drphilmd's Xanga

A year, hopeless and homeless

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 02:13:39 GMT

"Maybe you should concentrate on your career." My dad said to me tonight.

I sat there looking at my father across the kitchen table, a few months shy of my thirtieth birthday wondering if he felt the last year of my life has been a hopeless romp of wasted time.

For those who don't know me, I used to work incessantly at an accounting firm to impress my bosses, my peers, and my clients. I strived for excellence and worked hard to earn respect for many years. Last year, having some significant changes in life circumstances, I made the decision to walk away from the crazy work schedule that had me brainwashed into working every minute, thinking every minute, and spending every minute readying myself for another task. I was exhausted all the time. I was short-tempered. I was worn thin. I was just a shell of a man. Everyone knew the impact the lifestyle had on me. Friends knew if they wanted to see me, it would have to be on a saturday night, and I would likely have to turn in early to get ready for the next day of work. My girlfriend grew accustomed to dealing with my foul mood and did her best to put up with it. My family knew the sacrifice I had made for work, respecting it immensely, and did all they could to take care of my weary body by fueling it with nutritious food and taking care of all my adminstrative worries. Yet, with all the support I received from my loved ones, everyone knew that work was all-consuming and it made me rotten and miserable to my very core.

My decision to walk away from the firm, from the perspective of every outsider, was a clear one. I was unhappy, and I had to do something to change that situation. Tomorrow marks the one year anniversary I started in my new line of work, which allows me to maintain a 9-5 lifestyle. In this past year, I have not concentrated very much on developing my career. My focus has been on my spiritual journey, healing my soul, seeking creative pursuits, trying to find worthy causes to lend my hand, finding a place to call me own and looking for that special someone. The life aspects over the past year could not have been at a higher high in spite of my career having been "stalled" by comparative standards with my peers and in the eyes of my father.

Tonight, as my father sat across the table with his matter-of-fact statement, I could not escape the irony of being sized-up against a work-centred life that had made me so miserable. I realized that my dinner conversations over the past year have been in sharp contrast to the years of griping about work and career development. My focus was on grand life dreams and better days ahead. But for some reason, my focus has my dad wondering why I would pursue something other than my career. I know my father means well, but his statement really rubbed me the wrong way tonight. Though, it was the first time in a long while, I bit my tongue and accepted his words.

I love my dad, but at some point tonight I realized I have to grow up and stop answering to other people's perspectives. It took me nearly thirty years to realize this.

Sometimes you may seem hopeless to others, but it's no different than the homeless on the street. You have to see the true potential in yourself, even if others at the time - don't quite see it in you.

Friday, December 02, 2005

Fri, 02 Dec 2005 02:54:50 GMT

Life goes on. But, I have not forgotten.

Sunday, August 07, 2005

Sun, 07 Aug 2005 15:21:51 GMT

I received a very poignant email today. It was powerful. It was relevant. I want you to hear this message.

---

TRIBAL WORKERS
Today's generation of high-earning professionals maintain that their personal fulfilment comes from their jobs and the hours they work.

They should grow up, says Thomas Barlow.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited

A friend of mine recently met a young American woman who was studying on a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford. She already had two degrees from top US universities, had worked as a lawyer and as a social worker in the US, and somewhere along the way had acquired a black belt in kung fu. Now, however, her course at Oxford was coming to an end and she was thoroughly angst-ridden about what to do next.

Her problem was no ordinary one.

She couldn't decide whether she should make a lot of money as a corporate lawyer/management consultant, devote herself to charity work helping battered wives in disadvantaged Communities, or go to Hollywood to work as a stunt double in kung fu films. What most struck my friend was not the disparity of this woman's choices, but the earnestness and bad grace with which she ruminated on them. It was almost as though she begrudged her own talents, Opportunities and freedom - as though the world had treated her unkindly by forcing her to make such a hard choice.

Her case is symptomatic of our times. In recent years, there has grown up a culture of discontent among the highly educated young something that seems to flare up, especially, when people reach their late 20s and early 30s. It arises not from frustration caused by lack of opportunity, as may have been true in the past, but from an excess of possibilities.

Most theories of adult developmental psychology have a special category for those in their late 20s and early 30s.

