothing round here. At least, nothing for somebody who’s trying to get ahead. I’m sick of being behind. I’m sick of playing catch-up.

    If I go back to London and keep this Welsh seaside town as my primary residence, I can live on expenses – my rent, meals, travel… all that will be reducing my tax bill as well as giving me a lovely lifestyle. No more shitty AirBnBs and pot noodles. I can have my own little central London apartment and eat takeaway every night. I can take black cabs everywhere and even reclaim the expenses of having my suits dry cleaned, shirts laundered and shoes shone. What the hell am I doing, having to cook, clean and do laundry, in this sleepy seaside town where I don’t know anybody except for my ex-girlfriend and some of her friends, who all hate me.

    I can go on Tinder and there will be gazillions of drop-dead gorgeous highly educated well travelled professional career women, who are pretty up-front about what they want. Tinder in this Welsh seaside town has 15 identical looking Snapchat filter photos of women who look like they’ve put make up on with a trowel and can’t string a sentence together, and then that’s it – you’ve swiped them all left, and there’s no more to swipe.

    I shouldn’t do the place down, because it makes sense if you’ve got your wife & kids sorted and mortgage paid off, plus a big fat wedge of cash in the bank, but it makes no sense at all for me to be here, single and still struggling to get back to a position of financial security.

    So, at some point I’m going to push the button and the calls will come flooding in and the contract negotiations will start, and before I know it I’ll be on the train back to London, except I’m not slumming it this time.

    When I sign on the dotted line for my third attempt at making things work in London, I’ll be going to live in a serviced apartment, and I’ll be living there for the duration of the contract. I’ve got my little seaside retreat – my second home – where I can leave most of my stuff, but I’ll also have a permanent base in the capital, where I can leave my suits and shirts and smart shoes and everything else I need midweek.

    If I hesitate, I’ll just burn through all the cash I’ve managed to tuck away during the last 6 months of nonstop hard work. If I hesitate, I’ll lose all the ground I’ve gained. If I hesitate, I’ll lose momentum. If I hesitate, self-doubt will creep in and I’ll dither and dawdle.

    I might be sick of moving, but as long as I’m able to keep on sending my invoices every month, and every month my net worth moves rapidly from the negative to the positive, there’s a tiny glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. I might be sick of proving myself over and over and over again, and having the stress of yet more reference checks, security vetting, credit checks and criminal records checks, but in London if one contract doesn’t work out, there are literally hundreds of others. If one relationship doesn’t work out, the London is literally jam-packed with mind-blowingly beautiful intelligent women who have dedicated themselves to their careers, and are making themselves known to be single via the Tinder app.

    I have friends in London. I know my way around. There’s a drinking/socialising culture, instead of the “going home to the wife and kids” culture of the provinces. What am I doing here in this place where I suddenly feel so out of place?

    In the blink of an eye, I’ll be available again – back on the market.

    In 2 or 3 weeks, I’ll be meeting my new team and learning about my new project; my next opportunity.

    It’s actually quite exciting. It’s a fresh start in a place I already know and love. It’s another opportunity to stick two fingers up at my ex-wife for ruining my chance to have a clean break and rebuild my life back in London. It’s another roll of the dice – maybe I’ll be lucky this time and I’ll prove I can make it work. I’ve certainly tipped the odds massively in my favour.

    I’m sick at the moment, of course. My mania must be plain as day to anybody who has any dealings with me. My colleagues kindly and patiently indulge my endless stream of ideas and words, delivered so fast they can’t keep up, but it’s good timing: things are late and everybody’s stressed. To the uneducated eye, it just looks like I care a lot about the end of the project, as opposed to being in a fully-blown manic episode in the middle of an office full of mild-mannered civil servants, who normally move at glacial speed, as is the way of the public sector.

    I’m sick, but I haven’t pissed anybody off or burnt any bridges yet. I’m sick, but I do remember to shut up and try to act normal once in a while. I’m sick, but I obviously made enough of a good impression that I’m being given the benefit of the doubt.

    I’m sick and I’m sick of moving, but move I must. I must move and I must maintain momentum.

     

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