Corporate
Hell on Earth
14 October 2005
News of Departure for
You may know me for my published
books and my work in television and films, not under the name Mycroft Holmes of
course, but this is the only way I can actually write in English about my
experiences in
Up until now I mostly wrote in
French and thankfully none of you appear to understand French. However writing
in French has never got me anywhere despite my many published books, since
there is no market. So I had to find a new name, as it is anyway the fashion
for any aspiring actor in
A bit more than just aspiring,
since I have written many books and already worked on several series and films.
It does not matter in
So I will land in
Knowing my real name would not
change anything to you, I never got credited for anything I worked on, though I
was paid on all produced projects. I guess it compensates for all those long
nights I spent writing when I had to go to work the next day. I have no doubt
that if you are good at searching on the Internet, I will probably leave you
enough clues as to who I am, and probably you would find me out easy. What is
important, really, is that no one searching on my name or the projects I worked
on should find this blog, it is the only way for me to be truly honest and have
all the freedom to say what I want, what needs to be said.
I don’t intend to be that negative,
unless it turns out that I will go through hell whilst in
If I had to continue being so
unhappy and miserable, there is really no point in continuing this boring
existence. If nothing great happens to me in
So I have high expectations for my
moving into
I have learnt that much, that
wasting time is very easy. Any project could gobble up six months of your life
and you would have nothing to show for it afterwards since even the rights are
not yours. This is over, never again. And to arrive in
God, two more weeks, and I will
land in
Without too much expectation, you
cannot be too disappointed. And at the very least I will have this blog at the
end of it. If it is just to complain that nothing happens, I will eventually
just delete it and never give it another thought. So let’s see what destiny has
in store for me. Let’s move to
Blog – 20 October 2005
Changing my future, hoping for
success, one week before departure to LA
I’m in such a mess, and it is all
psychological. Counting the minutes before my departure for
Perhaps it is time that I truly
break with my past, and leave everything behind but the essential. I have lost
so many things in my life, because of these airplane regulations which oblige
you to have only two suitcases every time you move country. I know people who
will ship dozens of crates, even their cars, must cost a fortune, I can’t
afford it.
Every time I need to move out of a
country, everyone and everything turn into a nightmare, a place which in the
end, I am happy to leave behind. It happened in
At work we enter agreements
nightmare which could lead to court. Two more agreements need to be negotiated,
another thing which could take a few months of torment. I could not even do
anything about my last conference which was supposed to be finished by the time
I leave. As it stands, I have not even started. The new cat we bought shits and
pees everywhere every day, it seems the five other cats decided that it was now
permissible to do the same, so we live in a shit hole. I can’t wait to get out.
I have no more time to think about
philosophy of life, and anyway, I was going to try to avoid talking about this
here. Why? Well, people think I am already crazy, no need to confirm it so they
can act upon it and put me into a mental institution.
I was recently contacted by someone
who said he could change the future just by concentrating a lot and convincing
himself that what he wished for would definitely happen. I came to the
realization five years ago that I could do the same, and out of it I got
contracts to work in cinema and television when there was nothing really to
suggest I was ever going to end up working for that medium.
At the time I had written only one
film script, it was 10 years ago and it was an adaptation from a book. I had
forgotten about trying to change my future for the better, but I tried again
two months ago and my life went wild. My conferences which were flops suddenly
became successful overnight. My partner who was in deep trouble and was going
to lose his driving license and his job won in court. And I am now leaving for
However I am not certain if I was
ready for such a roller coaster, like, on the very next day that I would try to
change my destiny. I had more in mind something simple, just to make me happy,
and now it is happening on a massive scale. I am only talking about this now
because I don’t want to forget that once in
I’m not afraid of hard work, even
though I feel like a zombie right now, but hard work is not enough in
I know success is not an ingredient
for happiness. In fact, people who are driven as much as me, who dedicate their
life to succeeding, and spend all their energy, sacrificing everything and
everyone along the way to become famous, are the world’s worst sufferers. Because
these things take time, it is heartless, and you are left with a feeling of
having missed something quite huge once you succeed, or even worse, once you
accept that you will never succeed.
As a consequence, most people who
succeed on a massive scale are not happy and are unable to enjoy their success.
So they either need to succeed again and again, or somehow they realize that
and work now at becoming happier people, even if sometimes it means getting
away from it all.
This is not exactly encouraging to
be thinking about this stuff right now, I should get back to my big idea that I
will rock the boat in a spectacular way once I land in
That’s what logic does to you, it
makes you say stupid things that one day will prove without a doubt that you’re
worth nothing, that you were just crazy to begin with.