Whereas the early to mid-20s are seen as a time to establish one's mode of living, the late 20s to early 30s are often considered a period of reappraisal. In a society where people marry and have children young, where financial burdens accumulate early, and where job markets are inflexible, such appraisals may not last long. But when people manage to remain free of financial or family burdens, and where the perceived opportunities for alternative careers are many, the reappraisal is likely to be strong.

Among no social group is this more true than the modern, International, professional elite: that tribe of young bankers, lawyers, consultants and managers for whom financial, familial, personal, corporate and (increasingly) national ties have become irrelevant. Often they grew up in one country, were educated in another, and are now working in a third.

They are independent, well paid, and enriched by experiences that many of their parents could only dream of. Yet, by their late 20s, many carry a sense of disappointment: that for all their opportunities, freedoms and achievements, life has not delivered quite what they had hoped. At the heart of this disillusionment lies a new attitude towards work.

The idea has grown up, in recent years, that work should not be just a means to an end a way to make money, support a family, or gain social prestige but should provide a rich and fulfilling experience in and of itself. Jobs are no longer just jobs; they are lifestyle options.

Recruiters at financial companies, consultancies and law firms have promoted this conception of work. Job advertisements promise challenge, wide experiences, opportunities for travel and relentless personal development.

Michael is a 33-year-old management consultant who has bought into this vision of late-20th century work. Intelligent and well-educated - with three degrees, including a doctorate - he works in Munich, and has a "stable, long-distance relationship" with a woman living in California. He takes 140 flights a year and works an average of 80 hours a week. Some weeks he works more than 100 hours.

When asked if he likes his job, he will say: "I enjoy what I'm doing in terms of the intellectual challenges." Although he earns a lot, he doesn't spend much. He rents a small apartment, though he is rarely there, and has accumulated very few possessions. He justifies the long hours not in terms of wealth-acquisition, but solely as part of a "learning experience".

This attitude to work has several interesting implications, mostly to do with the shifting balance between work and non-work, employment and leisure. Because fulfilling and engrossing work - the sort that is thought to provide the most intense learning experience - often requires long hours or captivates the imagination for long periods of time, it is easy to slip into the idea that the converse is also true:

that just by working long hours, one is also engaging in fulfilling and engrossing work. This leads to the popular fallacy that you can measure the value of your job (and, therefore, the amount you are learning from it) by the amount of time you spend on it. And, incidentally, when a premium is placed on learning rather than earning, people are particularly susceptible to this form of self-deceit.

Thus, whereas in the past, when people in their 20s or 30s spoke disparagingly about nine-to-five jobs it was invariably because they were seen as too routine, too unimaginative, or too bourgeois. Now, it is simply because they don't contain enough hours.

Young professionals have not suddenly developed a distaste for leisure, but they have solidly bought into the belief that a 45-hour week necessarily signifies an unfulfilling job. Jane, a 29-year-old corporate lawyer who works in the City of London, tells a story about working on a deal with another lawyer, a young man in his early 30s.

At about 3am, he leant over the boardroom desk and said: "Isn't this great? This is when I really love my job." What most struck her about the remark was that the work was irrelevant (she says it was actually rather boring); her colleague simply liked the idea of working late.

"It's as though he was validated, or making his life important by this," she says.

Unfortunately, when people can convince themselves that all they need do in order to lead fulfilled and happy lives is to work long hours, they can quickly start to lose reasons for their existence. As they start to think of their employment as a lifestyle, fulfilling and rewarding of itself - and in which the reward is proportional to hours worked - people rapidly begin to substitute work for other aspects of their lives.

Michael, the management consultant, is a good example of this phenomenon. He is prepared to trade (his word) not just goods and time for the experience afforded by his work, but also a substantial measure of commitment in his personal relationships. In a few months, he is being transferred to San Francisco, where he will move in with his girlfriend. But he's not sure that living the same house is actually going to change the amount of time he spends on his relationship. "Once I move over, my time involvement on my relationship will not change significantly. My job takes up most of my time and pretty much dominates what I do, when, where and how I do it," he says. Moreover, the reluctance to commit time to a relationship because they are learning so much, and having such an intense and fulfilling time at work is compounded, for some young professionals, by a reluctance to have a long-term relationship at all.

Today, by the time someone reaches 30, they could easily have had three or four jobs in as many different cities - which is not, as it is often portrayed, a function of an insecure global job-market, but of choice. Robert is 30 years old. He has three degrees and has worked on three continents. He is currently working for the United Nations in Geneva. For him, the most significant deterrent when deciding whether to enter into a relationship is the likely transient nature of the rest of his life. "What is the point in investing all this emotional energy and exposing myself in a relationship, if I am leaving in two months, or if I do not know what I am doing next year?" he says.

