Welcome back. The response to Part I was mixed. The only feedback received about it was however positive except for my beloved internet super nemesis using an alt account. There was a lot more views than votes or feedback, so assume that quite a few saw the wall of text and baulked or found quickly it was not heading in a direction they were interested. So let us start with a little disclaimer.
Greetings intelligent entity on the internet! You are reading a story about the internet entity now known as edeity. It covers the whole of a life, with some degree of focus on the differences and challenges of life with the condition known as aspergers. This is not a medical story, nor a science story. It is not here to tell you facts or figures that are verifiable. It also is not a quick short story of hope and inspiration despite what I may otherwise say elsewhere to be ironic. This is a real story of a real boy becoming a real man.He doesnt just get hurt by an unfair world, he hurts back and he hurts back hard. Often to people who trust and depend on him. You are going to read of some of the very worst of human behaviour, not just done by others but by the central character of this story. The fact that he still finds pride in some of this should further give you a view that not all is good here. But it is real, and as much as possible has attempted to not be written in a way to make you like the central character, even though he does have likeable qualities. He is callous and damages lives.
To be clear, if you are after something nice and uplifting you are in the wrong end of town.
Part IIa
"Arise Lord eDeity"
A Recap on the So Far
A young boy, from a farm in a distant part of the galaxy has changed his name after a Jedi Knight. He is taken in by the mysterious robed monks who train him in the ways of the force. He has found he has a high midiclorian count, but only at certain things. His mother has known all along he is special from birth, but has not told him.
His monastic beliefs, Jedi Masters to whom he was a padawan are slain in his mind by the dark lord - logic, using it's own form of mastery of the force. He is adrift. Looks for a new master, and one finds him called IBM. At first he finds opportunity for growth and development Here. His Jedi skills are growing in power again. Sensing a great evil coming, it is beyond his powers to see what it is. Deeply afraid he has turned to IBM to see if he can become powerful enough to survive.
He will soon learn of former Jedi that gain true power. But to learn such power he realises he must reject all he holds to be true and of worth. He must betray the Jedi.
He will soon learn of former Jedi that gain true power. But to learn such power he realises he must reject all he holds to be true and of worth. He must betray the Jedi.
And so we begin.
Loyalty
I love dogs. At present I own 4. The earliest photos of me out of nappies I am holding and hugging dogs. Always an animal person, where others would not be able to connect or get the trust of a dog, I would. I do not attribute this to any special psychic ability or some rubbish, it is rather patience and willingness to project first co-operation and respect by displaying vulnerability, and then sharing love.
I had a dog when I was growing up on our farm. He was majestic, not just in how he looked, but if I believed in souls this dog had a noble soul. He saved my life at least once, when a MASSIVE im talking 4+ metre (thats ~12 feet America) red belly snake charged at me. For the two people on the internet that don't know about Australia, our wildlife is ridiculously lethal and the red belly black snake is amongst the most aggressive and dangerous of snakes in Australia.
This dog, Michael (name after the Archangel St. Michael) charged the snake with of course no sense of self preservation, and held it at bay until the rest of the herd of dogs showed up and the snake calculated its odds and rapidly writhed away. I was helplessly stunned throughout the whole thing.
He was the largest of our dogs, and we treated him with love. He had a great life, running the farm (3,500 arces... it was a decent size) and it would be rare for a dog to have as much freedom and love.
Our dogs had however been causing problems for the neighbours. Running down sheep and calves. Baits had been put out. One by one they were dying. Michael was tied to a car, to stop him running around, so he could be protected.
My parents, and really my mother, ran the prototype of her future global cult on this farm. We had lots of drug addicts and alcoholics living here, and by the power of prayer my mother was making them better... sometimes...sort of...
This in itself made for an interesting time - I learnt to shoot from a former British SAS soldier, he was once an assassin of IRA leaders in Belfast and told stories that the easiest way to kill IRA was to buy them drinks and follow them into the bathroom. (My Great Uncle, former mayor of Cork, Terence McSweeney was a big supporter of the IRA, or at least the old IRA that wore uniforms). After murdering a taxi driver in France from a night of drinking and a desire to avoid a taxi fare he was offered a place in the Foreign Legion (life in prison/death was the other choice on offer) and given the job of exterminating half of Algeria. He is an intentionally destructive alcoholic, and when he was first asked why he is trying to kill himself from drinking "I can still hear them crying, under the dirt from the bulldozer". Anyway, he taught me how to shoot, and I became a good shot.
My best friend from this time was Justine. She was a former child prostitute and six months older than me. When I started at high school, she looked out for me and no bully would risk it when she was around. This was a tough country school with HARD poor white kids and some seriously pissed off Aborigines. But she was at a different level. Seriously she could knife you and nobody would be willing to testify (this never happened but there are people you meet that you know how it would pan out if it did). She died when I was 16. She had run away, gone back to prostitution and drugs. She called up my mother one day asking to come back. I overheard the call from the hallway and remember it clearly. My mother said no, we have three other children to think of, you have made your choice. 4 weeks later she was dead from a drug overdose. Foul play was at first thought but never proven.
So anyway, Michael is tied to the car. A priest who is staying with us at the community, has to go get something from the shop 40km away. You can see where this goes. He is pulled over by a crying policeman. They bring the still alive Michael back to the farm. Dads rifle is pulled out of his study. I remember that rifle shot, where I don't think I can remember any other rifle shot from that time despite that we used to do a lot of hunting.
He lived and was loved for being a real dog. And he was horribly hurt and then we had to kill him because he was being a real dog.
My girlfriend at age 25 had been with me since I was 22 in university. She was a true believer in the Labor party, loved social justice, feminism and a good argument. She was very independant and strong willed. By now she had left the bank and was a Union Officer/Official or something anyway she was paid a full time salary, for the Financial Services Union.
