Real Talk About Leaving the Corporate World: All Hail the King (Or Not)

Oct 11, 2024

From Athens

I always imagine I’ll write a beautiful post after traveling, summarizing the trip and providing a gorgeous collage of photos… but instead I get antsy and I find myself drawn to share tidbits as I go along.

Life never stops entirely, either, and thoughts about my ‘next steps’ in this journey of I-left-my-corporate-job-in-aerospace-in-April are never too far off.

Sometimes, these things get all jumbled up in my mind… and how else am I supposed to clear my head - if not by writing to you, dear friends??

Orderly, scheduled writing is boring, anyways, right? (Right??!) So here we go again.

This time, I’m in Athens.

*A few days ago I told my sister-in-law where I was and she assumed I was in Athens, Georgia (odd assumption, if you ask me (love you ‘sis!))… but to be clear, I’m in Athens, Greece.

View of Parthenon from the vacation apartment balcony.

Changing of the Guards

We went to go see the changing of the guards at Syntagma Square. The guards were positioned at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in front of The Hellenic Parliament building, which my partner informed me was formerly the Old Royal Palace.

Wait, stop. We will come right back to this… but first, I need to bare-all and tell you dear readers something.

I am really bad at history. Like, really-really bad. (Worse than you are imagining.) My brain generally soaks up math and science-y stuff like a sponge, but I’ve never had much aptitude for history.

I always felt the Trivial Pursuit color for the History category, poo-poo brown, was appropriate. I just didn’t find much of it very interesting. Plus, I had a hard time following all the names and dates and endless lists of wars and just found the whole subject generally yawn-inducing.

(I feel like this admission might get me cancelled by all the intelligent writer-historian types… so in a weak attempt to gain your favor… YES I know that I need to understand history to understand present day and NO I don’t still think history is boring and I have the completed historical audio tours from the Athenian ruins to prove it. I find history infinitely more interesting as I get older. But still, I have a looooong ways to go…)

Anyways. Back to the changing of the guards ceremony.

Changing of the guards. (Well ok, “guard”, this is only one of them. Photo turned out cool though, right?)

So, as I was saying… my travel partner told me this building was formerly a Palace, and I, brimming with pride at all the knowledge I’d been gaining real-time about Greek history, responded enthusiastically,

“Wait, wutttttt??”

“What do you mean, a Palace?? Wasn’t Greece the literal birthplace of democracy?? Why the hell did they have a Royal Palace??”

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in front of The Hellenic Parliament building… aka, the old Royal Palace.

I peppered him with more questions and learned they had a King, for awhile. The ceremony was starting though, so I made mental note to look up more about it later.

(And I did!)

I’d explain it to you, but there is 100% chance I’d mess up the details, so I’ll share the explanation courtesy of www.unofficialroyalty.com instead:

Directly quoted from and all credit to: https://www.unofficialroyalty.com/former-monarchies/greek-royals/kings-of-greece/

I’m certain that there are long, complex, interesting reasons as to exactly why and how all of this happened, and although I’m curious to learn more about the role of this Treaty of London (especially after all the ‘borrowed’ Greek artifacts I saw in the British Museum during the London leg of my trip last week, hmm) I’m not going further down that rabbit hole to figure it all out at the moment.

So for now, consider the history lesson over. That’s all you needed to know for this next part.

The Real Question

Instead, I thought I’d share what first came to mind for me as I pondered this new nugget of recent-ish Greek history wisdom. This whole King-thing, that is.

As I watched the guard change ceremony, I wondered:

What would cause a people who had the freedom and agency that comes with democracy, to return to a monarchy?

Regardless of the historical backstory or the actual answer as it pertains to Greece, the question felt like it hit a nerve, personally.

Reign of The Corporate King

As a woman who is taking a yet-to-be-determined length of time away from the male-dominated tech industry, or perhaps, more simply, as a person taking time away from the ever-toxic corporate world… I find myself constantly looping through old, familiar thoughts.

Wondering… if the corporate world isn’t actually toxic after all? (Did I imagine that?)

Wondering… if I ever actually experienced any gender discrimination or sexual harassment? (Or even if I did experience a teeny tiny bit, was it really so bad?)

Wondering… if this isn’t actually all my fault, and if the source of my frustration over shitty managers or dishonest C-suites is actually just a manifestation of an entire series of character defects of my own? (Maybe everyone else is doing great and loving it, and it really is just me?)

To be clear, I’m a strong supporter of the idea that we all owe it to ourselves and to others to continually grow. I’m a strong supporter for giving grace to each other, in the workplace or otherwise, as well. We are all only human, after all. I’ve failed and succeeded and learned and changed and grown a million times and in a million ways throughout my career.

And yet, along with constantly seeking to do better and be better, and as much I loved the work itself, I’ve always hated the politics. Always.

I’ve always despised ‘the game’, where ‘the game’ seems geared to benefit those who are most willing to harm others.

I’ve never well tolerated the false veneers and the lies and the bullshit attempts at diversity policies that didn’t help.

Still, I struggle with circling the wagon again and again, making myself captive to the idea that “actually, they are right about everything, and I am the one who is wrong to feel this way.”

I… I place them as my Kings, I hand them the scepter, I bow down to the Royal Palace of Corporate again and again. I wrestle with myself and try to prove them right.

Surely, surely these guys all know better than I do - right?

Stepping away from the corporate world, and then spending time mooring over these thoughts - seems a bit reminiscent of a people who literally invented democracy and then somehow found themselves under rule of a monarchy, does it not?

And, now?

I’m working on many projects, and I even have some days where the fog seems to be clearing a bit. Like mayyybe this, whatever this is, will work after all.

But I still have no nice, neat answer to my future.

The corporate world, as fucked up as it is, provided both a safety net, and nice, tidy answers. It may be a jail, of sorts… or a ruling system of which I ultimately have no vote - regardless of my rank… but it’s a damn tidy one, decked out and adorned with fancy custom-fit golden handcuffs.

The ancient Greeks sure weren’t stingy with the gold.

Today is All That Is Promised

See, I want you to know that this is the truth about taking a ‘break’. This is the truth about what making this kind of change looks like.

There are a lot of things that are beginning to make sense, but there are no straight lines in this journey, and no certainty about what tomorrow is supposed to look like.

For now, I’ll enjoy what I do have.

Love. Family. Travel.
TIME, Today.
Unhinged laughter after terrible cheap wine in a Greek restaurant nestled in an alley shared with dirty, adorable stray cats.
Life.
And, DEMOCRACY.