My life had become dull and boring… Like two decades ago. And now, with 40 looming a few years away, my life had become a mix of unbearable boredom and unmitigated stress. You see, I was a middle manager of a regional bank. Sure, I made decent money, but I can’t remember the last time I had more than two days off because of the high pressure from the top to make our numbers. So even on my “weekends” I was reviewing reports, looking at sales projections, and studying my staff’s production for the week, and the numbers, as always, were dismal. I tried to be a good boss, I really did, but like the old saying goes, you just can’t find good help nowadays.
So here I am again, sitting in the same outfit I’ve worn since Friday morning now at 6pm on Sunday (without the tie and sport jacket at least) poring over piles of the same dull reports trying to figure out how we can make the ever higher sales goals imposed by my corporate overlords. I was frustrated, no beyond frustrated. Once again, we were going to miss our target by a considerable amount – and what does corporate expect? I’m not a miracle worker! There’s only so much we can literally bilk the local clientele for our revenues and most of them were already maxed out, like several years ago. Most of my new business consisted of trying to con local college students into signing up for our “free checking” accounts, which didn’t make us much revenue, but padded the numbers at least – and more importantly, kept corporate off my back for another week showing we were at least attempting to meet our quotas. But again, it was looking like I was going to have to let at least one of our bankers go, if not more, for failing to meet projections. Even though I’ve explained to corporate time and again that our market can’t make those numbers and we have way too much competition from more customer friendly banks with better rates and lower fees.
Sigh… Maybe I should find a new job at one of those places instead – but that would mean giving up my a lot of my vested benefits here as well as my shot at retirement in a few more years – assuming I even last that long at this job, which it isn’t looking like I will.
So here I was, alone, stressed, and hating my life. All the money in the world couldn’t fix this situation. And while I did make good money and had a solid financial situation, I was increasingly thinking it wasn’t worth all of this headache and depression. I have no time for friends, let alone dating, having seen anyone in my family since Christmas three years ago, and have no time to actually enjoy the money I’ve been letting pile up in my account for the last nearly two decades.
Fuck! I needed something to change in my life. But like the sunk cost fallacy, I just couldn’t force myself to make any changes. Well, I guess the one change I tried to make, fairly unsuccessfully, was actually getting to the gym three times a week for an hour at a time if I was lucky. Often I ended up getting one of my many “emergency” calls from corporate almost as soon as I got there, which meant I would have to hop on some pointless conference call where they would berate me about my low numbers. Fuck my life…
I vaguely believed in God, or at least some sort of higher power. I prayed that night before bed, an unofficial prayer (more of a wish) for something to change in my life for the better. Anything would be better than this, I thought to myself.
Then the jealousy set in. I thought about the people I did know, either from work, or the gym, or around town, who have lives infinitely less stressful and more fulfilling than my own. Why couldn’t I have a life like that? Why can’t I have a life where I don’t have to work thousands of hours of unpaid overtime (aka a “salary”) at a boring mind numbing dead end job? Why can’t I have a social life, friends, maybe even someone to date? In the end I knew it was kinda mostly my own fault for being unwilling to take the leap and try to do something different – anything different. But again, I was too afraid to make any substantial changes.
Instead, somehow Fate, or God, or something pushed me in that direction in a very unexpected and surprising way.