The first night I stayed at her house (she lived with her parents before moving to Sydney) they had put out a mattress for me in the lounge room. In front of her parents, she dragged the mattress past them sitting at the dining table and into her room. We had been dating less than a week. I was the first boy she had every brought home. Balls. I will give her that. I didn't sleep on the mattress.
Because of my shyness / inability to small talk / communicate at first the parents were very wary of me. Like a girlfriend I had when I was 15, I had decided to go visit her without telling anyone... including her.... and travel the 30 km and made a phone call from the bus station at 7.30am
"Hi, im here. Can I come over? I'm at the bus station."
I had met this girl on a catholic youth camp. A lot of the guys there were musicians / rock star type dudes. I couldn't even clap hands together in rhythm. "Do you like the Choirboys?" I worked out from the way they were asking the question it did not mean the guys at the altar at mass, one of whom I often was. Then began a crash course in modern rock, a culture I could never really participate in or integrate into. But anyway, despite all the uber alpha hot guys, this blonde haired girl with sometimes on glasses liked me. She was absolutely an attention whore however, and did sit on the lap and hug and touch all the rock gods non stop, so I was always very confused around her. But she asked me out, and we were theoretically dating.
Her dad drives her to the bus station at around 8am to pick me up. He is making all sorts of snide comments about boys sniffing around his daughter and being good for nothing losers. I do not understand any of this, it completely goes over my head, keep smiling at him and ask lots of questions about this town they lived in, what was it like, ooh look whats that over there. After about 10 minutes, he just felt bad for me and stopped seeing me as a threat and as rather a bird with a broken wing or something. When he brought me into the house to meet her mother I noticed him nodding and shaking his head in a weird combination as I was introduced, and she went from hostile to polite, and then very welcoming.
Being completely autistic can be useful to overcome parents reservations about someone new dating their daughter.
So my girlfriend at 25, when I first met her parents and was forcibly taken to her room - they went through this same adaption process. Her dad grew to really love me. He was a dyed in the wool old school nerd. If world of warcraft had existed 30 years earlier, he would have been raiding. An electrician, he worked in R&D to do with cutting edge microwave technology. We gradually got on really well, even though we barely talked to each other. Later when we broke up, I was told that he cried. I miss him too. But he would never know it.
It was from her family I first understood family love. They accepted me, not just as a boyfriend. I was family. They would literally do anything for me. Still terribly ill, they adapted to and worked with my need to sleep several times a day, my fevers, the fact that regularly my brain functions would degrade for days and I could barely remember things or string thoughts together. It was all ok.
This woman got me to go through university. I was bored, disinterested besides the back room side of politics and drinking. She got me studying, motivated to attend classes. Pushed me outside what was comfortable, even when it made me angry at her. Made me talk to people.
We were now living together in Sydney. Corruscant of commerce in Australia, and therefore centre of the world for technology jobs. Having put together a successful share house in my home town, I took the same approach and got a lease for a new house in reasonably good suburb in Sydney. I would have trouble affording that same house now, even though my salary has multiplied 5x since then.
I convince one of my nerd friends from uni to move down, based on how easy it is to get a technology job if your just nerdy enough. He does. Flatmate #1. We advertise for the other room. A doctor applies and we accept him. Genuinely nice guy, but very different to us. Flatmate #2.
My father visits one day. The house he used to live in, in this suburb is 3 blocks away. The maids quarters, stables etc. distinctly visible. He makes a comment to my brother that I overhear "young peoples housing has notably degraded over the years I see". I was so proud of my house, with its holes in the floor, old door i found underneath used as a table on some milk crates, kitchen that was so rough you didnt need to worry about stains, they would not be noticeable. It had taken a lot of industry and thought to make it happen. Rent in Sydney is a killer, and despite having a job I knew I couldnt plan on keeping one with my combination of health condition and sheer inability to communicate or be regarded as someone trustworthy for any serious business. So had pulled together and structured a great spacious house in a good suburb at a cost I could afford if I had to go back on the pension. But now I felt like a failure again.
My girlfriend wanted a car. She was always very moody, and it would often become my fault. It has been pointed out since then, that this same pattern occurs with all my girlfriends. If everyone else has the problem, maybe the cause is a bit closer to you than you thought...
So I researched. The way I best knew how to research was the way I researched buying computers. You ignore brands, look for what are the recent advancements, determine a cost price for the advanced features, then if you buy commodity items (i.e. any standard car) identify the low cost providers (for computer this means dodgy chinese computer shops that look you up and down when you walk in to see if you actually have $20 to spend before they will talk to you even though no one else is in the shop).
My girlfriend wanted a car. She was always very moody, and it would often become my fault. It has been pointed out since then, that this same pattern occurs with all my girlfriends. If everyone else has the problem, maybe the cause is a bit closer to you than you thought...
So I researched. The way I best knew how to research was the way I researched buying computers. You ignore brands, look for what are the recent advancements, determine a cost price for the advanced features, then if you buy commodity items (i.e. any standard car) identify the low cost providers (for computer this means dodgy chinese computer shops that look you up and down when you walk in to see if you actually have $20 to spend before they will talk to you even though no one else is in the shop).
She had a different research approach. She was a very diligent and fastidious student and stern follower of rule systems. Reputable, reliable sources was always to be held as more valuable. She came up with this crappy looking Carolla as the car to get. I went no way is my girlfriend driving something boring. She doesnt realise it, but she actually needs and wants some fun. So I researched all the features and how it was increasingly trendy and popular to have a toy RV, show the fuel benefits, and the fact that it could visit her parents farm easily no matter the weather conditions. Since she liked the Carolla - RAV4. She took one for a drive and loved it. Our car until there was no us.
It was in this car, after we had one day had a massive fight she yelled at me to get in the car. It was raining. She drove the car down the road, parked. She was crying a bit.
"You should marry me. Your going to be alone. Your going to drive me and then everyone in your life away from you. I cant stop you if thats what you want but you should marry me."
