There was this thing that Johann used to do everyday at work - we had our own computers at our desk but we weren't allowed to do more than read the news on the BBC and everything we did on the work computers had to be work related of course. Johann used to write a short story a day and I looked forward to getting his creations everyday some time in the afternoon. Admittedly, some were better than others, I'm afraid Johann was a Walter Mitty character as he would often create these protagonists who had all these characteristics that he never had - I would roll my eyes and think, rather than write about all these fantasies you should go and make your dreams come true. Here's how one of this typical stories went: there would be a main character who was rich, successful and handsome. Then there would be a damsel in distress - this weak woman needed a strong man to come into her life and solve her problems but in helping this weak woman, the strong man falls in love with her as she makes him realize how his life is not complete without a woman's tender love. Nonetheless, all that it was the complete opposite of what was happening in his own life: when you read his short stories, it almost came across as a painfully old fashioned sexist vision of the world where women obeyed their husbands and needed their men to save them from their own weakness. But in his own life, he was completely under the control of Rhonda to the point where it was obvious that she was the stronger character, dominating that relationship. I remember it was with that sense of irony when I read Johann's short stories, knowing that it was more than a means of escapism for him, it was a representation of what he really desired but could never have in his relationship with Rhonda.
If we were to go back about 17 years, this was when everyone was embracing social media and that was when you knew you were friends when they wanted to add you on Facebook. Well Rhonda didn't like the idea of Johann connecting with strangers on Facebook, so she simply didn't allow him to go on social media at all. In fact, she called him several times a day at work but he wasn't always able to take his calls as he might be busy in meetings. At first I thought, oh how sweet, they are so in love they want to speak to each other all the time but I do remember once hearing him saying something like, "I'm so sorry I was in a meeting earlier. No really, everyone was there, I couldn't answer the phone." It was the tone of his voice - he sounded like he was defending himself when accused of doing something wrong. I got along well with Johann at work as he was different from everyone else: there was a lot of toxic male masculinity in a sales environment and Johann wasn't like that. He was quite intellectual and I honestly thought, hey he could do well in this job - I liked talking to him and that was pretty much what sales was about. You spoke to your potential customer, established rapport and then present whatever you're selling; the client would then buy from you because they like and trust you. I felt like I had an interesting dynamic with Johann: I was trying to learn social skills, to see how posh, well-educated people made small talk and polite conversation. In return for that, I taught Johann the more technical aspects about the financial products that we were selling and it did work well for a while at least as we definitely helped each other and it was nice to have a friend like him at work. That was until Johann suggested that I had lunch with Rhonda one weekend, I thought yes sure why not. I've heard so much about her and it would be rude to decline such an invitation. But no, that lunch never happened as Rhonda decided she didn't like me - I struggled to try to understand why she viewed me as such a "threat".
I did question why: I am a gay man, Johann is straight and has a girlfriend. So Rhonda was afraid of Johann meeting other women but was she afraid that I would turn Johann gay and have sex with him late one night after work in the office? Heck, for the record, I never mix work and play and furthermore, did I mention that Johann was really quite fat? No, I can assure you that Rhonda had nothing to worry about on that front. Nonetheless, when Johann told her about the fact that we had developed a very pleasant working relationship, she wanted to put a stop to it. Was she homophobic or racist? I don't think so, rather I think she simply resented the fact that I had some kind of influence over Johann and she really wanted him to be the only person who had any influence over him. Johann regretted that he suggested that we had lunch together, it was clear that she had made him promise not to be that close to me at work. Johann then kept his distance from me at work and he did explain why - I wasn't close enough to him to challenge him. Well, I knew what I thought of his situation: I thought it was ridiculous that Rhonda got jealous of him making a new friend at work but did I know Johann well enough to tell him that his girlfriend was a total psycho bitch who was going to ruin his life? No, I didn't think that was something I could've or should've said to him. He was a grown man, he was an adult - like if a dumb young boy were to make a foolish mistake, us adults might feel compelled to rush in an save that kid from his own stupidity. But if an adult wants to make a mistake like that, most of us would react by taking a big step back and saying, "whatever happens to him now is none of my business, I'm not getting involved in this." Hence that's what I did with Johann. I thought he was making a mistake but no I just took a step back and said nothing. It wasn't my battle to fight in this case.
