Welcome.
This is the first entry for Black Corporate Refugee. First let me thank you, reader, for taking the time out of your busy day to read my content. If you like what you’re reading, please subscribe. If you don’t like it, subscribe anyway.
I’m Phil. I’m 40. For the last ten years of my life, I’ve worked as a software developer. I picked up software development while doing my undergraduate degree at the University of Connecticut around 2011. I majored in Mathematics but I couldn’t figure out what I should do after graduation. When it comes to Math majors, it seems that the career path is to teach or go to grad school and then teach. I knew I didn’t want to do either one of those things.
One day, I picked up a ‘Programming for Dummies’ book and I seemed to enjoy learning how to write computer software. This was great because the job market for software developers was very strong at that time. For two more years I studied and practiced, all on my own. Long hours of practice and study led me to finally make myself a competent programmer. After graduating, I worked a software adjacent job. After about a year in the position, I finally landed a real software developer job and that is where this blog begins. Or maybe it began when I picked up that first programming book.
Let me explain.
I spent the next 8 years working in corporate America. I worked in very comfortable office spaces with bright lighting, artificial white noise, and plenty of coffee. OMG. The endless supply of coffee! I made great money, for a bachelor living in a one-bedroom apartment. I’d made it. I had arrived at the supposed American dream™. You know it, right?
Go to school. Study hard. Get good grades. Graduate. Get a stable, well-paying job. I did all those things and now it was finally time for me to live that dream.
You’re expecting me to say that this is where the dream was actually a nightmare, right? Well yes it was, but that’s not exactly it. You see, while I was working this easy but boring job, making relatively good money, I still wasn’t happy in this American dream. Why wasn’t I happy? Just like when we actually dream, our minds still somewhat know we are dreaming, the same was true for my life. There were things that nagged me about my chosen path in corporate America. Stick around, and I’ll get to those things in more depth in later posts.
Here’s a bit of an appetizer.
You see, reader, for all my accomplishments, something still didn’t seem….right. A thorn nagged me. A feeling of unease or incongruence that I could never quite explain. For a while(read 6 years) I was content with my good but mediocre salary; my mediocre apartment; my mediocre car; my mediocre sex life. I still had that nagging feeling of discontent deep within my mind but things were good enough. Whatever dissatisfaction I sensed would quickly be numbed by the dopamine hit every other Friday; waking up and seeing my bank balance a couple thousand dollars higher.
The year is 2020.
The mother of all black swan events happens.
My life, like that of many other people on Earth, is thrown into complete disarray. Suddenly, my world shrinks down to my one bedroom apartment. My social life, evaporates. My sex life, what little I had, goes down the tubes also. All I have left is a boring job. A lonely apartment. I suddenly have hours and hours alone to contemplate that nagging feeling that I could so easily ignore and self-medicate away. Like a forensic pathologist, cutting open a corpse to determine the cause of death, I too cut away the necrotic flesh of my life to get to the root of my unhappiness.
Slowly the answers were revealed to me.
The problem was me!
The life I’d chosen was the source of my unhappiness and discontent. Reader, I’ll be honest with you. This has been hard for me to write. It’s a painful thing to wake up and question whether you’ve spent almost 10 years of your life walking in the wrong direction.
For 3 more years I tried to ignore that revelation that what I thought was the right path, the “American dream”, may have actually led me into a trap. I kept telling myself that the next job will be better. The next place I move to will be better. Just keep my head down, earn my paycheck, and I’ll be ok. As long as I can keep getting jobs as a programmer, everything will be ok.
I sunk further into the abyss as I became more and more unhappy. You see, reader, an idea is insidious. Once it’s in your mind, you can longer go back. You think about it always in your alone moments. It haunts you day and night. You wake up in the middle of the night with your heart racing and covered in sweat. This nagging feeling of desperation washing over your entire being.
I created this blog because I want to explore a different path. I want to follow my gut that tells me that I wasn’t walking in a direction that will lead me to happiness and fulfillment. I want to explore what else life has to offer besides a cubicle; a one bedroom apartment; a modest and uninspired existence as a faceless drone in a corporate office.
I am a black man.
I am a refugee.
I am a corporate refugee.
I am the Black Corporate Refugee.
Thank you for reading and I hope to see you back here again.