Simply being me

Future Perfect Now #236

I didn’t realize how valuable I was. Not for the longest time. I saw the business world as a dark grey place where I didn’t belong, where what I said and thought and even did, sometimes, was not quite relevant. I didn’t speak the same language of the collectively enthused. I didn’t hold the same manufactured values of so many middle managers, held onto out of fear for performance, job security or advancement politics. I was always an outsider, the visiting consultant who wasn’t tied by all those things, even though I played my own versions of them to some degree or other. The corporate world was always a bit of a mystery to me—or not. Actually, it was a place I didn’t want to be. It was uncomfortable and full of false promise—a playground for manipulators and the manipulated. At heart, I was always an artist, but I spent my life hopping from the boat to the shore because I could not see or find my true value. Not for the longest time. Until I did. And the strangest thing is that I am now sought out by those corporate manipulators and those caught up in their own betrayal, for the very reason that I am different, that I speak my own truth naturally and without training, qualifications or a trumped-up CV. I am simply me, and that, in this world, is a quality that holds more value than all the tea in China!