Through this conversation I am not even looking at her. I am not angry. When I do get angry or frustrated, it does effect my behaviour for a time, but I also retain the ability to be logical. So I'm listening to what she is saying. But just because she is talking, thats not the only thing going on my head. Im plotting out trajectory curves of my career, trajectory curves of my emotional and sexual development, intersection points of when she would want children, identification of key life experience milestones, financial risk assessment and fallback strategies. I dont have the graphs in front of me like a HUD, its not like that, but its like I have two visual realities, one of which is conceptual and contains the graphs and I flick between them and the eyesight visual reality constantly in little micro peeps.
It doesn't match for me to get married right now. Its the maths. I know she wants to, she wants babies, she has loved caring for me, but i have this need to be more. There was much more depth to her feelings and compassion, but I was blind and brutal. I simply could not and did not see life from her perspective. I would at times go through a logical process of deduction of what she must feel and experience, but it was seriously tiring to do this, and not always accurate.
A young, quite pretty, financially stable, sexually accommodating and most important exceptionally tolerant of my ridiculously high number of quirks, eccentricities and down right impossible to live with issues - is begging me to marry her. I have nothing going for me but a junior job at IBM and an increasing talent at Quake 2 multiplayer. AS THESE BRAVE SOLDIERS TAKE THE FIGHT TO THE STROGGS HOME PLANET.
Crying, tears streaming down her face she asks. "I'm asking you to marry me.". I think she knows I am not capable of saying yes. I also genuinely in hind sight think she loved me so much she was trying to save me from myself.
I am weak. I should have said either yes or no. I wish I was a stronger man. Instead I chose the easy out and was non-committal. I have since learnt how selfish it is to not be clear. It comes back on you as well (not always), and it is always hard to do the right thing. Ultimately its about the kind of person you want to be, and for someone that prided themself on moral fortitude, I was lacking. This lack would grow in time into a gaping abyss.
Unaware of it, due to my lack of both psychic powers and time travel - out in the world, beyond my horizon of knowledge and experience, at this time my daughter was born and soon my son soon would be too. Life happens whether you are aware of it or not. This right here is my proof point of the rejection of the statement "perception is reality". Reality doesn't care what you think or don't think, nor even what others think. It is unforgiving and beautiful at the same time. Humans get so wrapped up in themselves they lose sight of this.
Not from a Jedi
Career wise I had now gone from lowly rollout tech, to desktop support and was now a mainframe programmer for IBM for a large financial services company in North Sydney. My weirdo combination of Aspergers and Bipolar did things to me as far as ambition. I wanted to run games on a mainframe. And by games I of course meant Quake. MAINFRAME QUAKE BEST QUAKE. This was my career goal. I could never do that myself due to cost and infrastructure reasons, but my thinking was that if I completely abused my job I could maybe do it.
I researched a lot of about loading a TCP/IP stack on the Mainframe (Token ring! Token ring is all we need! Was the normal mainframe programmer response). Creating an LPAR for loading one of the very recent to exist Linux to S/390 series mainframe ports. Creating layered security architecture to meet strict security requirements for financial services systems of record holding customer data AND financial transactions. This was at that time serious cutting edge shit. The senior IBM guys I took the proposal to use Linux to for lower cost of processing for our clients, looked at me like I was mad but just maybe a genius so they could't rule out the idea.
It didn't get me Linux to load a Quake server onto but it did get me assigned to an ambitious new project. "We are going to link Lotus Notes to the mainframe.Your in charge of technical design of the interfaces.". Middleware wasnt even really a word then. The idea was that clients could use this newfangled thing called the internet. Yes we are aware no one is using this besides some nerds. But according to Gartner and Wired magazine which they read over latte it was gonna be big and they should get ready for it.
Consultants. No, not the individual contractors that called themselves consultants. But a tight knit team that were organised, had ways of talking, thinking, presenting, hell running a meeting and writing on a whiteboard I had never seen before. This was interesting. Start logically analysing the way they do things. Can see underlying systems at work. Talk to them about my observations. They are taken aback and start to treat me much more seriously than just the client interface SME. This is fun.
They are not technical like I am though. Yes they are using cool technology, unix systems and shell scripting, grabbing data from Lotus Notes, packaging it up and then running it through my interfaces into the mainframe. They want it batch, every 30 minutes for updating back and forth. Easy. I code up the mainframe JCL and then MS-DOS scripts on the Notes servers in literally 10 mins, spend 20 more testing and fine tuning. I have put together an interface using SFTP that uses change/delta based polling, checksums, authentication and authorisation and version tracking for each transfer for both non-repudiation and transaction reversal if needed on the mainframe side.
The consultants are all like holy shit. I have never actually done this before on either the mainframe or a windows server, but I read a passing reference in an IBM online book, had found out the TCP/IP stack had been loaded onto our mainframe a few weeks earlier and that FTP/SFTP came standard with that. I knew how to /? on windows and taught myself Windows NT DOS scripts, not the simple ones but with unix like pipes etc. and also worked out that just getting the data back and forth wasn't enough, they needed to manage it in a real time operations environment. Taught myself all this literally as I programmed. "Dude we are definitely calling you next time we need some ftp scripting". They are Americans flown over for this project. Never of course heard from them again. But I got a self esteem boost, and saw that I had value to the type of consultants that I had just learnt existed in IT. I had also learnt that hardcore programmers were not top of the IT food chain. Hmmmm.
Mostly what I realised was the consultants didn't get it and the people I worked with at IBM would never get it. In fact almost no one did. I wasn't good at DOS scripts, or even a good mainframe programmer. I was good at seeing how to pull things together to solve a problem no one knew how to in a very short period of time and then building a what I would later learn as a term from agile development, a "barely adequate" skill set to get it done. The people who are good at things simply cannot do what I did. Don't get me wrong, they can now. Its now standard commodity knowledge. But knowledge is static or at most linearly progressing. I am waging an asymmetric ground war of blitzkrieg movements sidestepping problems and adapting rapidly to situations as they evolve. Realise that I don't need to know things to be successful.
