Andy McLean’s Escape Story 2014–2017
An Introduction by Amira Aleem
In 2005 a few months short of his 30th birthday, Andy arrived in London (after living nearly all his life in New Zealand) in search of new work and life opportunities and after five months working on a project at Investec in the City, he asked himself the question: What now?
“I was in Denmark at the end of October and I thought to myself I have three options — I could go back to New Zealand and live the life I have lived already, I could take the opportunity to keep working in London, or I could look to find an amazing social-impact project in a different part of the world.”
Andy chose to stay in London to work for Investec, a specialist financial services company, enjoying a role and an organisation that supported him in many different ways, including while he completed an MBA 2009–2011, something he never thought he’d even attempt.
In his eight years with Investec he realised a childhood dream of living next to Lord’s Cricket Ground, he got married to Rima Treon, and he took a six-month sabbatical a year in 2013 after his wife’s sudden death in 2012.
This journey would push him to question the path he had set off on and draw him to a range of experiences that have helped him grow more resilient while increasingly unsure of what the future may hold.
In 2014, after his sabbatical Andy was in London at Investec and two years since Rima’s death he was feeling good about life, when an unexpected illness in his family set him on a path back to New Zealand to be closer to his mother, helping her with the transition from nurse to retired.
A few months on, in October 2014, Andy felt lost like he’d not felt before living an unstructured existence that took him to the Indonesian island of Bali (for six months), to Singapore (for three months), and eventually back to London in search of work 360 days after he left.
Six months and over 70 meetings and a rejected application to a fast-food shop in London later, Andy was depressed and despondent as 2016 closed in. Then, a week before he headed back to Bali for, we got saw an ad for a Project Manager at a small company called Tobias & Tobias. He got the job and felt a weight lifted off his shoulders.
After one year in an unfamiliar role and struggling to get any sort of project going, he agreed with his bosses to ‘down tools’ for the month of December. The enabled him to start a a ‘better living’ experiment in Cascais, Portugal, in the 2016/17 winter.
When that did not work out, the depression of unemployment hit hard again, as did his habit of going to the pub to have social contact on week days in London. He was lost and lonely once more.
But, Andy has a habit of finding environments that work for him and in March 2017 he headed to the United States for a seven-week trip down the Mississippi River. On his return to London, a chance encounter with an old boss (James Arnold) that would bring him full-circle, as he took up an offer to work with Investec again.
It is only now, three and a half years on, and looking back on his life’s trajectory, that he’s found a way through working with me as his supporter to draw out the learnings that have guided his pursuit of a stable life, and the possibility to move beyond survival.
It has been an exploration of reflection and inner self-discovery, one that has forced Andy to face the best and worst parts of himself, and embrace the lessons present in his continuously unfolding and completely uncertain life.