Actually, Johann needed me more than I had realized - sure I wasn't the only person who could help him with the more technical aspects of his job, but he found it hard to approach others for help the way he did with me, given that he wasn't as friendly with them. Whereas this whole thing about social skills, well if I didn't learn that from Johann, I could learn it from others - like he wasn't my only source of knowledge and information. His sales figure were poor but he refused to ask me for help. As I was about to leave that job, I found out that Johann was getting married to Rhonda and I knew that was going to happen as she had staked her claim on her man. I wished him all the best and we never kept in touch after I had left my job. As I did my research for this piece, I Googled him and interestingly enough, I found him (since he had a rather unusual Swedish surname, hence it wasn't hard to find him). He now works at a university as an academic which was fair enough, I doubted that he suited the world of finance and I hope he has found an environment where he felt comfortable. He has no presence at all on any social media platform today but in the short biography he has on the university's website, it states that he is married with two children and enjoys creative writing. The key reason why I wanted to share this story with you was because I saw the parallel with my previous post about my friend 'Chua' was because I didn't want Chua's story to be an attack on Asian or Chinese values - there are so many similarities between Chua's story and Johann's story and in Johann's case, he is half Swedish, half English whilst his wife is English. I wanted to demonstrate that even without the influence Asian culture, you could still end up with the same outcome when you have one dominant partner having too much influence in the relationship to that point where there is not mutual respect.
Around 2010, I ran into Johann at a very crowded London Bridge train station - we exchanged a few brief words but I was genuinely happy to see him. Then he said, "I'm so sorry, Rhonda's waiting for me, but I'll be in touch with you," before leaving abruptly. But no he never got in touch and that prompted me to search for him on social media - instead of finding him, I found a Facebook group by his friends and former classmates from Oxford University wondering what the heck happened to him as he seemed to have fallen off the face of the earth. That was when I messaged one of the people in the group (let's call him Richard) to assure him that Johann is alive and well, that I had just run into him at London Bridge station. That was when I found out that Johann had stopped speaking to all his former friends and classmates from his university days ever since he started dating Rhonda, they were simply wondering what the hell had happened: did he move back to Sweden or another country? Did something terrible happen, did he get killed in a car crash? Did he become a monk and retreat to a monastery in the middle of nowhere? Does anyone know what the heck has happened and can account for the radio silence? So I actually told Richard how I had worked with Johann for nearly a year and shared a lot of information with him - I was shocked to learn that Richard was one of Johann's best friends at university but Johann had simply stopped communicating with him overnight which left Richard wondering, hey did I do or say something so wrong that I had mortally offended you to the point where you no longer want to ever speak to me again? Richard was very relieved to have known that he didn't do anything to drive Johann away but of course, he was equally concerned about the way Rhonda was manipulating him in this relationship. I could only shrug my shoulders and assure Richard that I agreed with him, but there was nothing we could do in this case, if Johann has made up his mind.
It is only too easy to find a reason to explain why things turned out the way they did: Chua is Chinese (and had been made redundant from his job in IT), Johann is fat - thus that was the weakness that made then susceptible to manipulation. But then again, I have met people who are both fat and Chinese who didn't succumb to manipulation. So I leave you with this question: what makes us vulnerable to manipulation then by people who don't care if we are happy or not? Why do some people know when to walk away from toxic relationships whilst others willingly enter such awful, toxic relationships with a big smile? Please let me know what you think and leave a comment below. Many thanks for reading.
When you mentioned that Johann had trouble talking to other people in the workplace, that to me sounds like he has social anxiety and doesn't easily approach people. That can make someone feel like they have few options for dating, hence why he's stuck with such a controlling girlfriend. Also, fat guys really struggle in the dating market if they aren't confident enough to tell jokes. I used to think it was men who are shallow and not women. But when Tinder published their data for researchers to analyze, they found that its the women who are shallow and tend to mostly go for the top 10% of handsome guys with abs (regardless of what they look like), while the average man just swipes on anything. Also if Johann is really posh, he probably has no idea how privileged it is to go to Oxford and how to leverage that in the dating market. And I suspect he was bullied growing up for being fat because posh schools tend to have a huge emphasis on sports. Oh gosh I do have a posh friend who grew up fat and is still fat, was bullied in school, and struggles in dating. But despite being posh, he does not have a posh finance job like Johann. He refuses to get one using his degrees and just works minimum wage. If he did have a good job, I think he would easily fall for a Rhonda type since he has very low self esteem, and is extremely needy.
