I start a new corporate gig on Monday. I’m not particularly looking forward to it. I’ve been out of that environment for a couple of months now and it’s been great. Plus we’re now approaching high summer in Europe, the girls are all wearing butt-revealing cut-off denim shorts and there are a lot of people doing very little but drinking and partying in the continent’s cities and on its beaches.
I on the other hand have to get suited up and start work at a large, international publishing company, putting in hours to make someone else money while enduring whatever office politics and other nonsense the job throws up.
Over the last two months I’ve been doing a lot of work on my business and it’s paying off: things are looking pretty good. Not quite good enough that you would objectively say this is a great time to jump into full time self-employment, though. Plus I have financial commitments to sort out as well.
I’m nearly there—nearly financially free. But I’m not over the line yet. Which means I have to suck it up, put on my best corporate smile, shake hands and pretend to be a normal person again for a while.
If I’m honest I’ve been feeling a little apprehensive about the job for the last couple of days. In part this is because switching from being a free agent who doesn’t have to put up with any bullshit to being an indentured white-collar slave once more will doubtless be a shock to the system.
Also, I’m not actually that sociable. Or at least, I don’t particularly like socialising with groups of people with whom I have very little in common, and that is core to corporate work, unfortunately. In London, people who work in offices all tend to be married with families, or young, single and out drinking the whole time. I am neither married with a family (nor do I have any interest in domesticity) or particularly young. I also don’t drink alcohol.
All of which means that I am inevitably an outsider from the start—an outsider who doesn’t want to belong. And that’s not even taking into account the ways in which my experiences and views as I express them here set me apart from your regular office guy or girl.
The Corporate World Is Fucked
That’s not to say that there are no upsides to this new job. For a start it’s with one of the world’s most prominent online publishers, a field that directly relates to my side gig. On the internet everyone is using the same tools (pretty much), from multimillion-dollar organisations to solitary bloggers. Any insight into how the big boys ‘monetize content’, as we say in the trade, is useful.
Plus the money’s pretty good.
But let’s be totally honest here: the corporate world is fucked, and certainly my particular sector, media. The internet has capsized so many industries from music to book publishing to newspaper and magazine publishing, and in advertising in particular, something like 70% of all digital ad revenues go to Facebook and Google.
The publishers (website owners) fight for the remaining 30%, but increasingly that budget is spent programmatically. What this means is that the market now doesn’t care about your lovely cookery, music or politics content, or whatever. It only cares about reaching the largest possible relevant target audience at the lowest price. So ad spots are brought across multiple websites by a computer through a real-time bidding mechanism that drives prices down as far as possible.
This is a disaster for the industry, meaning that the same senior executives who ten years ago were quaffing champagne in world-class restaurants,their wage packets bolstered by the huge margins they were able to charge on their inventory, are now sitting in meetings earnestly discussing their Snapchat strategies in an effort to court disinterested millennials to their weathered, flaccid titles.
Companies are tens of millions of pounds of revenue down year-on-year. On the ground, this doesn’t bode well for the footsoldiers (like me). When money is tight then cost-cutting follows quickly. Indeed, the company that I’m about to join announced last week that it may be shedding up to 40 staff in its latest restructure.
So I’m heading back into the jungle. It seems a remnant of a wistful, sepia-tinged bygone age that anyone ever thought corporate work was the ‘safe option’ when this shitshow is what is on offer now. Add the uncertainty caused by Brexit into the mix and I’d probably be better off flipping burgers for some grease palace chain.
So I’m apprehensive. My plan is to give this six months while I get my house in order before I make my escape.
Apprehension Is A Waste Of Time
Of course, in reality any apprehension I feel is wasteful and unnecessary. Feeling anxious about the future is based in fear, and fear is a character defect.
The truth is that the only ‘reality’ is that which is in front of us right now. The past and the future do not exist. To try to predict the future or to regret the past is a misdirected use of energy.
Also, we need to learn to trust our future selves. I have lived long enough, and been through enough, to realise that I am enough. And whatever life throws at me I will deal with—one day, one hour, one minute, one second at a time.
Life sometimes is about making compromises, about doing things we don’t particularly want to for the bigger picture. And resistance in life comes about in many different ways, some of which we can cope with better than others. There is physical resistance, social resistance and our own mental resistance.
The key is to be flexible. To go with the flow. To enter into the stream of life and not try to control things to much in the moment. Then, at our leisure, we can survey our situations and contemplate. It is at this point that we must make the big decisions, take those huge risks, that will ultimately change our lives around entirely.
To pre-order your copy of my new game book HOW TO BE AN ASSH*LE (THAT BEAUTIFUL WOMEN LOVE) click here.
For exclusive additional free content every week join my subscribers list here.
For daily updates follow me on Twitter
