Fury

I survived on Fury for many many years, despite being an absolute pussy.

I did promise myself I would write one thing every week.

So, as usual when seeking inspiration, I open up Ludics’ highly entertaining series of articles and read; less than five minutes later I have an idea. So I’m just going to write.

To call his articles ‘posts’ would be to do him and them a horrible injustice, but I am also a hideous leech on the best of society so I took the idea for this post from his article ‘Fury Driven Development’, which is a joy to read.

Please go ahead and read that - but after this one. It won’t take long, I promise.

I spent a vast amount of time in my professional career being driven by fury.

Not the sort of fury that caused tremendous damage or harm - unless it was to egos, of course, in which case I cared not one slightest fuck about the dents I left - but one driven by a sense of injustice and the endless suspicion that I was surrounded by incompetent morons who were determined to ruin every waking moment of my life.

I mentioned before that I have ADHD. One of the traits is an apparent inability to ‘read the room’, or determine that what I was about to say would cause offence before I say it.

Despite repeating that error countless times, I never really learned my lesson.

If I spotted a problem, then I sought out the highest ranked person responsible for that problem, shared with them in no uncertain terms the incredibly obvious shortcomings of their lack of ability, foresight, or intelligence, also shared with them the easy solution to the problem, and then announced that I would go away and fix it immediately whether they agreed with me or not.

Looking back, it was a wonder I wasn’t fired almost every day of my life. I was made redundant twice, though - once through no fault of my own (thanks, combined governments and the horrendous pocket-lining, self-serving scam that was the Building Schools for the Future programme) - and once due to a collective downsizing that caught me in the crossfire, probably only tangentially related to the fact that only a few months before the CEO had called me a c**t to my face and thrown a printer across his office at me.

That’s for another post, though.

I say that it was an error to be so outspoken, but in hindsight it was a blessing.

Despite my bloodstream being continually soaked in adrenaline and my muscles twitching with the temptation to tear flesh asunder around me, I quickly got a reputation as the ‘fixer’. The guy who ‘got shit done, at any cost’.

Most often, I was the front man leading the charge into the office of a client threatening to sue the company I worked for, or the cannon fodder absorbing personal abuse from an apoplectic senior leader who decided that screaming at his suppliers’ unfortunate employee was the best way to demonstrate his Thought Leadership.

I was the one who, when pointing out a problem, was given all the freedom I needed to take care of it on the understanding that I was going to have to take shit from a great deal of people while I did it. This was a responsibility both heartily given by my worn out management and most likely used to make me go away.

I look back at those times from the comfortable position of my advanced years and wonder why the hell I was willing to do that - day after day, week after week. It took months of recent therapy before I realised that the combination of ADHD driven laser focus and a complete disregard for the societal nuances that plagued my colleagues was, in fact, my superpower.

Having someone yell at me while I mentally built a checklist of what pissed them off so much and computed a plan in my head to start solving those problems the minute the client shut the fuck up about them was where I thrived.

It was also a handy adjunct to my ‘special’ nature that I could relentlessly apply myself to the solution, and once solved, demonstrate the solution, gain the grudging thanks of No Longer Apoplectic Thought Leader, and leave the premises never to think about them again.

All while building on my reputation of ’taking shit, fixing problems, and then doing it all over again’.

It was a reputation that followed me from company to company, built my deep, deep experience in Clearing Up Other Peoples’ Messes, and eventually got me a solo career as a consultant which paid way more and gave me the freedom to just get on with solving problems while earning more money and working the hours I felt like working, which sounds like a great result, apart from one thing:

I ended up a caustic, sarcastic person who lived to solve problems.

As a result, I found problems everywhere.

Yes - I know - this is the world we live in. Problems abound. Incompetents walk among us, looking like everyday folk, but empowered by stupidity; the fantastical world of Idiocracy writ large and very, very, real.

Most companies I worked for just lurched from crisis to crisis, merrily ignoring the ‘guidance’ people like me offered. (I was lucky enough to meet many others who viewed the world as dimly as I did).

Most companies probably still do the same thing.

The only difference now is that I have - through therapy - gained the power to step away from the temptation to participate in the arrest of their downfall, and simply watch from the sidelines as they stumble through their problems and keep going like zombies.

In essence, I just don’t care any more.

And that, in its own way, is another Superpower. One that invites a slightly less jaundiced view of the world, does wonders for my blood pressure, and also helps me gain the respect of my colleagues for a multitude of reasons that don’t involve me cleaning up shit.

Postscript:

It occurred to me while hacking this together that I didn’t add anything about actually being a pussy. I was, most of the time.

Give me a problem to solve that enabled me to leverage my expertise, and I was unstoppable. But the moment I was out of my comfort zone and the reality that I was making everything up all the time hit me in the face, I would collapse like deflated balloon and scurry away to hide.

You might think that this is just normal life - but for me, oh no. I was all or nothing man. Solve the problem or get the fuck out, loser. And not every problem in the world can be solved by one man with an appetite for fury and relentless sarcasm, so I found myself hiding more often than I was riding a wave of fucked up glory.

Now therapy has shown me the middle ground. Give less of a shit about all the things, and a happy, fury free middle ground opens up.

One where problems pass by, left and right, and as long as they don’t affect me - Fuck ’em.