ReplyDeleteAlso, who calls their boyfriend/girlfriend at work? To me it sounds like this girlfriend doesn't have a job or has a very lax job. I don't even text my boyfriend during work hours, and we both have jobs.
The reason I wanted to share Johann's story is to make it clear that things can go terribly wrong even in the West when it comes to relationships like that and I did feel that in my previous post, I was making it come across that it was Asian culture that was the root problem, that if only Chua wasn't so 'Asian' he would be happier. But in Johann's case, both him and his wife are white Europeans yet the same situation happened and so I used it as an example to examine why things turned out like that. Just to be clear, Johann isn't raking in millions in academia, he retreated to academia as that's the world where he feels he belongs - he tried to make it in the world of business but decided it wasn't for him and his lack of success made him realize that. I don't judge him for that, I'm just glad he's found something he likes doing and is comfortable with but I imagine that Rhonda must be rather disappointed with his career choices. If only she allowed him to network a lot more, he might have succeeded in finance/business if he had better connections but she made the mistake of assuming that all big banks would be lining up to hire an Oxford graduate - that wasn't the case!
DeleteYeah I think it's not only an Asian thing, maybe being Asian pre-disposes someone to put having children over being happy, but abusive relationships exist everywhere. It had nothing to do with the kids. There are also manipulative partners that try to get their partner to not have kids. Though I will say, I think in Chua's case he has manipulative parents so he doesn't notice his partner is manipulative, because that's the example of "love" his parents set.
DeleteOh so you think Johann had a failed finance career which is why he went to academia? Does he work at Oxford or even a Russell group uni? But yeah I agree with you academia doesn't pay well relative to finance, especially if Johann is not working in STEM. By the way, did you know anything about Rhonda's background? Is she also posh? Because she comes across as having no understanding of the business world. If she really wanted her husband to maximize his earnings she should understand the value of networking, getting along with all your coworkers, and not spending your working hours on the phone with your girlfriend.
I think it would be needlessly unkind to call Johann a failure in finance - if he had been given the right opportunity in the right role, with the right support, there's no question that he would have succeeded. But no, he went for a sales job where you're measured by the amount of sales you make and he sucked at that. Now if he was in a big enough firm, a kind boss could have said okay Johann, you can't sell but you do have some useful skills that we can deploy in another department and we'll give you the training to make that transfer so we can still keep you in our company and you can excel in a different role. But no, we were in a small company, that wasn't possible and thus Johann needed to network to find a mentor who would help him do that and that's when Rhonda got in the way - she didn't like him networking just in case he met other women or friends who would tell him that Rhonda was a bad person and a terrible choice for a wife. She made the assumption that all employers would roll out the red carpet for an Oxford graduate but that wasn't ever going to be that easy for Johann. Yes it is a lot easier to find a good job if you have a degree from Oxford but a lot depends on WHAT SUBJECT that degree is in and not all Oxford degrees are the same. I'm afraid Johann's degree is in one of those subjects considered 'useless' along the lines of philosophy, history, literature and classics. As for Rhonda, I don't know that much of her as she never met any of Johann's friends or colleagues but from what I gathered: a really posh woman wouldn't be that jealous, a rich, posh woman would guard her boyfriend as jealously her she did as a rich, posh, confident woman wouldn't be that insecure - that's the benefit of wealth, you're independently wealthy. You don't need a rich man to set you up for life if your parents already have plenty of money for you. Thus I deduced that she was neither rich nor posh. But whether she was desperately poor or middle class, I don't know. You could be either and still very insecure. So based on that limited evidence, I can only tell that her family background definitely isn't rich and probably more middle class or working class, but rich people know the value of networking and having the right friends. Only someone who is desperately working class would be that naive about this aspect of Johann's career.
DeleteFrom what you tell me, it seems Johann is just not ruthless enough to survive in the cutthroat world of sales and finance in general. I mean he is so weak he gives in to whatever his girlfriend asks, nevermind whether it's good for his career. Since he is a posh boy I assume his parents must've taught him something about business, but all that get thrown out the window for a jealous girlfriend. Maybe if he did a STEM degree he could switch to being a quant. But even with an Oxford degree he'd still have to pass a math/coding test, unless he does a lot of networking. But even without a STEM degree he could have been a general analyst, quant firms also hire non quants to do due diligence without math. But all these things require time investment away from the relationship.
