Personal Gain

I've been wrestling with this for a while. suddenly, none of this matters to me anymore. I've been "climbing the greasy pole" for a number of years and some time ago, working for a major corporate, I decided to get out of it and go and run my own business. I no longer needed to play the internal politics nor do anything else just to further my career although I did enjoy it, it held no massive hold over me, I enjoyed and got paid well (or I thought so then) what I was good at and, as I was good at my job, it didn't matter if I was a bit "Maverick" or just a little difficult for the bosses to handle. That was, after all, part of my charm and made me different to my peers. See, even in this there was my climb the pole differentiators.

Since then I have run my own business and have had to impress myself rather than my bosses. Last year I took permanent work and that again meant playing that sort of corporate game but, frankly, there wasn't that much heavy stuff going down so it wasn't necessary. Playing politics in a 128,000 people business as opposed to about 50 people business really wasn't going to be that challenging when the CEO employed you.

Recently in my social life, I've noticed that politics have entered that too and I'm not too happy about it but I do find it almost blindingly obvious who is doing what, who is maneuvering who etc. It may be my take on things but you never shake this sort of stuff off/ In social clubs, people do things (always the same people) and they get bad mouthed by the people who don't do anything and if you do something you are sucking up to the chairman and all of this. Then there are the little squabbles and someone leaves as they've had enough.

I have to say that after my recent experiences, it really doesn't matter a fig about all of this. My Mum still says the words that her mum used to say

"You're a long time dead" and it really is true. Surely you can get on and sort these things out? It took a serious illness for me to see that half the things I wasted my time on before were hardly worth worrying about. If I worried about whether or not I was going to get this or that promotion or what was going to happen to me in ten years time? Well it isn't worth it is it - you could be dead tomorrow and that, is the change I need to start bringing about in myself. As I have said before, the issue then happens to be that if you want those around you to think and act like that too and they don't get it. It isn't life or death to them and they haven't had the benefit of the concentration of mind you have had through your life changing illness. Also this take s you back to the fact that only you have these thoughts and this urge to make the remaining time worthwhile! Gee life can be complicated sometimes :-)