Dedication

I dedicate this book to everyone who plants lemon trees. …  in fact to everyone who plants trees … especially those which bear fruit.

 

The Catalyst

He was the quiet type, unassuming, wise-looking but slow. He never moved quickly but that didn't mean he wasn't bright, he just didn't fluster easily - in keeping with the dignified English character.  Greg rarely said much, but when he spoke his words often stuck around like tar, unlike most conversations that dissipated like vapour moments later.

One day he walked past my desk with a grin and said:

"I've just heard it said that if you're not pirouetting on the edge then you are taking up too much space."

He was referring to the atmosphere of the corporate computing world we shared.  An elite world, riddled with impossible demands that stretched one to, and often beyond, the limit.  Then he added with an expression of emotion that was less controlled than usual, "now that's bloody tight ... very bloody tight." he said looking me straight in the eyes with a brightly flushed face that strained under laughter.  His look invited me to connect with his rare moment of amusement.  He waited for me to laugh on cue then he walked on and continued to smile to himself, savouring the tension in the truth of the imagery.

"It would be good to be that efficient with real-estate!" he continued as he disappeared behind the partition between our desks that only visually separated us.

The words seemed inane at the time, but they stuck like tar.

For 16 years I worked as a Computer Scientist in the corporate world – initially as a programmer and finally as a Program Manager.  In the earlier years I loved it.  Powered by the intellectual challenge, the adrenalin produced when faced with the demand to meet impossible deadlines, the eccentric people, the character-stretching demands.  It was a place for integrity and the intellectual elite.  The pace was exciting, even invigorating and at the age 25, I had thought nothing of the need to work three 20 hour days, back-to-back to keep a newly installed system running.  Each time we made it, the feeling of exhilaration and relief, couple with the need to push past the constant exhaustion, was very surreal. 

The later years, were tainted by an environment where you were no longer dealing with eclectic scientific professionals, but rather those who filtered into the industry lured by the high pay and admitted by the high demand for, and lack of supply of, trained professionals.  These people were driven by politics as opposed to professionalism and intellectual and personal challenge.

Solving some of the hardest computing problems is liberating next to the drain of having to face self-perpetuating politics.  The first aligns the mind, the second disorients it. 

Some mornings, whilst fighting the culture of this period, I would walk up the hill that led me to the office and remembering the emotionally chaotic environment that I had l left behind the previous night, an unsuspecting wish would creep out of my heart and I would quietly whisper “Please help me to get through this day graciously. Please, no matter what I am faced with, please let me remain gracious.” 

As time went by, with the work environment getting so far removed from anything that seemed suitable for human safety levels and feeling my immunity to the toxic struggle wane, my plea became, “Please, airlift me to safety.  Just airlift me out of here and I’ll go wherever you take me.”  Who I was talking to, I wasn’t sure, and as I didn’t have any particular image in mind, I felt I was just having a little private dialogue with another part of myself and that my request would be a secret plea held perfectly safe within us. 

Then it happened.  It all happened. 

I finally made the time to go to my doctor to address a long-standing health problem that I had been neglecting lately.  It was there that I casually mentioned that I needed something to help me concentrate because I found that I would be in front of a computer screen and that I would try and read an email but no matter how much I stared at it, I couldn’t read the words in front of me.  She then began to ask various questions.

We casually chatted and I mentioned the treatment that I and fellow worker had to endure, painting the picture of what was – even though none of us dared to admit it – an excessively dysfunctional work environment.  We talked of the refusal to allow us to take holiday breaks (even though I hadn’t had a proper holiday in five years), the constant humiliation of people in front of fellow workers as well as clients. 

I told her that young blonde women (around 20 years old) would be introduced into the work environment without a published role and it was later discover that their role was purely to spy on us – to make note of when we arrived, when we left (a little difficult when most of us left after they did), the number of breaks we took, who we spoke to, what wording we used in our reports down to punctuation marks and formatting that was inconsistent with the template we had been provided.  They would examine, compare and question our “confidential” salary packages.

