I ended up hanging out after work at the local bar for an hour or so with a couple guys in my (financial) dept. and with some tech writers. Of the half dozen of them, four were frustrated novelists! One even had an MFA! All had entered corporate America for the MONEY after having kids (usually unexpected). All had killed their dreams and took it out in the subtext of their drinking.
I never met more bright and frustrated men in my life. The men in the Army Security Agency were brighter, and they all had something to look forward to, i.e. getting out of the Army. These guys felt trapped -- and probably were. They were fun to drink with. Lots of wit, lots of book and movie talk, lots of laughs. After an hour they'd run off to their families. They'd return hung over and it would take an hour or two to get them working in the morning. Lots of coffee and donuts.
I thought, by the gods, what a miserable life! That's when I decided then and there to return to school. And I was even pretty good at what I did -- in fact, I was offered the carrot of a good promotion if I stayed. I impressed the hell out of the Big Corporate Boss one day near the end when most of my office was home sick, an emergency came up, and I handled it so well that the Big Corporate Boss called me in to find out Who was that masked man? I had drawn a Venn Diagram to solve the problem (!) and he, knowing what it was ha ha, was most impressed. He wanted me in his department -- asst to the Big Corporate Boss! Mucho Money! Thank the gods, I remembered the frustrated drinking buddies I met with after work and figured what happened to them could happen to me, and I was out of there.
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| Bob Trevor |
