UnPause

March 31, 2006 | Category: In My Life

I used to sit at this desk. For 5 years, I sat at this desk. Except on vacation or business trips. I sat at this desk.

I responded to instant messages in 3 different languages (and all with my infamous bad grammar). I spent hours on the phone. I planned projects that spent millions of dollars on equipment maybe a handful of people would understand. I smoothed the feathers and organized the efforts of hundreds of people.

I compiled succinct PowerPoint slides to present to executives, with words like: deliverable, return on investment, risk factor, earned value, escalation, customer facing, business driver, gain, break-even, up, down, strength, challenge. My friend M used to say I spoke the "corporate language" - as though you could take a Berlitz class in it.

And this was, 50 hours a week, this was reality. When people asked "what do you do?" this is what I did, therfore - this is who I was.

7 weeks ago, I walked away. The piles of paper in this room remain where they were that day.

When I was a little girl, my dad travelled all the time. On the rare days he wasn't on the road, he worked from home in a tiny office over the stairs. I remember watching him punch the numbers into a calculator as he analyzed his quarterly reports. His forehead crinkled, his pencil sharp.

I am a second-generation Corporate Brat. I was learning to take phone messages at 6. I was helping choose my father's ties at 8. By 10, I knew most of his employers and employees by name.

There isn't the panache, the tradition, the identity in being a corporate kid like there is in having a military or political or religious family. We aren't a tight-knit clan like those in a union. We don't do 21-gun salutes. Or honor codes.

In fact, there are many who think, in fact, the the "suits" eat their young.

We don't. Well, not often.

You want to find a pack of free-ranging corporate types? Walk into any airline club in any airport in the world. We're hanging at the bar drinking imported beer while we tap out responses to our overstuffed Blackberry email inboxes.

And I miss it already. So badly, in fact, that I have spent a lot of time over the last 7 weeks wishing I could go back.

Wishing I could sit down again at this desk, click a button, and see my own overstuffed email inbox.

Which is maybe why it has been so hard for me to sit down at this desk for any other reason. Knowing I can't. Knowing that I would see a little gray box that said "access denied".

This isn't self-pity.

This is change.

It is slow, like a cruise ship pulling a u-turn. It is painful, like running in the cold. It is necessary.

So yeah, I had alot of my self-worth tied up in my corporate status. And I've been afraid to look at who I am without it.

Dancing around the issue, and crying for it all.

My friend Laura says it took her 6 weeks to stop crying.

Took me 7.

Today the sadness didn't reach my eyes. And this chair, this desk, didn't pang me quite so much.

Time, finally, has salved the worst of the wound. Time, now, has arrived to let go of the tears.

Time to find out, what's next.

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