My new career model is that I must increase in value at a faster rate than what is possible by the most skilled most brilliant people in my technical profession. Because I am not brilliant (I'm not, while quite smart - an overheard discussion between a friend and someone new to our social group "you get he's not just smart don't you? He's SMART" - I do not have an off the charts IQ, there is people smarter than me... its not common but I do work with them regularly. I also sure as shit never try to look smart and find people who talk about their high IQ as the first flag they are stupid.) the only way to make happen this increase in value in my career year after year, is asymmetric value. Working hard and being smart is failure in this career model. I need something else. This was a fun challenge to set myself, but created a need for a break from the employer who had been very good to me. Work here was stable and linear in growth. The opposite to the trajectory I needed.
Start asking people I work with "how do you become a consultant?". Disappointing news - they only take people with absolutely the top marks in IT or Business degrees. But I get told "you would do well at Andersen Consulting. You like wearing nice suits." I think it was a bit of the opposite of a back handed compliment. I worked with hard working Operations support and development programmers. They worked hard, and career progression was after 10 years you may be good enough to lead a team.
I do up a resume. Highlight my recent experience linking up mainframes to web servers and Unix. Somehow it makes it past HR screening - I am told later a thorough investigation took place to check how someone without a degree could get an interview at Andersen Consulting for a full blown consultant position. The investigation was quashed at a partner level with my high billings and client trust. Credentials are important for perception, but reality wins even in the most perception sensitive organisations.
Interview one. Meet an Accenture manager. Foyer, reception guy with a headset fielding calls and visitors directs me to wait in a chair for the manager to collect me. Manager arrives. Heads straight over to me. Shakes my hand. He is dressed WELL good hair. Confident. When I watch the TV Show "Suits" my brain is just going - yeah whatever this was a few years of my life (and ironically with a job offer for a Director role at KPMG at present on the table, will probably be my life again in a few weeks). He looked very different from the tired salt of the earth programmers I worked with.
Ask him how he identified me so quick. "Reception said to look for the banker". Suit and tie choice. Quiet aspergers aloofness and complete lack of social awareness misinterpreted as professionalism and cultural sophistication. Good. I look conservative and reliable to him. I am actually fairly insane, no idea what I'm doing, know nothing about Andersen Consulting and still trying to work out how to get Quake 2 onto a mainframe as my primary goal in life.
He takes me up to the main level. There is a massive coffee machine there. At this time, this was exceptionally new and rare. Offers me a coffee. The kitchen has been designed for the coffee machine. This is just awesome. Long black, throw in some sugar. ERRMAGHERD HEAVEN. I have not had real long black from an espresso machine before except when I was drunk in Newtown at a lesbian cafe ("the old fish shop") and drank a giant bowl of espresso and couldn't sleep for 2 days. Anyway, this was, as I said, awesome and it set me off with making me be all talkative and enthusiastic. This is much better in an interview than being all quiet, reflective and aspergers when you are going for management consulting jobs.
Methodology. "I take the joke about us, about having the Andersen Chip implanted as a point of pride. The fact that you can replace one manager with another and have complete confidence in the outcome is very important to our clients." This is sort of what I experienced with those other consultants. But now I am seeing the inner workings of it. They are completely indoctrinated into a way of thinking.
Mum's religious indoctrination of large numbers of people over the years. Timein the monastery, and deep understanding of both Catholic traditions and modern evangelical christianity gave me a very thorough grounding on brain washing. Home.
He was impressed by how readily I affirmed and built on the concept of methodology right there off the top of my head in the meeting. "Look, I'm not supposed to tell you this straight away, but you should get ready for another interview. Your skills but more importantly your attitude are what we need."
Another interview. Blitz it. Spend most of the interview joking with the guy. Senior Manager. By half way through it's all "yeah I'm bumping you up to meet the partner. You will join our Financial Services practice. We could do with you on our client AMP which is where I am. I will probably be your career manager. Your still quite junior, but we can probably bring you in as a Senior Consultant."
Partner Interview. This partner is actually well know and I still get people asking if I ever worked with him. I'm at this point burnt out with the mental effort of trying to be normal and impress socially. Deep aspie mode. I know this won't go well.
The partner is very quiet and reserved. He is judging me. My aspieness makes me not even fidget or be nervous (I do have forms of stimming, but they are reasonably socially acceptable/innocuous - until I live with someone, and then they are all OMG WHY DO YOU HAVE TO DO THAT IT IS MAKING ME INSANE). I am oblivious to social norms. While deeply anxious, it is internal and I am a poker face - not because I am trying, thats just how I am.
He asks what I like about Andersen Consulting. I talk, genuinely, this is not in any way contrived, about how cool the whole concept of methodology is. My experience with it before and how I was so hungry for this knowledge. In passing I mention at the end of this "and to be honest, I am mostly in love with the coffee. It is just so much better than everywhere else."
He was the partner in charge of and lead sponsor for the project to install the coffee machine, with a business case based around positive impact to clients and future recruits. He thinks I have researched this and shown complete masterful end to end execution of research of him, the firm, and then leveraged this information to make a direct positive impact to his decision making process delivered in a sufficiently gentle way that is not overplayed. This right here is real consulting shit. But none of this is true.
Is it dumb luck? Yes and no. I was being true to my natural instincts and my natural instincts that are so easy to me led to the same outcome that someone else has to invest immense resources into. I can and have done similar in different situations by following my instincts.
Sign On Bonus. What the f??? They are going to pay me money to sign the form to join them. They will literally deposit a few thousand dollars into my bank account before I even work for them. Why did no one tell me this is even possible? Why did I never get jobs at companies like this before??? I tell people at work "Andersen Consulting offered me a job and a sign on bonus". Immediately distance forms. A few of the older friends congratulate me. But I am now an alien. No longer one of the tribe that I had spent so long getting accepted by despite all my "quirks".
