Corporate Base Jumper

Photo: http://www.telegraph.co.uk

 Today an old friend rang me up and thankfully, I had the brainpower to mine the most sobering nugget of reality from our conversation.

In true bon viveur style, my friend smartly quit corporate life after many years of ultra hard work and long hours to find himself elsewhere. HE JUMPED OFF THE HIGHEST SKYSCRAPER WITH A STRETCHED SMILE UPON HIS FACE. Since then, he's gone from extreme skiing, to learning to sail, to piloting small engine planes, to novel writer, to rock musician stints and back.

His on-going journey is nothing short of opportunistic and incredible. He reminds me very much of Tim Ferris who wrote The Four Hour Work week. We psycho-babbled like best girlfriends do when out of nowhere he blurted, "I can't work for 25 years and get the corner office. Even though there's perks galore and a private seating lounge area in the executive bathroom with imported Italian marble, you're still in close proximity to a cube farm, endless feelings of intense insecurity and people that are all too eager to cut your throat".

It occurred to me that even the guys at the top of the money grubbing food chain don't always want to be there. And what if your corner office only has a shitty view of the parking lot? I write that most metaphorically, of course. Things just don't always look the way we think they will when we get there.

I'm still letting this conversation marinate in my brain... after all, there are far worse things than trying something new. Questions are already spawning uncontrollably inside of my mental cloud. What if one day I'd get my priorities straight? Why am I not spending the majority of my time with the people I love? How can I change that? If I'm not finding a way to do work I love for a living, why don't I just do it for free - BECAUSE I LOVE DOING IT?

All good questions, self. Keep thinking.