How Far Down Could I Go?

Where Should You Live? I was at the client’s headquarters as part of my rapid rise up the corporate ladder, where I was perceived as someone on the fast track. Specifically, I had been asked to accompany a senior banker to an important client meeting. An important piece of business was at stake, and just about every bank in the area was pitching its own plan for it. The pitch took place in a long, long conference room. Everyone in the room, both the banker pitchers and the client catchers, knew exactly what was going on and how high the stakes were. Our game plan was that Bill would make the presentation and do all the talking. I was there to represent the brand. My job that day was to look right, to say the right things without ever getting a single fact wrong and without ever stumbling over a single word, and to assume the proper posture, just as I had done many times in the past. That there were just the two of us representing our bank shows you just how much trust was being placed in me to get it right. And to act composed and correct while doing it. Bill signaled for the first PowerPoint slide, and our pitch was underway. Excuse me, I said, and all eyes turned to me.

Someday Your Ship Will Sail

I found the place, locked the door behind me, and that’s when I fell on the floor. I really don’t know how long the anxiety attack lasted until I managed to pull myself back together and head back into the meeting. Senior banker Bill seemed mollified. Apparently, I really had looked awful. But the presentation had gone well. What I mostly remember is that when he and I left the meeting and walked outside to our cars, I took in the sweetest breath of fresh air I had ever known. Even before that anxiety attack, I had begun to realize that the life I was living wasn’t the life I had planned, and it sure as hell wasn’t the life I wanted. I felt like I was in career jail Monday to Friday. Till late Friday afternoon, when the cuffs came off and I found myself at the bar in town ordering shot number one and Keep ’em coming! I took that first sip, held it in my mouth for a second, swallowed, coughed slightly because I suck at shots, but even with that, it was the first time in five days that I felt free. Yet by Sunday afternoon I was feeling jumpy all over again, and by Sunday night I was way down, flattened by my own personal kryptonite, the Sunday Night Scaries. That’s what I called the sharp, jittery stabs of stress that seemed to eat away at my gut because of what was coming up the next day. And when I heard the office door close behind me Monday morning, I felt locked in all over again with the walls closing in on me.

Outrageous Lows And Extraordinary Highs

I felt this way despite the fact that I had the job I had wanted and planned for pretty much since I could remember. I got that job right out of college, where I had earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration. I was hired by a highly regarded financial corporation seen as innovative and growing, and I was assigned immediately to its elite management training program. Do you ever feel the way I did? Because I know I’m not alone in this. A lot of my colleagues at the bank grumbled along with me about the corporate culture and all that came with it. We all hated it but joked about how we had to look the part, fit into the image the execs called leadership, dress in a way that reflected the company’s culture, and maintain the impression that we were always striving upward. Well, we were always striving upward, but that’s because you couldn’t get away from the pressure to at least always look like you were striving upward. The message was issued nonstop, if perhaps subconsciously, from the top. And the truth is that I kind of believed it. I wanted to be part of it. Tell me what to do, how to do it, where to live, and how to live it . And to be clear, when I say corporate America, I don’t mean just business behemoths.

Beyond Beautiful

My generation grew up looking to these organizations as the place to find good careers. We wanted to be a part of those organizations, and there was an unspoken expectation that rising up the ladder in those organizations was how you measured success. It’s the picture of success I saw in my own father, an ideal corporate manager, and it’s the picture of success that was standard in previous generations. Success was a good job in a good organization that would take care of you as long you took care of what they asked you to do. And if you’re in one right now, maybe you, too, spend Monday to Friday waiting for the end of the workweek and the freedom of the weekend. For me back then, Saturday was just about my only saving grace. I could go to brunch, hammer down mimosas and a Bloody Mary, or maybe put in a sports bet here or there. That’s a bad, bad equation. Yet this life was what I had been aiming for since I was nineteen and declared myself a business major in college. What I really could not deal with was how, to other people anyway, the life I was leading qualified by every known definition as success. If this was success, why the hell did I feel like there was a lid on my life pushing me down? How far down could I go? All I could think about was that what had happened to me was a sign of weakness, and that if it were revealed, it could end my career.