All Your Base Are Belong To Us
Life changed here. I wore nice suits all the time. The people I worked with also did. Absolutely all of my colleagues were within a reasonably tight IQ band of me. I didnt have to feel bad for being smart around people that had higher social positioning. My career started to take off.
New types of interaction emerged however. The archetype of the behaviour can be traced back to high school and the social positioning games to be popular or cool. I had not had to even be aware of this for over a decade.
My career lead on the engagement at a large financial services company was this young Indian guy, lets call him J. Now this is before India and IT was a thing. In fact he was the first person to mention to me Infosys and that I should buy shares in them. The one nice bit of advice he offered. J worked out quickly I was not going to advance his social position. I was not worth time. I also rapidly formed the view J did not have a job in technology for technology. He was just here for the money. This means he was actually a failure. He wasn't able to become a stockbroker (although he mentioned it a lot) so he was in his fallback to pay the bills. I had run into this before, but he was an extreme example of it. I did not have the skills to protect myself from someone like J especially when he was in an authority position over me to report back on my career development.
Ultimately my reputation suffered with a few people as a result. I do recall being in one meeting with my manager, Mr Smithers yelling at me "give us your opinion, we are paying you to give us your opinion". I had always thought it rude to voice my opinion, especially if it very much disagreed with the dominant alpha in the room. This was helpful for me. They wanted me to talk even if a loud dominant person was convinced my opinion isnt needed.
Melbourne. Sent to work on a large IT transformation. Suddenly I had some seniority. Despite knowing nothing. Fly back and forth every 1 or 2 weeks between Sydney and Melbourne. Plane flights are very angst ridden torture devices for me. Close eyes, grip seat, lately I have started a routine of telling myself its just like a fish swimming through water whenever we hit turbulence. Remind myself of the very low statistical occurance of major faults on jet planes. Constantly fear being hit by another plane or seaguls in the engine.
Set up shop in Prahran. This was a hipster suburb before there was such things as hipsters, that's how hipster it was.
My days are a suit wearing management consultant, operating as a project manager and then a technology architect. My managers and I find out that I have this near unique ability to conceptualise a pragmatic solution to previously impossible problems. This leads to a rapid growth in responsibility. I am 120% billable AFTER deducting holidays / sick leave etc. To a partner on an account this says promotion material. I have no idea about any of this. Just loving the freedom to think.
My computer gaming is my real passion however at this time. There is a place in the melbourne CBD that is essentially a floor full of computers on cheap desks on concrete. It is packed wall to wall with teenage and university aged asian males. I am one of the very few white boys with the balls to go there. I wanted to see what they did. That many nerds in one room had to be amazing. Counter Strike. It is so goddam hard. If you die, your dead. You can be sneaky and creep around, but that won't save you in the end. GEEKBOY starts abysmally. Dead. Dead. Dead. Eventually a growth in knowledge and talent. His powers grow. A first kill using an MP5 against a bunnyhopping asian nerd. Life achievement unlocked.
Eat Consult Game Repeat. This is my life. I actually really like it.
A different side of me also starts to emerge at this time. I have learnt to lie. I cheat on my girlfriend. In time I will do this more than most realise. I become practiced. A pattern. The thing is, I don't even do it for the sex. The utter overwhelming anxiety makes it horrific. If you have aspergers, seriously masturbating to an old Kmart catalogue offers you more joy than an affair. I actually hate it. No this is not guilt. Real guilt comes later, and not over this. Instead I regret not being honest and for causing hurt. I regret what I am becoming. But I am weak and hide hide hide. I have never once enjoyed the sex from an affair or pretty much a one night stand. This is actually very sad, not moral. I feel chained, shackled to a construct of morals still that denies me finding joy in this most basic of human acts of intimacy.
I have found that women, who I had held in such a high regard, are just as base as men who I pretty much hate. Vile men who judge me, push me around, bully me, treat women badly so they assume that I am like those men until I prove myself otherwise. But women too will lie, cheat, throw everything away without thought to morality like I now hypocritically prided myself on. They will flirt with a man already in a relationship. I realise I cannot use a womans judgement to protect me from myself. I am now wading into very dangerous territory. Where I am going, there is no guide. My faith has abandoned me, or more correctly - I, it. Those who I love and who love me I am lying to and abandoning at the least and for the one who stood by me more than all others, stabbing in the back.
There is a shift inside me. I am no longer Geekboy. I have become something else. There is no cute, no naive - or at least what is still left is slowly dissipating. What am I? What will I become?
My sense of self has profoundly transformed. I am still quiet, shy, "How do you know if a millionaire is from Silicon Valley? He still can't get a date" is a joke used to reference me at a party. Fundamentally cannot understand or even know that I don't know much of human relationship fundamentals. I am bitter, but growing strong in my career. My word carries weight, the pretty boy social engineers have to take the nerd seriously or their projects get canned by the partner. I take joy in making departments redundant or downsizing as a result of my architectures. Arrogant. Drinking the cool aid of elitism of a "top tier" consulting firm. I think the world hates me, but I hate it back harder and keep thinking one day I will be strong enough to put it in it's place.
I remember my IBM performance review, before I quit. There was a question "Outline your career aspirations 5+ years". My answer was scoffed at politely by my manager. "I will become an ecommerce deity". This was the time when IBM was pushing the concept of "ecommerce" and everything had an "e" in front of it (kind of like apple does with "i" now). A guy I worked with used to take "I do eBusiness" stickers and put them on his shirt to go out clubbing. Apparently it was good for breaking the ice at raves to talk to cute girls.
I change my Counterstrike name to eDeity. This was now a very different young man to the one whos hopes and dreams centred on finding acceptance and some friends.
It was in this car, after we had one day had a massive fight she yelled at me to get in the car. It was raining. She drove the car down the road, parked. She was crying a bit.
