Monthly Archives: March 2014

Why I Walked – Part 4 – Disbelief

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On August 14, 2012, after thirteen years with the same company, I quit my job, with no plan about what would come next. In retrospect it was more than that; I walked away from a career, away from a six-figure salary, and toward something entirely different. Here’s why.  (Part 4 of 7). Missed the start? Rewind to Part 1.

Disbelief

Some of my personal challenges working in corporate America have been around for as long as I can remember. On an off day, when asked “What do you do?” I’d respond nonchalantly “Help banks make more money.” While technically true, yes, I did do that, it speaks to a larger issue – is unfettered capitalism good for all? If you look at the rise of income inequality in America over the last 40 years, and that globally we still struggle feeding the people of our planet – despite having the resources to do so…maybe therein lies the answer.

Reality, perception, and an ideal - and likely a future post
Reality, perception, and an ideal – and likely a future post

I was fortunate to have good managers over the years for the most part. They had a knack for reframing the question of what we did in a positive light and would point out the good that banks can do. Banks help people buy things like houses and cars, pay for college, and start small businesses.  That’s all true, and good can come from this. For loans there is also a catch, a debt to be paid, an obligation. From a global perspective, most of you reading this *ARE* crazy wealthy, check out www.globalrichlist.com for some perspective on that.  Despite this vast wealth we have been well trained to believe what we have is never enough, and seek desperately to keep up with the proverbial Jones.

The Good Book also speaks to this at length. A favorite verse on that is proverbial in its own way, from Proverbs 22:7 says, “The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is the slave of the lender.” If you just consider common forms of debt, things like carrying credit card debt, having a mortgage, school and car loans, approximately 80% of American adults are in debt to some extent. Slavery, of this sort, is alive and well in these United States. Ouch.

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This is how debt feels to me. *NOT* a fan.
How debt feels to me. *NOT* a fan.

I was never able to fully reconcile this belief internally. In my mind I was working within a system designed to keep people in the shackles of debt. Over time not being able to come to terms with this cognitive dissonance between what I did for a living – and how it can negatively impact society – wore me down.  Fortunately, my wife and I had been working to remove our own shackles, with a plan that offers freedom from this kind of slavery.

Six months before walking from the day job my wife and I hosted a mortgage burning party. At 36 years old we had done it, paid all debts, no car loans, no credit card debt, no student loans, and no mortgage. Part of this was luck; we’ve been blessed with decent education that led to stable careers. Some of that luck is the randomness of being born at a certain place and time, with skills and interests that society happens to reward financially.

...and how freedom feels, me and the missus, with our pastor, and surrounded by friends. Burn, Burn, Yes Mortgage, You Gonna Burn!
How freedom feels. Burn, Burn, Yes Mortgage, you Gonna Burn! -me and the missus, our pastor, and surrounded by friends.

Other parts of becoming debt-free were entirely intentional. We chose to wait later in life to have kids. We set goals of paying down debt, prioritized how to do it, and celebrated each milestone. We don’t live simply, per se, tho we live more simply than many. We dreamed of second careers, retiring early, and just being. When the darkness of depression covered me, there was a viable exit from the pain, one that I understood to be a bad job, of just walking away. Fortunately this walk would allow me the space to get back to living.

Continue on to Part 5 – Resurrection.

Why I Walked – Part 3 – Peeps

word, , ,

On August 14, 2012, after thirteen years with the same company, I quit my job, with no plan about what would come next. In retrospect it was more than that; I walked away from a career, away from a six-figure salary, and toward something entirely different. Here’s why.  (Part 3 of 7). Missed the start? Part 1 is here.

Peeps

I started to work from home full-time in 2005. Until then I had been commuting to the office like an average Joe. When my employer transitioned the largest study I managed from using a call center to collecting surveys online they let 70 people go and kept two of them. I was one of those two.  For a while I kept working at the office – it was a shared space with people from another business unit – tho there wasn’t any face-to-face business to be done there.  Not seeing the point of working on-site I decided to start working from home.

To prepare for this I arranged to have work calls transferred to my home phone, set up a formal office in a spare bedroom, and upgraded to high-speed internet (thought bubble – geesh dial-up internet makes me feel old!) Working from home would save me over an hour a day in commute time and saved some serious coin in gas and toll roads.  Though I didn’t take into account this decision would have another effect: I got lonely.