DeleteWell there are mentally ill posh people, maybe she wanted a husband she could control regardless of his money? But even the average fat posh girl doesn't struggle that hard to find a guy, so I don't know why she's guarding Johann as if he's the last sip of an oasis in a desert. If she was fat and poor, along with her very obvious bad social skills, that would make a lot more sense. Being either fat, poor, or having bad social skills makes dating difficult, but it would make it infinitely harder to have all three qualities at once.
OK let me put it this way, I don't think Johann is without his merits. Allow me to share with you a distressed case I was presented today: company 'Atlanta Star' in Georgia is up for sale, it has a good track record, it has a solid customer base over 10 states and the reason why it is up for sale is because the CEO has personal problems. He is willing to put the company up for sale for about $6 million even though it can be worth up to twice that given its current track record. The reason why the CEO is willing to sell it off so quickly is a complex story involving his extended family, but in short, family problems have required him to raise that kind of money very quickly and selling Atlanta Star off to a buyer willing to hand him that kind of money ASAP is the easiest route for him to do it. I could go into a lot more details about the business model and the financials but I want you to imagine meeting Johann is a very nice restaurant in the heart of London. Whilst he offers you a choice of tea or coffee, he starts to tell you that story in his posh English accent. You listen because he is a good story teller, okay he may be fat but he is charming and he has just paid you at least ten compliments about how awesome you are - everything from your shoes to your complexion is perfect according to him. Now whether or not you will convince your boss to invest in Atlanta Star is contingent on him making you feel very comfortable doing business with him and so far, you've enjoyed having coffee with Johann. Imagine if I got someone else who was working class and dressed badly, didn't have the social skills to make you feel comfortable and even if that was a good investment proposition, well, you might still walk away from that meeting thinking: do I trust him? Do I feel comfortable doing business with someone like that? Oh it's so hard to build trust but so easy to break it. Someone like Johann can be put in a position to use his posh social skills to his advantage and that's the world I move in. I have seen people walk away from business deals for no better reason than, "no, I don't think there's enough trust for us to do business together" and it boils down to a lack of rapport. That has happened a lot more than you think - business is all about social skills and so many people think it's about numbers or maths, as if! As for how much Johann's parents taught him, clearly not enough, not a lot - posh parents can be neglectful and selfish as well you know. Alright I'd reveal that Johann's degree was in history (roll eyes) - that proved to be totally useless in the business world.
DeleteWell yeah being posh helps, but you also have to be ruthless rather than just nice. Show initiative. Nobody is gonna tell you what to do, you have to come up with the ideas. Simply being upper class is not enough. I know many lazy upper class people whose parents don't demand very much from, but could probably chat other upper class strangers up easily. Well, for all we know Johann might have a trust fund he uses to supplement his income while he works in academia. And no, history is not that useless of a degree, it all comes down to how you use it. There are many people with engineering degrees that forget half of what they're taught by the time they leave university, especially the theoretical parts, and have to be retrained anyway by the time they start the job.
DeleteAaaah, I know for a fact that Johann does NOT have a trust fund. If you have a trust fund, then you would gladly take jobs which don't pay very well but are fun and interesting. When we were colleagues, the job was neither fun nor interesting, it was hard work, it was stressful and it's the kind of job that poor people like me had to do in order to earn money quickly - sales was attractive as I could literally write my own pay check. Wanna earn more this month? Sure thing, just sell more and I'll double my earnings. It was a cut throat, nasty, challenging environment that Johann struggled with and left eventually. A rich person with a safety net like a trust fund would quit by lunch time on day 1 if they realized how toxic the environment was but a poor person like me would simply put up with all the poison there because there is the possibility to make money, a lot of it, very quickly.