"You should marry me. Your going to be alone. Your going to drive me and then everyone in your life away from you. I cant stop you if thats what you want but you should marry me."
Through this conversation I am not even looking at her. I am not angry. When I do get angry or frustrated, it does effect my behaviour for a time, but I also retain the ability to be logical. So I'm listening to what she is saying. But just because she is talking, thats not the only thing going on my head. Im plotting out trajectory curves of my career, trajectory curves of my emotional and sexual development, intersection points of when she would want children, identification of key life experience milestones, financial risk assessment and fallback strategies. I dont have the graphs in front of me like a HUD, its not like that, but its like I have two visual realities, one of which is conceptual and contains the graphs and I flick between them and the eyesight visual reality constantly in little micro peeps.
It doesn't match for me to get married right now. Its the maths. I know she wants to, she wants babies, she has loved caring for me, but i have this need to be more. There was much more depth to her feelings and compassion, but I was blind and brutal. I simply could not and did not see life from her perspective. I would at times go through a logical process of deduction of what she must feel and experience, but it was seriously tiring to do this, and not always accurate.
A young, quite pretty, financially stable, sexually accommodating and most important exceptionally tolerant of my ridiculously high number of quirks, eccentricities and down right impossible to live with issues - is begging me to marry her. I have nothing going for me but a junior job at IBM and an increasing talent at Quake 2 multiplayer. AS THESE BRAVE SOLDIERS TAKE THE FIGHT TO THE STROGGS HOME PLANET.
Crying, tears streaming down her face she asks. "I'm asking you to marry me.". I think she knows I am not capable of saying yes. I also genuinely in hind sight think she loved me so much she was trying to save me from myself.
I am weak. I should have said either yes or no. I wish I was a stronger man. Instead I chose the easy out and was non-committal. I have since learnt how selfish it is to not be clear. It comes back on you as well (not always), and it is always hard to do the right thing. Ultimately its about the kind of person you want to be, and for someone that prided themself on moral fortitude, I was lacking. This lack would grow in time into a gaping abyss.
Unaware of it, due to my lack of both psychic powers and time travel - out in the world, beyond my horizon of knowledge and experience, at this time my daughter was born and soon my son soon would be too. Life happens whether you are aware of it or not. This right here is my proof point of the rejection of the statement "perception is reality". Reality doesn't care what you think or don't think, nor even what others think. It is unforgiving and beautiful at the same time. Humans get so wrapped up in themselves they lose sight of this.
Not from a Jedi
Career wise I had now gone from lowly rollout tech, to desktop support and was now a mainframe programmer for IBM for a large financial services company in North Sydney. My weirdo combination of Aspergers and Bipolar did things to me as far as ambition. I wanted to run games on a mainframe. And by games I of course meant Quake. MAINFRAME QUAKE BEST QUAKE. This was my career goal. I could never do that myself due to cost and infrastructure reasons, but my thinking was that if I completely abused my job I could maybe do it.
I researched a lot of about loading a TCP/IP stack on the Mainframe (Token ring! Token ring is all we need! Was the normal mainframe programmer response). Creating an LPAR for loading one of the very recent to exist Linux to S/390 series mainframe ports. Creating layered security architecture to meet strict security requirements for financial services systems of record holding customer data AND financial transactions. This was at that time serious cutting edge shit. The senior IBM guys I took the proposal to use Linux to for lower cost of processing for our clients, looked at me like I was mad but just maybe a genius so they could't rule out the idea.
It didn't get me Linux to load a Quake server onto but it did get me assigned to an ambitious new project. "We are going to link Lotus Notes to the mainframe.Your in charge of technical design of the interfaces.". Middleware wasnt even really a word then. The idea was that clients could use this newfangled thing called the internet. Yes we are aware no one is using this besides some nerds. But according to Gartner and Wired magazine which they read over latte it was gonna be big and they should get ready for it.
Consultants. No, not the individual contractors that called themselves consultants. But a tight knit team that were organised, had ways of talking, thinking, presenting, hell running a meeting and writing on a whiteboard I had never seen before. This was interesting. Start logically analysing the way they do things. Can see underlying systems at work. Talk to them about my observations. They are taken aback and start to treat me much more seriously than just the client interface SME. This is fun.
They are not technical like I am though. Yes they are using cool technology, unix systems and shell scripting, grabbing data from Lotus Notes, packaging it up and then running it through my interfaces into the mainframe. They want it batch, every 30 minutes for updating back and forth. Easy. I code up the mainframe JCL and then MS-DOS scripts on the Notes servers in literally 10 mins, spend 20 more testing and fine tuning. I have put together an interface using SFTP that uses change/delta based polling, checksums, authentication and authorisation and version tracking for each transfer for both non-repudiation and transaction reversal if needed on the mainframe side.
The consultants are all like holy shit. I have never actually done this before on either the mainframe or a windows server, but I read a passing reference in an IBM online book, had found out the TCP/IP stack had been loaded onto our mainframe a few weeks earlier and that FTP/SFTP came standard with that. I knew how to /? on windows and taught myself Windows NT DOS scripts, not the simple ones but with unix like pipes etc. and also worked out that just getting the data back and forth wasn't enough, they needed to manage it in a real time operations environment. Taught myself all this literally as I programmed. "Dude we are definitely calling you next time we need some ftp scripting". They are Americans flown over for this project. Never of course heard from them again. But I got a self esteem boost, and saw that I had value to the type of consultants that I had just learnt existed in IT. I had also learnt that hardcore programmers were not top of the IT food chain. Hmmmm.
Mostly what I realised was the consultants didn't get it and the people I worked with at IBM would never get it. In fact almost no one did. I wasn't good at DOS scripts, or even a good mainframe programmer. I was good at seeing how to pull things together to solve a problem no one knew how to in a very short period of time and then building a what I would later learn as a term from agile development, a "barely adequate" skill set to get it done. The people who are good at things simply cannot do what I did. Don't get me wrong, they can now. Its now standard commodity knowledge. But knowledge is static or at most linearly progressing. I am waging an asymmetric ground war of blitzkrieg movements sidestepping problems and adapting rapidly to situations as they evolve. Realise that I don't need to know things to be successful.
