This may be my approaching dotage talking, but I have begun to find a lot of corporate work amusing rather than merely annoying. This wasn’t the case in my youth, when I could be as serious about a PowerPoint presentation as the next person, but I suppose it’s the cloud of doom hanging over all our heads these days that makes me feel as if those years spent climbing up some corporate ladder were trivial pursuits. Why did I do it, I ask myself.

I have spent a lot of time in many offices over the past couple of decades, primarily because I was always warned about a regular income being necessary and critical for my well-being. I agree that it was to a certain extent, which is why I’m not typing this out from a homeless encampment, but I often question the nature of that time spent in those windowless rooms. Nothing I did there added anything of value apart from money in a savings account. I can’t recall anything that was discussed in conference halls, or during meetings that stretched into the night, ending only when everyone present felt as if some problem had been solved. I don’t remember the problems either.