Bodi's blog

By trade I’m a chemical engineer. I’ve invested a lot in this career: difficult A-levels, an expensive and difficult degree and then eight or so years of constantly trying to improve myself as an engineer, suffering awful jobs and poor environments for the prize of skills acquisition. I nostalgically remember at certain points taking great pride in my reputation as a hard and comptent worker.

A few years ago I took the red pill. Life changed: drastically and permanently. I was ‘inbetween jobs’ at the time so I had no idea that my perception of the workplace was about to change so radically.

Now I’ve been back at work for a year and I detest it. I am counting down the weeks until I will have saved enough money to simply quit and walk away and then live for several years, burning through a future ex-wife’s half of a house and doing nothing but not working and enjoying life.

Where did it all go right?

When I was between jobs most of the male contact I had was with other sorted, sound, high-value guys who’d taken the red pill and knew game. It was a deep shock to me to go back into an environment and see that EVERYONE was either Gamma or Beta. And extremely so. In my entire office of a hundred people there were approximately two guys who were remotely close to being “well rounded men”. The sheer extent of Gammaness was breathtaking. I felt sickened and suffocated to have to be around and interact with men who so obviously to me seemed weak and pathetic. It was a visceral reaction; even being around them filled me with contempt.

I’m not saying they were ‘bad people’. Just horribly Beta and Gamma. For example:

• The short, dumpy, pasty-faced, chinless dweeb, age 23 and dating a 30 year old American girl who controlled every part of his life. Already mortgaged up, with her living with him (rent free) and obeying in a heartbeat her demand that he emigrate to Minnesota with her. Mentioning “his girlfriend” at least twice an hour he obviously considers himself incredibly lucky to be dating her and even to have finally got a real, live girl that sometimes has sex with him. Often gets a dreamy, wistful expression when talking about her and once or twice has almost wept with emotion when thinking about her.

• The 45-year old version of the above. A haggard, cynical, bitter Gamma. Sitting in the corner and being sneary to everyone. His old, shrewish girlfriend calling him at least six times a day and texting him multiple times every hour. Often throwing him random chores and assignments to do during the day to subjugate him. His girlfriend is in a self-important public-sector parasite job and insists he do his ‘fair share’ of all househould chores and looking after their sickly IVF child. He sits stupefied with exhaustion chain-drinking espresso all day and staring into space with the glazed, horror-filled eyes of a Vietnam vet.

Now I didn’t go in here with an agenda to be a dick and position myself as an aloof, brooding sigma. It just happened. A total disinterest in socializing through work and an unwillingness to be involved with or tolerate the legion mind-games daily played soon positioned me as ‘antisocial’ and ‘odd’.

The real problem with all the Betas and Gammas is not their repellence, but the endless myriad frame-controlling attacks they see fit to attempt on anyone they feel doesn’t play their bitch games. What we essentially have is a group of men behaving like women. There is no conduct of honour or integrity in their behaviour. In short: there is no masculinity: weasely, snidey men being weasely and snidey. The closet metaphor I can construct for how I feel at work is that of a proud, majestic bear, chained in a pit, de-clawed and being slowly dragged down by small, vicious dogs darting in and out to attack. Yes: I really said proud and majestic. More Iorek Byrnison than Bungle.

It was hard to come to terms with the fact that 90% of my colleagues were irrelevant people but ontop of this I then discovered to my suprise that I wasn’t actually very good at the job anymore. I hadn’t expected this.

After a few weeks I suddenly realised what it is that makes chemical engineers good at chemical engineering:

a burning need to prove oneself through chemical engineering.

It was there shining out of most of my colleagues (and coincidentally the history of the entire western world)….. they actually gave a shit. They cared about this stuff and were desperate to learn that little nugget more of information to be able to get the feeling of self satisfaction from knowledge-mogging a co-worker. My problem was this:

I simply didn’t give a shit anymore.

Two years of inner-game work had moved my reference-frame to be soundly internal and I simply now don’t care what nearly all other people think. I am extremely content with myself as a person. This state of mind is in fact not condusive to doing a technical job for a living. What drives people like engineers, surgeons, pilots or computer programmers to spend years and years mastering their craft, to go home and then do more research at home on their ‘pet projects’ (as a lot do) is a deep connection between their ego and their trade. And of course a spectacular lack of pussy.

I, however, don’t make any connection between my core, inner feeling of self worth and my work. Some people may never master this in a lifetime; I have, and I tell you this: there is a price for this.

I now wistfully regard the last ten years and my destroyed career as being all part of life’s journey. No point wishing I’d spent ten years on a beach either because then I wouldn’t be where I am now, and ten years on a beach without my mindset of er, now, would be pointless.

It’s apparent to me I’ll have to start looking for an alternative source of income. There’s no way I can stand doing this for very much longer. Ontop of that engineering is actually a very poor career choice for me. Chemical engineering is an arena in which you decide to compete against highly intelligent Betas and (mainly) Gammas in an activity which they have a life or death ego attachment to. These guys will sit all weekend reading thermodynamics textbooks for fun. They will have a reference book by the night stand. They will use their holiday allowance to go to Offshore Process Engineering conferences. If you yourself don’t have a similar burning urge to play this game then you are fighting a losing battle.

Life is outside of work. Life is sex, food, friends, literature, knowledge, debate, companionship, sport, exercise and a myriad of other fun things. Once you take a few years off work and have some breathing space to live your life you realise what an utter grind most careers are. Look around a typical office and show me the happy and content 45 year old men. Most are mere shells, their souls worn thin and translucent by the endless, sleep-deprived years of grind in boring, stressful jobs. As most women spectacularly fail to realize, jobs are not these little wonderful founts of status and emotional supply: the majority of them are soul-destroying grinds and men suffer them not to steal status and money off women but to keep them and their offspring in food and shelter.

My father did a job he despised, day in and day out, in similar conditions, for thirty years straight. He provided a good life for his family but at the price of basically sacrificing his own. By the end he was in many respects a broken man and aware that his life was nothing but soft-slavery. Six months after finally retiring he started displaying signs of Parkinson’s disease. And for what price? To raise children to repeat the cycle? No thank you sir.

I’m glad I went back to my career for this last year: it’s been a fantastic way to show myself that I need to stop enchoding myself, and the very worse thing that could happen is that I become entrapped into doing this until old age (e.g. by having to support dependants). It’s helped me make the decision, the very tough decision, that if the price of ever having children is to do this forever more then that is not a price I am willing to pay. I would simply rather remain a bachelor and seek enjoyment from other things in life. (in my ample free time).

And lastly it’s important to emphasize that I am not saying ALL work sucks. I do, in fact, want to work, but I want to work for myself, with no interaction with foul Gammas, Betas or women that doesn’t involve me telling them what to do. I want to develop my entrepreneurial side. I want to run my own business of some sort. I want to create and I want a sense of ownership. I want to set my own hours and run the show myself. This is an important experiment: given the sentiment above the only way I’m ever likely to procreate is if I get my work and income situation sorted first. If it doesn’t happen…. m’eh: I gave it a shot.

I figure a lot of people reading this have never had any significant time off work. High school, university, then straight into work and well, people just work from one job to the next right? My advice for these people would be to stop and look around before life passes you by. Take the red pill. Educate yourself. Seriously, why are you even working so hard? What for? Scrape together some money and just STOP. Take a year off your career and go do something interesting. If you must work then take the female approach: don’t worry about supporting a family and just do something that gives you emotional supply.