My new career model is that I must increase in value at a faster rate than what is possible by the most skilled most brilliant people in my technical profession. Because I am not brilliant (I'm not, while quite smart - an overheard discussion between a friend and someone new to our social group "you get he's not just smart don't you? He's SMART" - I do not have an off the charts IQ, there is people smarter than me... its not common but I do work with them regularly. I also sure as shit never try to look smart and find people who talk about their high IQ as the first flag they are stupid.) the only way to make happen this increase in value in my career year after year, is asymmetric value. Working hard and being smart is failure in this career model. I need something else. This was a fun challenge to set myself, but created a need for a break from the employer who had been very good to me. Work here was stable and linear in growth. The opposite to the trajectory I needed.
Start asking people I work with "how do you become a consultant?". Disappointing news - they only take people with absolutely the top marks in IT or Business degrees. But I get told "you would do well at Andersen Consulting. You like wearing nice suits." I think it was a bit of the opposite of a back handed compliment. I worked with hard working Operations support and development programmers. They worked hard, and career progression was after 10 years you may be good enough to lead a team.
I do up a resume. Highlight my recent experience linking up mainframes to web servers and Unix. Somehow it makes it past HR screening - I am told later a thorough investigation took place to check how someone without a degree could get an interview at Andersen Consulting for a full blown consultant position. The investigation was quashed at a partner level with my high billings and client trust. Credentials are important for perception, but reality wins even in the most perception sensitive organisations.
Interview one. Meet an Accenture manager. Foyer, reception guy with a headset fielding calls and visitors directs me to wait in a chair for the manager to collect me. Manager arrives. Heads straight over to me. Shakes my hand. He is dressed WELL good hair. Confident. When I watch the TV Show "Suits" my brain is just going - yeah whatever this was a few years of my life (and ironically with a job offer for a Director role at KPMG at present on the table, will probably be my life again in a few weeks). He looked very different from the tired salt of the earth programmers I worked with.
Ask him how he identified me so quick. "Reception said to look for the banker". Suit and tie choice. Quiet aspergers aloofness and complete lack of social awareness misinterpreted as professionalism and cultural sophistication. Good. I look conservative and reliable to him. I am actually fairly insane, no idea what I'm doing, know nothing about Andersen Consulting and still trying to work out how to get Quake 2 onto a mainframe as my primary goal in life.
He takes me up to the main level. There is a massive coffee machine there. At this time, this was exceptionally new and rare. Offers me a coffee. The kitchen has been designed for the coffee machine. This is just awesome. Long black, throw in some sugar. ERRMAGHERD HEAVEN. I have not had real long black from an espresso machine before except when I was drunk in Newtown at a lesbian cafe ("the old fish shop") and drank a giant bowl of espresso and couldn't sleep for 2 days. Anyway, this was, as I said, awesome and it set me off with making me be all talkative and enthusiastic. This is much better in an interview than being all quiet, reflective and aspergers when you are going for management consulting jobs.
Methodology. "I take the joke about us, about having the Andersen Chip implanted as a point of pride. The fact that you can replace one manager with another and have complete confidence in the outcome is very important to our clients." This is sort of what I experienced with those other consultants. But now I am seeing the inner workings of it. They are completely indoctrinated into a way of thinking.
Mum's religious indoctrination of large numbers of people over the years. Timein the monastery, and deep understanding of both Catholic traditions and modern evangelical christianity gave me a very thorough grounding on brain washing. Home.
He was impressed by how readily I affirmed and built on the concept of methodology right there off the top of my head in the meeting. "Look, I'm not supposed to tell you this straight away, but you should get ready for another interview. Your skills but more importantly your attitude are what we need."
Another interview. Blitz it. Spend most of the interview joking with the guy. Senior Manager. By half way through it's all "yeah I'm bumping you up to meet the partner. You will join our Financial Services practice. We could do with you on our client AMP which is where I am. I will probably be your career manager. Your still quite junior, but we can probably bring you in as a Senior Consultant."
Partner Interview. This partner is actually well know and I still get people asking if I ever worked with him. I'm at this point burnt out with the mental effort of trying to be normal and impress socially. Deep aspie mode. I know this won't go well.
The partner is very quiet and reserved. He is judging me. My aspieness makes me not even fidget or be nervous (I do have forms of stimming, but they are reasonably socially acceptable/innocuous - until I live with someone, and then they are all OMG WHY DO YOU HAVE TO DO THAT IT IS MAKING ME INSANE). I am oblivious to social norms. While deeply anxious, it is internal and I am a poker face - not because I am trying, thats just how I am.
He asks what I like about Andersen Consulting. I talk, genuinely, this is not in any way contrived, about how cool the whole concept of methodology is. My experience with it before and how I was so hungry for this knowledge. In passing I mention at the end of this "and to be honest, I am mostly in love with the coffee. It is just so much better than everywhere else."
He was the partner in charge of and lead sponsor for the project to install the coffee machine, with a business case based around positive impact to clients and future recruits. He thinks I have researched this and shown complete masterful end to end execution of research of him, the firm, and then leveraged this information to make a direct positive impact to his decision making process delivered in a sufficiently gentle way that is not overplayed. This right here is real consulting shit. But none of this is true.
Is it dumb luck? Yes and no. I was being true to my natural instincts and my natural instincts that are so easy to me led to the same outcome that someone else has to invest immense resources into. I can and have done similar in different situations by following my instincts.
Sign On Bonus. What the f??? They are going to pay me money to sign the form to join them. They will literally deposit a few thousand dollars into my bank account before I even work for them. Why did no one tell me this is even possible? Why did I never get jobs at companies like this before??? I tell people at work "Andersen Consulting offered me a job and a sign on bonus". Immediately distance forms. A few of the older friends congratulate me. But I am now an alien. No longer one of the tribe that I had spent so long getting accepted by despite all my "quirks".
