FEAR IS THE KEY

For several months now I have been living in a constant state of fear, which has resulted in me not recognising myself as the person I thought I was, or perhaps, and I think that this is probably the case, not recognising myself in the past and now, finally, as a result of shaking off the "business manager persona", swapping the stress of an 80 hour manic working week, for the stress of being on benefits and making ends meet, being allowed to be who I am. Does that make sense? No matter, it makes sense to me. The ends never meet incidentally, which is one aspect of the fear of course.

In my defence though, (and now I am wondering why I need to defend, but I've typed it so I'll leave it in, maybe one of the philosophers out there can enlighten me) I have never been a woman who "shops" and "lunches" or even "networked" to get on. I was very good at my job, got on with it, put everything I had into it, with great success, and stared in wonder at colleagues ingratiating themselves, sometimes to the point of humiliation, to their superiors in the business circle to get on and obviously believing that their self betrayal was justified and a means to an end (simpering twats). I think "brown nosing" is the expression - not guilty yer honour. If promotion and or recognition waved at me fine, if not, fine.

I also never had to browbeat people to produce results for me like some of my colleagues (be-suited harridans and Hitlers intent on feeding their own egos with a sense of power at the expense of the so called "indians"), which to me was evidence of their own lack of confidence, that only a mobile phone welded to one ear and an organiser in other could cure. Their attitude was a result of their fear, or is that far too lenient of me?

I was, however once accused of being weak for not having this trait and attitude, I was most upset at the time, but my integrity remained intact and I always produced the results. I walked away from that meeting whispering wanker! under my breath and carried on regardless. But nevertheless was frightened, in case I was wrong.

But the irony is, I still lived in a state of fear, the fear of not succeeding, the fear of downturns in business which I would be held personally responsible for, but was bugger all to do with me and had more to do with the weather, the economic climate , the colour of the Managing Director's underpants and a myriad of other obscure reasons beyond my control.

I joined another company for a job with more money, blah blah blah, even more stress and it folded within a year of me joining. Well that's the fear of a sense of failure and bad judgement smacking me in the chops for good measure. Go on world beat me, beat me!

More f*****g fear, and dealing with other people's fear while I made them redundant, hiding my fear so they wouldn't be more frightened. Frightening innit?

I started this post because a book I am reading got me thinking about fear and although a work of fiction has some quite profound observations about social fear. I think I'll save that one for the next post.

So, I hear you asking (?), would I go back to that life? The answer is a resounding NO. When I go back to work, which I will because I want to, I will be doing something entirely different.

Next episode tomorrow plus the joys of social fear.

Kats:0)