The upside of this newfound loneliness, if there was an upside, is I craved social interaction more than ever. Some days working from home included a few phone calls. Other days it was just email. Most days it was decidedly too quiet.  I learned pretty fast that to stay sane I’d need to find some new social outlets.

I really did, in many ways, for a while
I really did, in my finest pajamas

Initially this included talking to the neighbors more. If our retired neighbor wanted to stand and chat for ten minutes as we headed to collect our mail I figured sure, why not? I also joined the local YMCA and attended a 6am boot camp that met twice a week. There is something special about getting your arse kicked in the name of physical fitness alongside others getting their collective arses kicked at the same time that is all kinds of fun.

During my depression in 2011 and 2012 I also relied heavily on a weekly men’s group for support and perspective, their listening ear was very good medicine. One friend in particular gave me some straight talk right when I needed it most. His questions were simple, “What are you doing?” “What now?” “How are you faring as a husband and father?” The questions forced me to look at my impact on those around me, particularly loved ones. I’m better able to answer those questions these days compared to 18 months ago.

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Every week, 6am at the local Denny's
every week, 6am at the local Denny’s

I also leaned extra hard into my wife for support during the two depressive episodes. She has always been crazy awesome in so many ways, smart, funny, witty, and willing to challenge me in life when needed.  When I had problems sleeping she was full of possible solutions to try. My favorite was a suggestion, try sleeping at the foot of the bed. “Maybe you need to change your perspective, flip it in your head to sleep” she told me. I tried that, it helped, and I still take this approach from time-to-time when in search of new perspectives. She stayed by my side – and by the foot of the bed – through the highs and lows of this dark time and literally gave me permission to walk away from the job. How she put up with me during this time I’ll never fully understand. She’s an amazing woman, and without her support none of this would have been possible.

wasn't quite like this, tho I *so* want this chair
wasn’t quite like this, tho I *so* dig this chair

Another outlet that ended up being very helpful in relieving the loneliness was to reconnect with how I understood community growing up – through church. My wife and I decided to shop around for a good congregation, found a place we liked, and joined. We both got involved in various ways, including volunteering as greeters and ushers, co-leading a young adult group, attending retreats or other weekend programs, and generally fully immersed ourselves in the life of the church.

I also joined church council, which is its own fascinating ecosystem, and a very social thing. The role on council kept me plenty busy and typically required meeting three to four evenings a month. The combination of community, social interaction and taking on leadership roles that focused on things I cared about was – and is – a powerful elixir to combat loneliness.

here is the church, here is the steeple, open the doors and there is LIFE
here is the church, here is the steeple, open the doors and there is LIFE

Embracing my peeps  – in all their various forms – has helped me grow as a person and I look at life a bit differently of late. Now, instead of basing a personal identity on what I do, i.e a job, the aim is a bit different: to define myself by the quality of relationships I have with others. So far that’s been a much healthier view.  I didn’t realize it until later, tho in retrospect through these peeps I was learning to love one world, of a faith community, while becoming increasingly disillusioned with the other world of my day job in corporate America. Disbelief in this other world, you know, the one that pays the bills, began to grow.

Continue on to Part 4 – Disbelief.

Why I Walked – Part 2 – Depression

word, ,

On August 14, 2012, after thirteen years with the same company, I quit my job, with no plan about what would come next. In retrospect it was more than that; I walked away from a career, away from a six-figure salary, and toward something entirely different. Here’s why.  (Part 2 of 7).  Missed the start? Rewind to Part 1.

Depression

The first few months as a manager were pretty tough. As an employee I felt obligated to take on even more challenging assignments, and pull even longer hours than before. I also felt like a bit of an imposter, that there must have been someone that’d be better at this job, heck someone that actually wanted it. As a manager I felt like I had to have the right answer, at all times. People were depending on me, and I couldn’t let them down.

Right around this time a good friend passed away unexpectedly, and was far too young to go. A few months after that, my mother-in-law passed away too. There was a lot of change going on, none of it that I wanted, all at once. I didn’t deal with all this loss well, which led to some unhealthy sleep patterns. Or maybe they were un-sleep patterns. Most nights during this time I’d lay in bed and obsess about the old predictable job I missed, of how to get better at the new job that I still wasn’t sure I wanted, and about these people who were close to me passing away. For six weeks or so I averaged three hours of sleep a night, which began to take a toll.