All Your Base Are Belong To Us
Life changed here. I wore nice suits all the time. The people I worked with also did. Absolutely all of my colleagues were within a reasonably tight IQ band of me. I didnt have to feel bad for being smart around people that had higher social positioning. My career started to take off.
New types of interaction emerged however. The archetype of the behaviour can be traced back to high school and the social positioning games to be popular or cool. I had not had to even be aware of this for over a decade.
My career lead on the engagement at a large financial services company was this young Indian guy, lets call him J. Now this is before India and IT was a thing. In fact he was the first person to mention to me Infosys and that I should buy shares in them. The one nice bit of advice he offered. J worked out quickly I was not going to advance his social position. I was not worth time. I also rapidly formed the view J did not have a job in technology for technology. He was just here for the money. This means he was actually a failure. He wasn't able to become a stockbroker (although he mentioned it a lot) so he was in his fallback to pay the bills. I had run into this before, but he was an extreme example of it. I did not have the skills to protect myself from someone like J especially when he was in an authority position over me to report back on my career development.
Ultimately my reputation suffered with a few people as a result. I do recall being in one meeting with my manager, Mr Smithers yelling at me "give us your opinion, we are paying you to give us your opinion". I had always thought it rude to voice my opinion, especially if it very much disagreed with the dominant alpha in the room. This was helpful for me. They wanted me to talk even if a loud dominant person was convinced my opinion isnt needed.
Melbourne. Sent to work on a large IT transformation. Suddenly I had some seniority. Despite knowing nothing. Fly back and forth every 1 or 2 weeks between Sydney and Melbourne. Plane flights are very angst ridden torture devices for me. Close eyes, grip seat, lately I have started a routine of telling myself its just like a fish swimming through water whenever we hit turbulence. Remind myself of the very low statistical occurance of major faults on jet planes. Constantly fear being hit by another plane or seaguls in the engine.
Set up shop in Prahran. This was a hipster suburb before there was such things as hipsters, that's how hipster it was.
My days are a suit wearing management consultant, operating as a project manager and then a technology architect. My managers and I find out that I have this near unique ability to conceptualise a pragmatic solution to previously impossible problems. This leads to a rapid growth in responsibility. I am 120% billable AFTER deducting holidays / sick leave etc. To a partner on an account this says promotion material. I have no idea about any of this. Just loving the freedom to think.
My computer gaming is my real passion however at this time. There is a place in the melbourne CBD that is essentially a floor full of computers on cheap desks on concrete. It is packed wall to wall with teenage and university aged asian males. I am one of the very few white boys with the balls to go there. I wanted to see what they did. That many nerds in one room had to be amazing. Counter Strike. It is so goddam hard. If you die, your dead. You can be sneaky and creep around, but that won't save you in the end. GEEKBOY starts abysmally. Dead. Dead. Dead. Eventually a growth in knowledge and talent. His powers grow. A first kill using an MP5 against a bunnyhopping asian nerd. Life achievement unlocked.
Eat Consult Game Repeat. This is my life. I actually really like it.
A different side of me also starts to emerge at this time. I have learnt to lie. I cheat on my girlfriend. In time I will do this more than most realise. I become practiced. A pattern. The thing is, I don't even do it for the sex. The utter overwhelming anxiety makes it horrific. If you have aspergers, seriously masturbating to an old Kmart catalogue offers you more joy than an affair. I actually hate it. No this is not guilt. Real guilt comes later, and not over this. Instead I regret not being honest and for causing hurt. I regret what I am becoming. But I am weak and hide hide hide. I have never once enjoyed the sex from an affair or pretty much a one night stand. This is actually very sad, not moral. I feel chained, shackled to a construct of morals still that denies me finding joy in this most basic of human acts of intimacy.
I have found that women, who I had held in such a high regard, are just as base as men who I pretty much hate. Vile men who judge me, push me around, bully me, treat women badly so they assume that I am like those men until I prove myself otherwise. But women too will lie, cheat, throw everything away without thought to morality like I now hypocritically prided myself on. They will flirt with a man already in a relationship. I realise I cannot use a womans judgement to protect me from myself. I am now wading into very dangerous territory. Where I am going, there is no guide. My faith has abandoned me, or more correctly - I, it. Those who I love and who love me I am lying to and abandoning at the least and for the one who stood by me more than all others, stabbing in the back.
There is a shift inside me. I am no longer Geekboy. I have become something else. There is no cute, no naive - or at least what is still left is slowly dissipating. What am I? What will I become?
My sense of self has profoundly transformed. I am still quiet, shy, "How do you know if a millionaire is from Silicon Valley? He still can't get a date" is a joke used to reference me at a party. Fundamentally cannot understand or even know that I don't know much of human relationship fundamentals. I am bitter, but growing strong in my career. My word carries weight, the pretty boy social engineers have to take the nerd seriously or their projects get canned by the partner. I take joy in making departments redundant or downsizing as a result of my architectures. Arrogant. Drinking the cool aid of elitism of a "top tier" consulting firm. I think the world hates me, but I hate it back harder and keep thinking one day I will be strong enough to put it in it's place.
I remember my IBM performance review, before I quit. There was a question "Outline your career aspirations 5+ years". My answer was scoffed at politely by my manager. "I will become an ecommerce deity". This was the time when IBM was pushing the concept of "ecommerce" and everything had an "e" in front of it (kind of like apple does with "i" now). A guy I worked with used to take "I do eBusiness" stickers and put them on his shirt to go out clubbing. Apparently it was good for breaking the ice at raves to talk to cute girls.
I change my Counterstrike name to eDeity. This was now a very different young man to the one whos hopes and dreams centred on finding acceptance and some friends.
No comments:
Post a Comment