DeleteAllow me to compare it to the people in Africa who work in abandoned gold mines - now these are the poorest of the poor in Africa who will die of hunger if they don't earn some money everyday. The abandoned mines are full of toxic chemicals like mercury which can cause cancer and all kinds of nasty illnesses but in the short run, you can literally just go into the old abandoned gold mine and dig your way to a small fortune as there's still some gold left there (that's why there was a gold mine there in the first place). So these poor people ignore the poisons in the soil and water and dig for gold there whilst someone who is educated and has choices would say, "no thanks, I'll rather do something else, I'm poor but not that desperate." By the same token, a rich person with a gold mine would have seen that company Johann and I worked in and said, "no thanks, I'll rather do something else. I've got enough money in the bank to tide me over until I find something better." But the fact that Johann went into that very toxic, poisonous abandoned gold mine tells me that he simply didn't have anything like a trust fund, that's why he jumped into the poisonous water in the abandoned gold mine with me.
In any case, you don't need a trust fund to work in academia - there are loads of people in lower-paid jobs (nurses, teachers, hairdressers etc) who simply get on with life whilst surviving on very little money. It's called being poor. It simply means you do not get to enjoy the nice things in life like fun holidays, buying the latest iPhone, going to nice restaurants with your friends and buying new clothes when you just feel like it. Johann can easily just accept 'being poor' - even if I think that may well and truly piss Rhonda off as that's not what her plan was.
DeleteOh wow that really is settling then. Especially because he grew up posh. Unlike Chua he just had short stories he wrote that looked like unattainable fantasies. My take is that people don't really know what it's like to fight for nice things until they enter the working world, even if they went to Oxford.
DeleteJust because one grows up with rich parents doesn't mean they would automatically become rich. My take is that if you want the nice things in life, then you must be prepared to make sacrifices for them. I'm doing a long weekend in Norway, I'm flying to Stavanger on Norway on Friday, then the weekend will be a luxury cruise around fjords before catching a flight back on Sunday evening and I'll land back in London at 8 pm on Sunday night. Norway is freaking expensive, the cruise costs more than the flight + the airbnb but I'm like, I can afford it, I wanna do something special and see the fjords covered in snow in the middle of a Norwegian winter. I know of friends who go on holiday like once a year if they're lucky and this is my second holiday in January alone after I went skiing in Italy earlier this month. I have money to do things like that and some people will tell you, hey maybe Johann is happier pursuing something he is passionate about in academia and he doesn't need fancy stuff to be happy - that I'm just being materialistic in the way I enjoy life. Guilty as charged.
DeleteBut you're referring to Johann's situation as 'settling' - that's kinda harsh because the vast majority of people out there have average jobs, earning average salaries and they are the people making you coffee in Starbucks, the lady behind the ticket counter at your local train station, the friendly Uber driver who picks you up after work. the receptionist at your gym who greets you each time you visit - people like that earn relatively little and are they all 'settling'? Is settling the norm?
DeleteOh have fun in Norway. Wow two vacations during the winter. I didn't know they had cruises in the winter.
DeleteWhat I mean by settling is relative to what he started with, which was a posh upbringing + an Oxford degree. If you compare him to other Oxford graduates then it looks like he had a lot of opportunities in front of him the average person would never get, and chose to either ignore them or ended up messing them up. As someone who did grow up posh, if I did what he did people would wonder why I didn't try harder. It kinda makes me wonder what his social circle is like nowadays. But it's all relative, I suppose for most people there is only upward and lateral mobility because there's not much below. But for the upper class there's mostly sideways or down. Relationship wise I have no idea how he ended up with such a controlling girlfriend, but I'm guessing he might have rich parents who were never home so he could really enjoy the attention he gets from Rhonda, and doesn't see it as being controlling.
Two vacations in January, not just winter. I intend to have more vacations in February as well but that's just the way I roll. I didn't have one in December as I was in Dubai and Abu Dhabi for half of November, but this is the norm for me. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram for the latest content from tomorrow - I have my flight at 11 am to Stavanger. As for social mobility, right the only way was up for people like me but for Johann, it wasn't hard for him to mess up and even I was surprised, that's why I often remember him as a case study not to take anything for granted like, oh you have an Oxford degree, you can't fail now. As for his social circles these days, I imagine it must be like he only speaks to the people he has to work with, then he rushes home to his wife and kids the moment he can leave the office - people call that being a family man, it's considered normal, even celebrated as a virtue. "Look at him, he loves his wife and kids so much, he must be a great husband and father."
DeleteWhat's it like going on a cruise during the winter? I take it there won't be an open pool, water slide, volleyball, or what tropical cruises advertise.
