I had a message from a former colleague at The Bad Place last week, asking me to provide him a reference for a job. I was happy to oblige, and even happier when I heard that he'd got it. (I don't take credit for that, I'm sure he'd have got it without my reference, he is an excellent teacher.)
Understandably, he was over the moon to have found a way out of The Bad Place, and filled me in on some of the things that had been happening there since I left. Needless to say: bad to worse. Just hearing about what was going on there though, imagining myself having to deal with it, I felt the old anxiety coming back. And this time it was mixed with something else, something I can only characterise as survivor guilt. Like those lucky few who got a lifeboat on the Titanic or escaped the Twin Towers before they fell... you can't help but feel terrible for the ones who didn't (yet) get away. My former colleagues and friends, going down with the ship. I know many of them are looking for a life raft or escape tunnel too. I hope they find one soon.
I thought about playing some Survivor to accompany this post, but they only really have one great song, and the beret always bothers me. Instead, here's some Curtis. You can't go wrong with Curtis.
i often think we gave up our Bad Place jobs too soon, as I won't pretend it's been easy earning our living from self-employment since. Reading this confirms that we did the right thing.
ReplyDeleteTry not to think about the survivor's guilt thing too much. You paid your dues and were bold enough to jump ship.
Can't go wrong with a bit of Curtis.
"You can't go wrong with Curtis"
ReplyDeleteYou can't go wrong with Eye Of The Tiger by Survivor
No. The rest of their repertoire, however...
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