Making it

‘I’ve heard the Hyatt is the best in Malibu.’

‘Absolutely not, the carpet stinks. The Realm has a way better gym. And it’s close to Nobu.’

‘What’s Nobu?’

‘Wow… you just disqualified yourself from this conversation!’

I had just booked flights for my first ever project at my new management consulting firm. My first job out of college and I was earning six figures, staying in six-star hotels and flying twice a week. I had made it. We were wrapping up induction and heading to a firm party for Pride, discussing the relative merits of competing hotel chains. I didn’t have a lot to say but I was excited to one day soon speak with the same authority and gravitas about the Sofitel buffet options and the W’s range of orthopedic pillows.

Reaching the rooftop of the first firm party I’d ever attended, there was a DJ, many hired drag queens, firm employees with their shirts off covered in glitter, canapes, flowing Aperol and a great deal of indiscriminate PDA. I had bought a sequined dress from Amazon for the very occasion which arrived that afternoon via same-day shipping. I had brought my boyfriend, a corporate lawyer with perfect hair who used to model in toothpaste ads and as a groom for wedding venues. We danced and met my co-workers and everyone smiled at each other in a uniquely self-satisfied way reserved for those who have been anointed by 25 as a success.

Two days later the world shut down. I enjoyed two nights in the Ritz marveling at an impossibly large marble bathroom, somehow larger than the rest of the entire room; despite the almost satirical degree of grandeur, the room was stuck at a glacial temperature and the water pressure felt like someone gently urinating on my face and hair.

By the time I landed back in California we were all locked down.

The first two weeks were an amusing novelty, not least due to the bubble of domestic bliss my partner and I found ourselves in. We cooked one another lunches and held hands at midday lying on the carpet munching on homemade vegan meals. We rearranged the bathroom cupboard and finally had time to do all the things we never otherwise had time to do. I raked the garden and took up water-colouring. He gurneyed the sandstone and rearranged the garage.

The job was exciting. I was learning new things – the ‘core toolkit’ as termed by the consultancy. ‘Your first two years is to master the core toolkit. We are toolkit building.’ The jargon began to become second nature.

‘Can we just quickly align?’

‘I need 5 minutes to PS this.’

‘Sam is a low-capability operator in need of coaching.’

Even jargon that wasn’t really jargon came to feel like jargon, standing in for something else or having its meaning massaged. ‘It’s a values issue’, someone would say, and the rest of the team would nod knowingly, or at least nod in a way that convinced a passive observer that their nod was in some way knowing.

I learned how to do an index-match and make a pivot table on Excel. I loved bumping into people on my daily permitted lockdown walk and not being able to chat, pointing to my AirPods and mouthing, ‘I’m on a call’, pitying their relative unimportance. How tragic not to be privy to the insights and tactical decisions I was lucky enough to listen to and learn from.

‘But what is the insight?’

‘What’s the so-what?’

Every fortnight I would have feedback. In April, these feedback calls assured me of my impeccable client hands - I spoke to people in a way that assuaged their general and entirely rational fear of losing their job. I was told I needed to work on my quantitative problem solving but that this would come with time.

Gradually, my hours began to worsen. 7pm became 8pm. 8pm became 11pm. At 1am one May evening, recalling an error in a spreadsheet, I phoned a friend and wept inconsolably until a 2am resolution. My partner would walk up behind me and rub my shoulders, kiss my hair, and gently reassure me that everything would be okay.

I began to notice physical changes in myself. I used to run at perhaps 10pm, to fit it into my day, after 14 hours of hunching over my laptop screen on zoom calls. The 10pm run began to fall by the wayside. Pins and needles began to creep up my back and into my shoulders, hunched up near my ears. My exercise became reduced, at least on weeknights, to rolling on the floor trying to get my lower back to crack back into its proper place.

Weeks went by when finding time to wash my hair became a struggle and it sat matted and lank to my skull, sweat beads rolling over the arms of my spectacles. A once lithe body settled into mottled cellulite and creaking joints. Sometimes my partner would come up behind me and start to feel the curves of my body and a shudder would rip through me, deeply uninterested in the prospect of intimacy or anything requiring energy apart from aligning boxes on the slide in front of me and going directly to bed.

‘I’m leaving,’ he said one day, I think in the middle of July, voice breaking uncharacteristically.

‘Just a sec,’ I replied, mid-way through entering data into a ThinkCell chart and two minutes away from my next call where I’d be expected to share screen. ‘Can we discuss this tonight?’ I asked.

‘It’s 9 already.’

‘Oh shit, sorry. Well in a bit?’