DeleteI'm flying to Boston tonight, but I just realized I don't have any formal shoes and either have to drive to the mall and buy some, or hope the company representatives at the networking event won't look at my feet. Ugh, I don't have lots of formal clothes because I don't go out and buy them for fun like you haha. I hope they'll accept I'm a math geek and math geek formal is usually just a hoodie and jeans. Also, how do people dress formal in the winter? For men I get you can buy wool-lined suits, but for women in dresses or skirts that would be very cold.
Haha so Johann is just Chua with rich white parents, but they ended up in the same spot in the end. I would just expect the rich white parents to push him harder to succeed in his career instead of settling down so quickly. But maybe they tried and it just didn't work. I'm getting the idea that Chua was booksmart enough to get into Oxford, but not streetsmart enough to succeed in the business world. I see that a lot in my field, people who are really good with numbers who just can't work with other people due to horrible social skills.
None of the above in a winter cruise - winter cruises are a thing but it's focusing on what you see rather than activities for young people. Come on, I am an old man, I am no longer young so the activities catering for young people don't appeal to me. We sit on the deck, sail into a majestic fjord, take photos of the Norwegian landscape and that's kinda it. We may spot some whales, we may see some wild life but there's plenty of beautiful nature to look at in the rugged Norway coastline in winter. I must admit, I do look at men's shoes and socks only as a means to judge if they bother to dress up for the event (I was at a conference today) or if they roll out of bed and can't be bothered. But I don't care about the women unless they draw attention to themselves. As for winter formal wear, I have a good winter coat to protect me against the elements but it doesn't get more than like -10 in London (that's as cold as it gets) so it's not that bad. Today it was more like +5 degrees so I am dressed normally. Suit and tie + coat + scarf + hat + gloves and I'm ready to head on out. No need for anything special, the cold never bothered me anyway.
DeleteThis made me think about one experience I had in Africa - I was in Tunisia when I had my transfer from my hotel to the airport (a common thing when you wanna make sure you make your flight) and there was one lady on the bus whose kid needed to be entertained, so the boy was on his iPad the entire trip to the airport and I was like, why didn't the mother once say to her kid, "hey look out of the window, this is AFRICA!" Nope, the kid was playing some silly game on the iPad and the mother couldn't be bothered trying to engage the kid. As an old man, I am more than happy to just look out of the window of that bus and look at the streets we were driving through - that was already fascinating for me but I think young people are not interested in that. They need an open pool, water slide and volleyball to be entertained?! Generation gap perhaps?
DeleteAnyway, I'm off to Norway in a few hours - I hope Boston is a lot of fun for you and we'll chat when we both get back from our respective trips. Bon voyage.
DeleteHey Alex, how was Norway? Did you see any majestic wildlife in the Fjords? I had a blast in Boston, it's a very walkable city with good public transport, but not nearly as crowded as New York. I might just want to move here and look for full-time jobs. Seeing MIT and networking with companies was also really fun. I don't think I was very good at my "elevator pitch" for myself when talking to recruiters, but I hardly go out to networking events to talk to people so it was a good learning experience.
DeleteBy the way, being around so much wealth and prestige at the event made me think, why am I sacrificing so much to live in poverty to pursue science? I had qualms before about going into quantitative finance to "be useless to society", but maybe in the short term I just want to be financially secure. It seems within reach for me too, many companies asked for my CV at the event. It wasn't for finance jobs but it was still five figures/month starting. I don't have to love everything I do, but having money would mean I get to visit Norway myself and look at the whales and icebergs. I probably sound like I'm in a very privileged position, as in I already have marketable skills but I just don't make full lucrative use of them. But it also makes me question why I haven't tried to all these years. I dunno, I guess I just didn't love myself very much back then because of all the abuse I've suffered in childhood. I almost saw it as saintly to sacrifice myself for some higher purpose, it was kinda like a coping mechanism. But now I know to take care of myself first if I want to be happy.
