Life on the Outside

With my 44th birthday fast approaching, I find myself considering my future; where to go, what to do, who to be? You would think by now I would have a much better idea than I actually seem to. The one benefit I have gained from all these year of getting up and walking around is that I have, at a minimum, a better understanding of who I am not, what I don’t want to do and where I don’t want to be.

For example, I know that I’m absolutely, most definitely and unequivocally ill suited for working in a corporate setting, behind a desk, for 10 hours a day. Aside from the absolutely mind-numbingly boring, soul-killing environment of corporate America and especially that of corporate finance, I’m really not very good at it anyway. It’s genuinely difficult for me to say that. I hate to admit that I’m not good at something, but in all honesty I really can’t remember and apply the minutia required for that kind of work.

Now you would think that since I don’t even want to work in the corporate world that it wouldn’t really bother me, but alas no.  Pride can be so useful and so ugly as well.  Pride (other people’s that is) is something I’ve run up against quite a bit lately.

I’ve had a couple of instance in articles I’ve written where one of the individuals mentioned in the article was angry about something that was written.  In both cases, I discovered that what I wrote was in fact correct, but the person it was written about had their ego bruised by it.  The clients I write for don’t feel comfortable upsetting or angering anyone, so we end up apologizing for printing the truth.  It’s a strange world we live in.