As the door shut behind him, I clicked on the Zoom link, the fluorescence of my computer screen radiating in the darkness, illuminating my face. Once I saw my ghostly reflection I was glad I would shrink to a thumbnail once screen-sharing commenced.

By November, it was winter and I was alone in the apartment. I was not doing well at work but I was not doing poorly. I was doing enough each day to survive and my reviews stated that I was fine but relatively mediocre. On every metric I was told I was average, except for one metric where I was evidently under-performing. To be mediocre at this firm, however, was still better than being outstanding anywhere else doing anything else, and I had to remember that.

No one seemed to understand. People said that I looked tired or that I had gained or lost weight or I needed to sleep more, but firstly, they couldn’t even identify what was different, secondly, they didn’t seem to understand exactly how successful I was to survive in this job, and thirdly, at the very least I wasn’t doing whatever menial, administrative work they were stuck doing. It was worth it.

By late November I was put on a project where the company had a serious cost problem. There were just too many heads in SG&A and the manufacturing costs had gone through the roof. They were unable to compete with new entrants as new technologies had reduced the cost of market entry. My final deliverable articulated a strategy entailing massive onshore headcount reduction, automation and outsourcing of all remaining tasks requiring human interface. As my manager explained this plan to a screen full of executive faces, I beamed with pride. This wasn’t visible as I was not permitted to join the call, rather I was listening through a separate phone my manager had set up in the room he was in.

The executives were impressed. Granted their armies of onshore workers would shrink to almost nothing, but it would be to the benefit of their pay packet for time immemorial. I had ensured the mass layoffs were spread evenly across every portfolio so that no single executive could accuse any other of empire-building. The plan received unanimous endorsement from the board and we had effectively doubled our year-on-year savings target.

As I sat there, feeling vindicated, I realised that I had bled through my tampon, my jeans and onto my chair. I had not changed my tampon in 16 hours. It had been an all-nighter, and I could feel cramps ripping through my uterus, feeling more like Toxic Shock than regular period pain. I looked around at the bowls of crusted 2-minute noodles around me, stale coffee cups and my retainer collecting bacteria on a plate. There were insects growing inside my dirty clothes basket, crawling over my underwear. Anti-depressants and beta blocker pustule packets littered the floor of the apartment, along with used tissues, dirty socks and Ural sachets. I walked to the bathroom to clean myself up and saw myself in the mirror. Red ringed eyes with bloodshot little capillaries crawling like little spiders over the whites; yellow teeth, bent out of shape, covered in air stains and with little greens trapped in the gums from the last time I ate a salad; a yeast infection around the corners of my nose, red bacteria spreading from nostril to lip. Large purple bags under my eyes. This was what success looked like and I was finally getting used to it.

As I cleaned the clots from between my legs and had a disappointingly fluid bowel movement, a small unwelcome thought entered my mind. What if I were to work somewhere else, where I could sleep for six hours or more each night? What if I went back to law? I scrolled my iPhone aimlessly on the toilet and read about rising house prices on the Eastern Suburbs.

On my graduation from the law degree I never used, my father gifted me with a heart locket. Inside it was engraved the quotation, ‘Fear is temporary. Regret is forever.’ He was right. It was impossible to buy a house big enough for multiple children without earning at least in the mid six figures, and I’d lose too much time going back to law. No, I’d gone too far. I couldn’t accept failure now. I’d regret it forever.

Funnily enough, I never did have those children. I did end up with the beautiful house. You should see it. It’s stunning. Mediterranean inspired. Almost like Marlon Brando’s house Vinny Chase bought in Entourage. The envy of all the beachgoers who walk past. I bet they always wonder who owns it and how they became so successful.

And if they peaked through the windows, which of course they can’t, I’ve had them tinted, they’d see me, alone, at my computer, headset on, with a Girlboss poster hanging above my head. Turned out working from home agreed with me. I’ve had some gastric banding done and some plates in my back for posture reasons, but I’ve built in some healthy habits. For example, I do yoga at my desk every Wednesday morning. I’m great at organizing team events involving the entire team over Zoom. I’m great at Slack messaging to keep up connectivity with my team and make sure they’re having a productive day. I even remember to shower or at least run a wet cloth over the gentle undulations of the pustules on my back and upper shoulders every few days. I’ve always been an early achiever. I had a cataract operation at 40. I led the charge in outsourcing and rose to be managing partner in headcount reduction in retail and manufacturing. I was known as the ‘fat trimmer’ – once I cast my eye over an org chart, there was nowhere for worthless employees to hide.

Not only am I a career success, but I have also achieved balance in my life. I don’t know how I got so lucky – the only thing I can put it down to is my personal resilience, my insight, and the toolkit.