Hello There.

If you’ve trekked your way across the broad expanse of the internet and landed on my humble blog, I’m going to assume your story is something like mine was a few years back.

You were a go-getter in school.  You studied hard, filled your out-of classroom time with extracurriculars, and spent your summers as an intern in an exciting, bleeding edge company.  

During senior year, you inundated the inboxes of the world’s employers with sparkling cover letters and resumes.  After graduating with an honest, practical degree, you headed off to your first real job full of enthusiasm. 

The first few months were everything you could have wanted and more.  Each day you learned something new and felt thrilled that you were contributing to a real business doing real things in the real world, and supporting yourself by doing so.

Then, at some point, the shine started to wear off.  Your work assignments began to feel repetitive, even as the words and numbers on the screen changed.  Looking around, you realized that the office was as full of cliques, gossip, and backbiting as any high school cafeteria.  

You were making decent money, but between rent, food, student loans, insurance and some fun spending, it went out the door almost as fast.  You gained a few pounds, despite your resolution to exercise more. The numbers on the scale only seemed to move in one direction (not down).

There are a few people in the office whom you almost pitied when you first arrived. The puffy forty-five year old middle managers entrenched in dusty cubicles, surrounded by manila folders full of Important Documents.  It seems as though they have been there forever and plan on staying indefinitely.  Their entire existence seems to revolve around conference calls and quarterly reports.

Never would you become that person, you promised yourself early in your career.

Now though, you are starting to worry.  Some quick math indicates that at your current pace, you may need to work until you are eighty to support yourself, even without considering other life plans you may want to pursue, such as starting a family or buying a house.

You start spending a lot of nervous time polishing your resume, updating your LinkedIn page, and browsing online job postings.

Maybe you pull the trigger and change jobs, maybe not.  In either case, it doesn’t seem to matter.  Your job seems more and more pointless and repetitive with each passing day.  You’re inundated with busy work, yet so bored you can barely maintain focus.

The prospect of financial stability that would allow you to pursue your true passions appears so remote that you give up the idea altogether and resign yourself to a lifetime in a cubicle.

If you’ve made it this far without breaking down in tears, I have some good news for you:

It doesn’t have to be this way!

If you’re apathetic, exhausted, and doing just enough to get by with no end in sight, you can make things better.  And I can help you get there.

But why should you listen to me?

Because I’ve been there.  I’ve lived through the situation above and come out on the other side mostly unscathed.

I’m nothing spectacular, just a normal mid-level supervisor in a generic twenty-first century corporation.  But I’ve seen what works and what doesn’t, what improves people’s work lives and what makes them miserable.

“But I bet this is just a bunch of generic, repackaged self-help rah-rah nonsense.”

Not so.  I’m only writing from my experience, both what I’ve gone through personally and what I’ve seen in co-workers and friends.  I’ll share anything I’ve done that has helped, along with mistakes I’ve made along the way.

“I hope this doesn’t turn into a personal finance blog imploring me to live on 5% of my pay and save the rest!”

Again, no!  While I personally am a fan of frugality and try to practice it in my own life, I realize not everyone can or wants to live that way.  If you’re into the frugality/FI movement, great! If not, also great.  I hope what I have to say will be beneficial either way.

If the scenario outlined above hit a little too close to home, and you’d like to see what you can do about it, then read on and become a fellow corporate survivalist.