Such is the character of the modern, international professional, at least throughout his or her 20s. Spare time, goods and relationships, these are all willingly traded for the exigencies of work. Nothing is valued so highly as accumulated experience. Nothing is neglected so much as commitment. With this work ethic - or perhaps one should call it a "professional development ethic" - becoming so powerful, the globally mobile generation now in its late 20s and early 30s has garnered considerable professional success. At what point, though, does the experience-seeking end?

Kathryn is a successful American academic, 29, who bucked the trend of her generation: she recently turned her life round for someone else.

She moved to the UK, specifically, to be with a man, a decision that she says few of her contemporaries understood. "We're not meant to

say: 'I made this decision for this person. Today, you're meant to do things for yourself. If you're willing to make sacrifices for others - especially if you're a woman - that's seen as a kind of weakness. I wonder, though, is doing things for yourself really empowerment, or is liberty a kind of trap?" she says.

For many, it is a trap that is difficult to break out of, not least because they are so caught up in a culture of professional development. And spoilt for choice, some like the American Rhodes Scholar no doubt become paralysed by their opportunities, unable to do much else in their lives, because they are so determined not to let a single one of their chances slip. If that means minimal personal commitments well into their 30s, so be it. "Loneliness is better than boredom" is Jane's philosophy.

And, although she knows "a lot of professional single women who would give it all up if they met a rich man to marry", she remains far more concerned herself about finding fulfillment at work. "I am constantly questioning whether I am doing the right thing here," she says.

"There's an eternal search for a more challenging and satisfying option, a better lifestyle. You always feel you're not doing the right thing always feel as if you should be striving for another goal," she says.

Jane, Michael, Robert and Kathryn grew up as part of a generation with fewer social constraints determining their futures than has been true for probably any other generation in history. They were taught at school that when they grew up they could "do anything", "be anything".

It was an idea that was reinforced by popular culture, in films, books and television.
The notion that one can do anything is clearly liberating. But life without constraints has also proved a recipe for endless searching, endless questioning of aspirations. It has made this generation obsessed with self-development and determined, for as long as possible, to minimise personal commitments in order to maximise the options open to them. One might see this as a sign of extended adolescence.

Eventually, they will be forced to realise that living is as much about closing possibilities as it is about creating them.

Wednesday, May 18, 2005

Wed, 18 May 2005 01:49:54 GMT

http://drphilmd.blogspot.com/

Tuesday, March 15, 2005

Tue, 15 Mar 2005 02:33:59 GMT

The chapters are read, the finish nears.

What happens at the end of all the unfinished business, only faith will provide.

I asked you to rendez-vous with me in September, and you saw me through. I will never forget the shapened personalities so unfamiliar but so comforting I met here.

Premium ends after 2 years. With a momentus rookie year and a rocky sophmore season, the ups-and-downs of this place have born it's toll on me. The fad is over. The blogging must stop.

Life continues all around us like a snow flurry, each moment unique as each flake that passes you by. Reach out and grab one, but be selective in the ones you touch; life's mittens are only so big, and can only shield the warmth of your hand so long. Everything you touch eventually melts away.

I will miss you all... But will always remember those who took that chance on a stranger.

Smiles all around. Pay it forward.

Wednesday, March 02, 2005

Wed, 02 Mar 2005 16:14:29 GMT

Solving this jigsaw puzzle and posting about this sweepstakes for Big Red makes me eligible for free Xanga Premium for life...

Tuesday, March 01, 2005

Tue, 01 Mar 2005 19:27:42 GMT

In the true spirit of drphilmd's blog and anal-retentive ways... a new question has surfaced that needs some input. No, I'm not looking for accessories to my car.

VACATION!

Vapo and I are looking for an all-inclusive vacation package for about 1 week somewhere sunny. We're looking to spend from $1,000 - $1500 Cdn / person (before taxes). I want some eco-tourist type activity on top of the resort life (ie. watersports, hiking, etc.). Anybody have any good recommendations?

The following are on the radar screen at this point:

Los Cabos
Puerto Vallarta
Montego Bay

Any advice or first-hand experiences would be greatly appreciated!