Not being able to sleep, I went to a psychiatrist to get sleeping pills. When that didn’t work, and thinking my challenges at work were tied to an inability to focus I added in prescription medication for ADHD. When that didn’t work I added in anxiety pills for difficult conversations with co-workers. When all of that failed, I finally went to a psychologist – really should have started there in the first place – and was diagnosed with a major depressive episode.

It was news to me, and it sucked
It was news to me, and it sucked

For a time, with the help of medication, the fog of depression lifted. I started to gain confidence in my work. I really started to enjoy being a manager. There is something very special about helping people along their path. I learned you don’t have to have the answers, you just have to listen, and remove roadblocks that pop up along the way. In many ways I learned to love the leadership piece of the job much more than the daily tasks of getting our product out the door.

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community-manager
one way to approach leadership

Unfortunately, the fog of depression never fully lifted.  And then I was assigned another manager in May 2012 and had the joy (insert sarcasm) of experiencing yet another corporate reorganization. The descent into darkness began anew.

There was one moment that really stands out during this time. I had found a way to save our company a sizeable chunk of change, and received an award for it. The award was announced at a company-wide meeting, a nice shiny-happy-feel-good moment. Five minutes after this meeting ended the phone rang. Instead of a “Hello” or “Congrats” or even “How are you doing?” it was my boss, and the president of our company, and I was being asked “What happened?”

It seems one of the projects I managed had some data issues, and answers were being demanded, dammit. I got to work answering the pointed questions and solving the problems.  It’s difficult to describe how much this sucks, being at the top of the mountain in your career and then having your legs cut out from under you right after that. I remember begin told on this call, “if we can’t figure this out people could lose their jobs.” Go Team go, now that’s the spirit! Right….

a somewhat different view of leadership
another leadership approach…

This experience, of receiving an award for good works followed by a quick switch to cold, impersonal doubt showed me all that mattered in this corner of corporate America was the Almighty Dollar. Personal relationships, in and of themselves, were only a means to an end of higher profits. As someone that has become more and more relational over the years this was a problem.

Continue on to Part 3 – Peeps.

Why I Walked – Part 1 – Shock

word,

On August 14, 2012, after thirteen years with the same company, I quit my job, with no plan about what would come next. In retrospect it was more than that; I walked away from a career, away from a six-figure salary, and toward something entirely different. Here’s why.  (Part 1 of 7).

Shock

This may sound odd, but the initial trigger that started me thinking about walking away from the job was being offered a promotion. I’d been happily employed by the same company for a dozen years at that point. My role was in syndicated research, which involved doing a few really big market research projects well: meeting deadlines, publishing accurate data, generally keeping the white-collar assembly line humming with minimum downtime.

I enjoyed working with my peers, had good managers for the most part, and happily took on challenging assignments. I also enjoyed using surveys to help understand and explain similarities and differences among various groups of people, it is interesting work, well at least it was interesting to me. Taking information a step further, crafting a message toward some desired goal, say the purchase of a widget, just fascinates me. And so it went for a dozen years.

Then, in June 2011 I was offered a promotion. This wasn’t something I’d expected or planned for, and it came with a with a decent salary bump, sweetness. I’d get to manage a small team of five people and would be responsible for producing an entire line of survey products for our company. Exciting, right? The trouble was, for some reason, I *didn’t* want the job.

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What do you mean you want to promote me?!?
What did you say? Promote? Who, me?!?

Why not?  Part of it, I think, was that I wasn’t expecting it, the opportunity caught me off guard, shock probably best describes the initial response.  The company I worked for had a policy of not allowing employees that work off-site to become managers, so I didn’t think a promotion of this sort was even possible. I’d accepted this reality in my own head, of having reached a plateau in my career, and that was ok.

Besides, like many others, my company would frequently reorganize and was always on the lookout to cut costs. This often equated to cutting staff. So I figured at some point my number would be up anyways, I assumed I’d get laid off sooner than get promoted. After being there those dozen years I would have gotten a decent severance package and had some time to ponder the next career steps.

Not able to keep my old position – at least as it had existed – and not being let go, I reluctantly accepted the promotion. Thus began the descent.

Continue on to Part 2 – Depression.