Fellow workers would be interrogated and “shot-down” in front of the “team” for being one minute late for a meeting while the manager who called the meeting could keep a team of twelve people waiting for up to half an hour. (Any project manager would instantly calculate this behaviour, as causing a loss that cost “6 man hours”).  The pedantically soul-destroying list goes on and on … In short, it felt like we were no longer qualified professionals, but rather subjects working in a corporate concentration camp.  I told her I was constantly tired, lacked energy and that now I was finding that I would have increasingly regular moments where I had to leave the office because I would feel the need to cry for no reason.  It’s bad to confess such a combination all at once. 

She then ran various tests and when the results came back she showed me my blood pattern against the patterns of one who was “normal”.  The one that was “normal” was like a completely uniform blanket of spots, mine looked like something that only “Mr Squiggle”[1] could find delight in.

I was soon diagnosed as being “burnt out” and prescribed “time out”. 

For a workaholic, “time out” feels like welcomed relief for about a week.  The body catches up on sleep, little chores get done, bills get paid, friends are contacted and life feels “corrected”.  Then, that’s enough.

After that, the pace has become too slow … thoughts go back to the office, guilt sets in, one begins to feel lazy, and there is a fear that a disaster is imminent if the “normal” frenetic pace is not resumed … at that point “time out” begins to feels like the beginning of a snowballing derailment of all that I had known to be my working life to that point.

I had constant reviews with my doctor who had a holistic approach to healing.  You need time-out she kept saying.  I can give you various drugs and send you back to that environment, but it won’t solve anything.  It’s up to you.  Your options are drugs and pretend nothing is wrong or “time out” and give your body a chance to recover. 

Reluctantly, I chose to recover.

“So what do I do when I am not at work?”

“What are your interests?”

“Photography.  I photograph sunrises in the morning before work.”

“That would be good for you - go to the beach.  Connect with nature, continue with your photography.”

She then prescribed me various vitamins and a change in diet.  Among the list of vitamins was a very high dosage of vitamin B.  I took it for over a year and in that time continued to pee clear.  It was at this point that I began to concede that obviously, I had a problem.  .  If the signs of becoming a nervous wreck were not taken into consideration, then you can’t ignore that no fluorescent yellow urine, when you continuously take high dosages of vitamin B, is not a good sign.

My thoughts went back to the mornings before work, where I would get up at around 5:30 to beat the morning traffic.  I had done it for years, to avoid sitting in my car in peak-hour traffic without moving. 

During this time, one of the things that kept me grounded throughout the day was a collection of the most majestic sunrises that would play out in front of my home and spill over into my house in the mornings as I prepared to leave for work.  Their colours would stream from my lounge room through to my kitchen where I would be preparing a transportable breakfast - that would get eaten at the traffic lights on the way to work.  Like a cheeky school-girl, I stole ten minutes out of the early morning to run down to the beach and photograph them.  As the work day progressed, the feint memory of these sunrises would feed and nourish something primitive inside me.  The part of me that didn’t listen to a word they said at university during all those years that I attended.  That part of me that chose to remain unchanged.

Each day as I went to the beach, I took my camera with me – to capture glimpses of the majesty that would inevitably play out before me.  To break the monotony of the lifeless work environment I brought some of my photos into work.

Greg looked at each one as if he were sunbaking in front of the rays of the sun in each image.  Then after looking at each carefully with the care and attention of a Zen Master, he said without emotion and as if it was a given: 

“Silvana, I see a coffee table book in your future.”

It was a heart warming thought but not one that I took seriously.  I mean, I couldn’t see how that could possibly happen, but it was a nice kind thought anyway.  But, he wasn’t expressing and opinion, he was telling it like it was, according to him.

Here I was now.  In a doctor’s office being prescribed photography of sunrises as a cure to whatever I had.  Most would have seen it as a romantic relief, but I instantly felt that doing such a thing would be completely irresponsible and I had a slight anxiety attack just at the thought.