A year of unusual events

Today marks one year since I left my job, my flat and my life. A year ago I ceremoniously left my well-paid job in London, surrounded by a faithful army of friends, my sister close by and a social calendar that still spears cravings of nostalgia through me at the most unexpected moments.


In celebration of this fact I would like to post something I wrote early last year. I find the juxtaposition of these words with my current position reassuring. No offence is intended to anyone left behind - I respect that each person has their own choices and the same situation for another person would have meant something entirely different. I also appreciate and value the fact I had the opportunity to live this kind of life, and the choice to realise it was not for me, when so many do not have the choice.  This is merely my opinion brought on from a soul-drowning job and a fire inside that needed to grow somewhere else.


I wake up full of a nervous energy. My insides vibrate as if I am listening to a deep bassline. But my room is silent. As the last tendrils of my dream slip away, I have the sense that I have been looking for something, fervently, all night.


The thoughts fold under themselves like waves in the multiple snooze of my alarm clock, and become lost in the rush of the morning. My fevered mind remains vaguely mesmerised by what, in the blurred moments of waking, had seemed the most important thing in the world.




Now I just feel a lingering sense of confusion and a longing to be back in that lost dreamscape.


I dress myself in skin-tight shades of grey, slick hair and shiny lips, masking myself with the strangling uniform of business. I take the bus in to the office, mechanically changing vehicles on the Euston Road, staring out unseeing at the concrete and the rush of occupied minds.




I say occupied here to indicate the fact that people in London seem to be shut off to anything that is not included within their own agenda. From the moment they wake up, their brains are full of tasks.



But occupied also means conquered, subjugated, dominated.


Under enemy control.




This dual definition is appealing. The word becomes stuck in my head. With no other thoughts in there to challenge it, it repeats itself incessantly for the whole of the journey, until it starts to lose meaning.



Occupied. Occupied. Occupied.



My day passes, as they always do, in a mundane blur of traffic and computers. I procrastinate on my task list until four, when I am able to cross off half of it in a flurry of hastily-dialled phone calls.


My job filled me with excitement when I first took it, 18 months ago. The people were bright and the company new, and every day had felt like opening a present.




Now it just feels like it is stealing my life.


Every day it forces me into the synthetic, waxy mould of a corporate doll. My soul feels empty and I can’t do anything about it.


I am trapped.


Even the hours outside of work feel like they belong to someone else.


Sometimes I scream out loud, pulling at my hair like a mad woman, diving at the people sitting blankly in their desks and venting my frustration at this calm acceptance of a robot’s life. Then the world swirls back into reality and I realise I am in fact sitting quiet and accepting in my own desk, in a row of quiet, accepting people, and no one has even blinked.


One day I think I might actually do this.


I cannot wait for the day when I hand in my notice. I think of that moment at least once every hour. Perhaps more like three or four times. Some days it is all I can think about. I picture myself going into the CEO’s office, letting him wax falsely lyrical about my supreme consultancy abilities, trying to build my confidence so I seduce the clients more effectively. I imagine myself springing it on him mid-flow. Like flirting with someone for hours and then turning away when they try to kiss you.


I would thrust a letter in his hand which detailed methodically and unashamedly all the corrupt twists and suppressive rules of his beloved company. I would laugh at the blind devotion to a loosely-concealed totalitarian regime. This virtual furnace that consumes souls and spits out money. My words would reduce it to a pile of ash.


I just haven’t found quite the right ones yet.


The thing that pains me most is seeing the sparks of my co-workers (my love for whom still remains loyal enough to keep me here) condensed down to the same, standard-issue ambition as him. They will complain about the money-driven mentality, the repression and being told what to do by a self-centred, clueless manager, but they will remain silent.


The London in my head is an eerie toy town, operated by Stepford Wives, dolled up and twinkle-smiled and ‘yes of course, Sir, anything you want, Sir’.


They will be fucked up the arse until they bleed, and they won’t notice because their eyes are on their glittering futures; dreams grossly deformed by that pre-ordained framework we rarely dare to question.


As a child, we are consistently asked what we would like to BE when we grow up. Our entire lives, we relate our future job to the verb 'to be'. A career is part of our fundamental make-up. It is an apex to climb, in order to prove our worth as a person.


And thus, we dutifully tick the boxes.


School, college, university. Education, packaged prettily.


Job.


Soon we will have a great CV, that menu of clichéd attributes, and a fantastic social life that spans the breadth of London’s pretentious wine bars. A well-matched partner to take Sunday walks with, and a pile of savings which we will watch grow until they die.


All these people, building their career. A career that occupies them. Conquered and subsequently dominated for the rest of their lives. They will be promoted to managers and they will have finally made it after all these years. They will buy a house and have a lovely wedding in a country manor and end up with gammy-mouthed kids who will go on to do the same.


Security. They need to know where they are, otherwise they lose themselves.


This kind of thing terrifies me.


Isn’t your ‘career’ just what you’re doing right here, right now?


What I’m doing right now is utter bollocks.


Old people say life is what happens while you are planning your future.


I think we should listen to old people.


I think I’m so different. And yet still I put myself through the excruciating pain of getting out of bed at half past six every day to go into a place I despise.