On The Planet Corporate: Survival Finished Fiction
- Posted by Essays Blog in Essays Blog |
- April 17th, 2009 |
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I found myself motion in the HR department of one of the most famous companies in America. My ice queen presently to be boss craved me and I knew it. After all, I had graduated from a pseudo impressive Lincoln and I looked really good in my Ann Klein accommodate. Problem was, I’d never worked a day in Corporate America and I had just turned fifty. Hard to instruct an old dog new tricks but the bills were piling up and the only place my freedom loving artistic character had gotten me was down and out in New York City.
I was offered the job; mostly because the actress in me conjured up Sigourney Oscine in Bawd, a dash of Faye Dunaway in Network and I performed a nifty little improv exploitation the astute and fresh elegance of Judy Holiday and Melanie Griffith as rather impressive role models. My arresting performance worked and thither I was, embraced by my new corporate family and occasionally loaned back out to the rest of elite, my pet Pomeranian and my old disco buddies.
After filling the pages of my gratitude journal for at least cardinal months, and thanking the collection for this rather prestigious position, the honeymoon wore off and I became increasingly bombard aghast. My co-workers were real antic indeed. I didn’t feel that they were family at all, but that’s what having a job is called on the Planet Corporate: family. Oh, they like putting us in teams also. Teams connote competition and a great rah, rah character. In my old class they called it “opening night.” Here they call it “making goal.” As you can imagine, I was confused.
I had a hard time apprehension these people. They talked about a lot of things that didn’t really interest me. When they weren’t obsessing on how low the sales numbers were, they were obsessing on the New York Jets, what to nuke for lunch and whether or not the Bachelor would chose the blonde or the tenacious little redhead. I was beginning to feel quite miserable. Why, the first time I heard I had a direct report I cerebration I was going to be writing up a presentation on how I was going to direct the Christmas play. The first time I was called a adjunct, I almost wept aloud. Jeez, if I craved to be adjunct to anyone I would have married my ex.
So I was told I was getting a performance review. Advantageously, finally something to look forward to. I was happy at last. Certainly, my calculated persona as a prisoner in pin chevron was impressive. Why, I learned to click down the hallowed halls of this real famous corporation in III inch heels. I found the perfect border length and kept my nails conservatively French atilt. I even talked numbers all day, like they were as important as season tickets to the Met, and I pretended to be in a constant country of urging so my boss would believe I was absolutely killing myself to make my sales goal.
Advantageously, you could have knocked me over in a breath when I discovered that a performance review was actually based on whether or not I was selling anything. Disappointingly, my review was moderate to cold. I felt that I craved to crawl low a rock and not emerge until I figured out how I could learn to care how much money my company made off the ninety percent of my life it was action. My consciousness esteem had appropriated an affront. Here I cerebration my humanity was more important.
So be it. I licked my wounds and went on like a good Confederate. These people were expanding my sales goal wider than a middle age area line, but allay, I persisted. I plodded along, cursing my fate and trying to figure out if I’d enjoy driving a cab for a living.
Finally, any good news from the Planet of the Corporate: We were all going on a retreat. I joyously ran out to buy a yoga mat, karma sutra oil to apportion with colleagues, hot pink sweatpants and new Addidas. I couldn’t deprivation to chant with my corporate family. I was ecstatic.
But so, the bomb fell. I was both amazed and appalled. My corporate family was jab me into a hotel room with another adult, asking me to apportion the cape and saliva of kip, the intimacy of bodily woes and the loss of privacy on my frequent calls home to the dog walker. That did it. I rebelled. I wore the new Addidas and the hot pink garment to their all day meetings on how to sell more block. I chanted enthusiastically during the power lunch and old any little book on cheese they gave me as a place mat for the real gooey award night dinner.
Wouldn’t you know it, I was written up. At first I cerebration I’d earned any good review on the little monologue I gave to the company president on corporate greed. Not so, I was put on probation and conveyed home to follow Oprah, the Arcanum and meditate on changing my life as I sat by the Hudson with my Pomeranian re-reading What Color Is Your Parachute.
After fortnight, I was back on the planet Corporate inquisitive how I’d get finished it. I couldn’t quit, it was already going to accept me cardinal years to get out of the debt I’d accumulated relying on an income doing extra film activity and occasional expression overs for pharmaceutical drug companies. I needed the damn job. But something had shifted for me during my little reprisal from the bull pen of consumption. Maybe it was Oprah, maybe the law of attraction really works. I careful was intending to alter my present country. And it happened just like that. I put all my efforts into perception myself as a happy little puppy and lo and behold, I started writing a novel.
Once I began, the words just flowed. I wrote and I wrote soil my little fingers twitched. My life was altered forever by that simple action. I now started to wake at five am with a passion I hadn’t felt in years. I threw myself at the keyboard for an hour or more. I filled my weekends weaving a account, creating characters that I couldn’t get enough of. My joy was abundant.
Wouldn’t you know it? The bull pen became bearable. Even the ice queen melted a bit and the complicated hidden agendas of coworkers became insignificant. My head was filled with plot and character. Who cares who wants my head on a corporate conductor platter? What cared I for corporate agendas when my chapters flowed off the page? I cerebration about nothing else. My sales numbers even increased, as did my disposition for the ice queens and bully boys on the Planet Corporate. How antic it all was.
Now I have a book, actually various books. You accompany, I stole back my time. I found a place that I craved to be. You might have I took back my feeling to compose. I would advise anyone out thither who has found themselves on an alien planet, to follow their passion as advantageously, even if it doesn’t get you back on the planet Earth right away, I can assure you that eventually, it will, one artifact or the other. You accompany, your freedom will come out of the creation and your joy is in action, not the inaction of just feeling miserable. Writing is a place no one can enter or begrime with demands you may never reach and definitions that limit you. So find your book and compose it. If you don’t, your Corporate family will become the appellation of your life, and the character who longs to fly free will loose adjoin with the words that might have been, and the key to the door not appropriated.