Finally!

After 4 years with my current firm, and nearly 10 years in consulting, I resigned today and am currently negotiating a release date.

I am going to do my MSc and then set up a new venture, Bloom Psychology, with someone I met during my last course.

I am so excited about doing it, relieved to have made a decision, pleased not to have to do any more consultancy and above all, I can't wait to get going with making Bloom a success.

To everyone who has offered me their support and advice over the last few months, thank you.

The T junction looms

I had a really wreteched week at work. Every hour passed in a day. And after every day I counted it off as I left the office, whilst dreading the next.

For reasons I will go into later, this long road which I started 3 years ago is leading me to a point where I have to go one way, or another.

Up til now I have been doing something which is classically me: hedging my bets.

So, I have been studying in my spare time, taking sabbaticals, making plans, but all the while keeping my nice, safe, highly paid consulting job.

But that can't go on forever. Bill Cosby once said the key to failure was trying to please everybody, and he's right.

So soon - very soon - I have a decision to make. No more hedging. Of course, I can always go back, that's what everyone is telling me. But I know that isn't true.

I either turn left, and console myself perhaps by buying a beautiful house, a car, expensive holidays. That's not so bad. Or I turn right, and wave goodbye to all that, but do something that might improve the world by a fraction.

And of course, if you will indulge me in another quote: the real measure of your wealth is how much you'd be worth if you lost all your money.

So, left or right?

A story about Lithuanians in which I question your career choice

I read about a Police Officer in Torquay who has just won Lithuania's personality of the year award. Quite how this was achieved has implications for what we should all be trying to achieve at work.

PC Gary Pettengell is an ordinary Bobby on the Beat in Great Yarmouth. He was moved to work on the seafront, and there came into contact with the community's large immigrant Lithuanian population who more often than not were in trouble with the law, usually for acts of petty theft.

So far so unexceptional. It was Gary's response to this which was amazing.

It would have been so easy to think well, crime and immigrants, that's life isn't it? But Gary didn't. Instead he went to the library, got out some language tapes and taught himself some basic Lithuanian in his drive to work. He then went about trying to understand this community, eventually uncovering the other half of the story.

Lithuanians were coming here via dodgy intermediaries and through work agencies who paid them little, and took most of that away on board and lodgings. Some had not eaten for a week, and resorted to crime simply to eat. Gary was disturbed enough to begin to address these problems. Firstly, by posting information on the web about basic services, how to get an NI number, how to access medical care, how to get a bank account. He then lobbied the local Criminal Justice Board to dset up money for a Welcome to Norfolk website which now contains all this information.

Welcome to Norfolk.

This to me is amazing. There is no way I'd do this for my job, I just couldn't be arsed. And there's the indictment. If you can't imagine a situation where you could be bothered to make this sort of effort, why bother to work at all? Gary put meaning into his work by putting his life into it.

Surely, we must all strive to do the same, or risk sliding into old age with nothing to show but flatscreen TVs and buy-to-let houses.

That's why when it comes to career choices and the head v heart debate, it must be the heart that wins, every time.