Tuesday, February 08, 2005

Tue, 08 Feb 2005 12:47:40 GMT

An Evil Empire

Do you ever look at the building tops of large corporations?

Architecture gothic or post-modern, invoking feelings of power and might. Name-sake emblazened red and firing it's ghostly presence a mile away. Reaching high into the sky with a billow of smoke trailing into the distance. It's almost like these building belongs in a comic book, like many an edifice in Gotham City - home of an evil empire.

My colleague has aptly pointed out that the top of a particular building in Toronto is truly the epitomy of such imagery and stands out like a tower in the sky looming down on the drifters in the streets.

I couldn't help but agree...

Rogers is an evil empire.

Thursday, February 03, 2005

Thu, 03 Feb 2005 04:55:44 GMT

The man is a beast.

Watching Steve Nash play on Sunday at the Air Canada Centre was the most unbelievable thing I'd ever seen. My fondness for this Victoria BC native, has always been there, but his improving fundamentals and talent has exploded onto the floor like never before, making him a monster favourite.

The canadian white guy who can play ball.

But seriously, until you see the man do a no-look-behind-the-back-pass-through-three-defenders to his teammate crashing the boards in person, you have not seen squat.

I'm still reeling.

---

Edit: So what do you do when a hero finds you?

Emulate.

Wednesday, January 19, 2005

Wed, 19 Jan 2005 00:03:09 GMT

Drphilmd's Believe it or Not!: A Strange Happening At Work

It was midnight as I packed up my things at the client's office. I collected all the papers I had strewn over the desk into one pile and stuffed it into a cabinet drawer. I lined up my pens and plopped my laptop into my bag. I threw on my coat, snatched up my bag and walked towards the central elevators.

* * *

I had clocked a very long day; coming in at 7:30 in the morning and checking out a couple minutes into the next day... boy, was I exhausted.

An hour and a half prior to my depature, the lights in the building automatically shut down. I had turned the lights back on manually from a central switch by the elevators in order to continue working until midnight. My colleagues were also in the building until shortly after 11pm.

In a late night chat around 9:30pm, one of my colleagues had mentioned that the floor we were on happened to be haunted. Telling of a story that the windows mysteriously opened one night a couple years back during the annual audit in January. A couple of the previous members of the team noticed the room getting very cold around 1:30am one night, and decided to investigate. They circled the 6th floor and noticed that all the windows had been left open to let in the frigid wintry air. All the cleaning staff had left by 8pm and nobody was on the floor except the auditors.

The following night, the same thing happened.

I joked how I was going make friends with the ghosts since I was staying for a few more hours.

* * *

At midnight, as I walked towards the elevators, I had to walk through a series of cubicles and pass by a photocopying room which continued to be dark as the lights had been deactivated automatically at 10:30pm.

I was extremely tired, feeling the temples of my head imploding and the weight of my shoes over-powering every step. I shuffled slowly towards the elevators.

As I neared the dark room, looking straight ahead at the elevators, a faint green light caught the corner of my eye. I turned to look. The light cascaded hurriedly up the side of the wall in the photocopying room and then disappeared into the ceiling.

Curious, I peered into the room and discovered that the photocopier was open with the lid propped up... and the photocopier was trying to photocopy. The lights were sliding across the glass pane photocopying the dead air. As my eyes focused on the green light piercing through the darkness of the room, the lights stopped abruptly as if the photocopier was reacting to my awareness.

With the exception of me, nobody had been on the 6th floor for about an hour before I had my experience.

Without letting out a girlish shriek, I hot-stepped it towards the elevators while looking over my shoulder.

Some interesting theories.

1) Granted, I was dog tired, so I could have been hallucinating. Also jinxed with the words of my colleague about previously ghostly experiences.

2) Photocopiers usual have a powersave function, though they usually kick in after about 15 minutes, not after an hour (that would sorta defeat the purpose of trying to save energy).

3) Photocopiers adjust the scanning head automatically, which may have explained the movement of the photocopier.

4) My colleague could have been hiding behind the photocopier.

5) I could be making this up for kicks. But that's not my style.

Whatever the reason for explaining this strange experience, I feel that the experience was a sign... an omen... a portent. I work too much, and this was the way my mind or environment was trying to warn me of the ills that awaited me if I continued to work late into the morning.

Like a cinematic thriller, the conscious nightmare haunts me at this hour.

It is 8pm the following evening.

I don't plan on staying late tonight.