Yeah that's also a factor, I didn't know how to get people to like me growing up. I mean I do like science but it was kinda a case of "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." Carbohydrates are important but they can't replace protein or fat. At the time I had two problems, one was in general having one toxic parent and finding it hard to not be paranoid everyone will treat me awful, and the other was the bad financial situation because my mom likes to trash my dad's finances whenever she throws a tantrum(so irrational since it affects her too, but some people just don't think before acting). But I don't have to live in either of those situations, sometimes I think the scientific training was me rationalizing an excuse for not fixing the problem. It's like how your mother couldn't attract men growing up, and instead of doing anything she just
Deletecalled pretty women whores and thought of herself as a saint for practicing restraint. It's so much easier to find a distraction or excuse not to do something than to actually suffer to get the job done. At least scientific training isn't entirely idle, I picked up a lot of skills which would let me be a trader in finance using math or write some software algorithms for other purposes. I dunno why I never dreamt of just making all the money back, it's like I just accepted that money and lifestyle was gone and this is how I have to live. But my mom is bad with money, not me, I don't have to share that destiny. A prof I knew even suggested I network so I can transfer to MIT, but why would I want to endure another 2-3 years of poverty pay just for a degree to get a job if I can already get the high paying job now? I even met a company that said they hire masters graduates and do hire from my school.
Also wow dreaming of being an aid worker to feel important in life. Yeah that's also another case of "if I have to suffer, at least get some recognition for it." It's so much harder to love yourself if people say you're not worth it.
Well we've both been through a difficult upbringing to warp our views of our place in the world and what we want in life. In your case, you need to think outside the box about proving yourself through that one thing that you're good at (science) and recognizing that there's something called transferable skills and the ability to adapt because you're really intelligent. If I had stuck to the principles of sticking to what I was good at, I would be a secondary school or JC teacher in Singapore teaching geography who ran the school's gymnastics club - as that's what I was good at as a student: geography + gymnastics. However, I grew up, explored the world not just in terms of visiting many countries, but getting to know a lot of people and trying a lot of things - all that made me grow and mature as an adult and gained confidence which I then applied in the world of business. All that growth happened when I was around your age actually and so you're growing through this growth process right now - embrace it with a big smile on your face and plenty of confidence in your abilities and your future.
DeleteYeah it's hard for me to give me the things I felt I didn't get but needed growing up. And sometimes I rationalize the financial part as "oh it's shameful to be rich, look how awful of a rich person your mom is." But reading this blog you cover that topic multiple times, the concept of sour grapes and the tendency to romanticize poverty. A lot of people would envy the position I'm in and wonder why I don't take care of myself better. Originally I was gonna write "my near term goal is just... Get rich" but then I decided that is way too vague and rich could range from well off to Bill Gates. So a more quantitative description of my goal would be to land a job that pays in the top 10% of income in America, and if I get lucky maybe top 5%.
DeleteYeah I don't have to put myself in a box based on what I was good at in high school, like you said it's okay to branch out. That's the kinda encouragement I should give myself that I never got. Also, after going to MIT and talking to lots of companies, I actually know what they're looking for! They gave more advice than just "send in your resume", they actually told me what is in the job and I can demonstrate that by contributing to open source projects that the companies run.
Yes indeed, that's why such events are so useful!
DeleteReading about Rhonda, I have a real life story I want to share as well. I had a very close male buddy whom I often refer to as my brother from another mother. We used to hang out almost all the time and at all Japanese related events (we were J-culture nerds back then).
ReplyDeleteThen he got divorced and his new girlfriend (now spouse) forbade him from hanging out with me since she was afraid we were gay buddies. But of course she hangs out with her male and female friends without issue.
I decided to pick my battles and totally cut contact with him. Now I only meet him once a year, during the CNY period.
I don't think it's an irrational fear that you might be gay - in Rhonda's case, did she really think that I would seduce Johann? Firstly, Johann is straight. Secondly, I'm not attracted to him (sorry no offence but he's fat) so what was she on about? Well, it's not so much the possibility of me having sex with Johann, but more the possibility of me telling Johann "she's no good, leave her - you deserve better." Now that's the kind of influence she was afraid I would have over her man and thus she did everything to stop that in order to safeguard her investment. That must have been a very similar process going on with your former buddy's wife - it was your influence over him that she feared, she was worried what you might say to him about her controlling ways. At least you still meet him once a year, I've not spoken to Johann in about 17 years.
DeleteDiscounting the fact that I might be gay (I wasn't in fact I was always more attracted to beautiful girls, which happened to be Japanese girls at that point in my life). He was married to a female so was her trust so low for her future husband that she could not believe that he wasn't gay and that I wasn't one too (according to him).
DeleteI am shaking my head - if this woman doesn't know how to trust in her own judgment, then she is projecting that lack of trust in her own judgment on others by being so paranoid.
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