Change the World

We all want to make a difference.  Some of us want to become famous, soon of us want to invent stuff; but most of us just want to be respected and admired.

My working life prior to age of 21 didn't give me much potential for that, most of my energy was focused on playing cricket.  During school/university holidays I worked at a Market Research agency.  My scope for changing the world was a bit limited when asking random people "If there was a general election tomorrow who would you vote for" or "What is your favourite section of the Sunday Times".  No, I needed to bide my time and wait for my chance to make a difference.
I thought my chance had come along when I landed my first post University job.  As I mentioned in my last blog, I was working in a call centre to begin with, but so what. I was young, it was a massive company and I was going places.  Best of all, in the early days, that place was often the local pub.  Socializing was as important to me working life as answering phone calls, it was a big part of corporate culture.  It didn't matter that my performance was average, I was intelligent and there were plenty of jobs I could progress to.

Sure enough, I soon moved a rung up the ladder and was working in the complaints department.  It was around this time that the first seeds of doubt started appearing in my head.  I was still reasonably happy, still making friends and still wanting to make a difference.  However, I was becoming a bit skeptical and disillusioned with how things worked.  I wasn't used to being a tiny cog in a massive machine.  When I played cricket, I was an important part of most matches I played in - my performance made a big difference. Here, my performance had no impact on the company performance at all.

I realise that this is the case for a vast amount of people in large organisations. If 50,000 work for the company it means you're a pretty small part of that.  For a lot of people that's all well and good, and they can focus on the bigger picture and see how they are contributing to it. In many ways, I wish I was like that, it would have made me feel a lot more relaxed, but as I've previously stated, we're all different.

However, as I said, I was still relatively happy and looking to progress.  I was living with a couple of friends from Uni, I had a girlfriend who also worked at the same company and I was making some money for the future.  Looking back, it's not surprising that I (or anybody else) failed to spot signs of stress or mental illness.  After all, my story is still pretty similar to millions of others.  There was nothing glaringly obvious to suggest that trouble was ahead.
At the risk of hyperbole (as well as using a terrible metaphor!) - there were a couple of reports of bad weather, but no sign of an iceberg!