There’s nothing here for me…

Write a blog they said… it’ll be great they said…

I’ve been wanting to write a blog for a long time, but I’ve never gotten around to it, never made the time and never felt comfortable putting all my thoughts and feelings out into the world.

So, when I signed up for the Escape Tribe, with Escape the City, and we were challenged to take on an “Edge”, something that pushed us beyond our comfort zone every week, blogging seemed an obvious choice. Three weeks in, it’s still way outside my comfort zone, and I’ve posted and then deleted a 4 posts on a WordPress site — this is me trying again (Thanks Tessa!)

The already deleted versions of this post had long sob stories about my life, my time in Africa, how it all fell apart and I ended up working for a big corporate consultancy, but I don’t think it serves much purpose, but instead, I’m going to describe how I felt last night.

It was the quarterly meet up of my department at work, held in the upstairs room of a pub, with free booze, a photographer to take professional photos for your LinkedIn page, and a series of odiously self-congratulatory speeches from each of the projects and leads. A veritable corporate love-fest.

As I sat and sipped my second (or forth) free pint of crap beer, I looked around the room, and half listened to the speeches, I realised that, not only was I totally distant from the group in my level of interest in the work that we collectively do. I wasn’t whooping when the number of users deployed to that new technology was announced, and I certainly didn’t cheer when the newest deal signed for multiple millions was announced. Worse than that, and what I really need to “escape” from, is that as I looked around the room, I didn’t see anybody there I wanted to be like.

Of the 60 or so people in the room, there were some I liked talking to about football over lunch, but none that I aspired to emulate, nobody with a career path I wanted to follow, nobody who’s values aligned to mine — at least not the values they shared publicly.

In fact, the thought of being 45, fat, drunk, with bags under my eyes, exhausted having spent 20 years making somebody I’ve never met rich… that scares the hell out of me.

I looked around the room, as I have done time and time again over the two years I’ve worked here, and thought, there is really nothing here for me.

The trouble is, I’ve not done anything about it, I’ve known since day one that I don’t belong here, I’m not cut out to be a soulless automaton living for the weekend and taking home a reasonable salary that is somehow never enough — Maybe I’m needy, selfish, and arrogant even, but I need to be more than this. Yet, here I am anyway.

So, this is my escape blog. I may also mention running — a lot.

This is my journey!

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