Blog - 22 October 2005
Surviving management and change at
work, how to live an exciting destiny good enough to write a book
It is Saturday, exactly one week
before I leave
However, I was truly disappointed
with
Unless I was truly good at it,
which I believe after one year in
So I have to wish that within weeks
I can reach that same point with my new employers, and if they are as disorganized
as a company as I was led to believe in the interview, I may actually be the
expert who will save their company. I have ten years of experience on the
subject, surely I have something of interest to communicate to them?
The only remaining problem is that
change takes a long time. Nothing can happen overnight. Dissatisfied employees
will definitely leave, even though they might have been the best. They are
always the first ones to go, they know they can succeed elsewhere without
having to complicate their lives with new processes which suddenly make their
life a living hell, by preventing them from doing what they are good at,
producing, selling.
It has been one year and a half in
my last job since change has started, you could easily say that nothing has
really changed yet. Another frightening thought. How long does it take for
results to finally appear? Well, it took me a year to achieve my goal. Now I
need to put this knowledge to good work, whatever it is that I am going to do,
we need to see tangible results within six months. Who am I kidding? It cannot
take less than a year.
The worst part is that I don’t even
know yet what it is that I have been hired for. At the beginning I was told
they were looking for a simple Conference Producer. Their website was claiming
to be looking for a Conference Manager, and my immigration papers are stating
that I was hired as a Management Consultant to turn around their business and
open new offices worldwide. Was it just for immigration purposes, or am I to
become this management figure finally controlling a few bugs that I will be at a
liberty to crush whenever I feel like it?
I’m joking. My idea of management
is moral and ethical, much more than everything I have observed up until now in
my short career. I am mister new management, compassionate but at the same time
looking for results. A mix of what a male Director or Manager could be,
compared with a Female Director or Manager. Being gay, I have the best of both
worlds. I am balanced. And I won’t freak out anyone, either the monsters in higher
management or the bugs under me.
I could not even see myself taking
out the “kill-fly” to wipe one of these bugs. Perhaps I am too much like women,
I should keep perspective here, I might need to squash a few of these bugs if
it becomes necessary, if I feel I am justified, if I feel there is no other
solution in sight. I would hate it, but I am prepared and ready for it.
Thankfully nobody can bullshit me
in this business, I have done everything for so many years, every single
position, I will know if someone is playing with me and I will lose all
respect. I will have to crush a few bugs, hopefully I will always act in a
moral and ethical manner, and for the right reasons.
Personal clash of personalities is
not good enough, no pettiness can get between me and the bugs. Like I hope
management won’t act like that with the bug that I will be in their eyes. Otherwise
this is when and where I will be thinking seriously about the mistake it was to
move to L.A. Oh God, I hope for so much, for so much which I have never
witnessed in my short life, a job that I would actually love, with people I can
actually bear!
Incidentally, today I have met both
my old bosses from one of my previous jobs. We met at the Pets at Home center,
so they could give me the last reference letter I needed for immigration. God
she was lovely, she looked great. A real American woman living some sort of
great destiny, but stuck with a stubborn British husband who started a
conference company in
He looked frozen, could not say a
thing apart from that they were now planning conferences in
Luckily the ones who came after me were
all incompetent, which is why today they appreciate me, and were kind enough to
write that great reference letter for me. They’re leaving for
I believe I talked lengthily about
suicide, I had problems with the employees. The very next day I stayed home and
almost told them I was resigning. I came back the day after and we found a
solution. The solution was simple, I was their boss, of the two bugs in sales
who were the problem. I tell them what to do, they do not tell me what to do.
It was an arrangement I could live with. And of all of us, they came out as the
bad guys, they felt bad about it, and I never had any trouble with them
afterwards.
That I was ready to sacrifice my
career over this at the time, is probably something they never thought I would
do. It caused maximum impact, they were reprimanded and probably threatened
with their jobs. At the time I thought it was not very ethical for me to do
this, to bring it all to such an extreme, but I have lived enough in this life
that I am not going to put up with any kind of shit, especially for a job. And
they quickly got back in line. Great management skills! This is exactly what I
need to avoid in
When I left my two previous bosses
today, I told them that we never know what the future is preparing for us. And
the man said: exactly. We were on the same wavelength, he thought and I
thought, that one day I will be working for them again. I would love that, I
would love to open their Chinese office, or whatever else they may have in
their plans. But it is over now, it is old history. I need to move on.
However her son lives in
Bush will become my President,
something I never ever considered before. While this madman was actually
deciding for people I had nothing to do with, it was ok, whatever the power he
has over this world. But now it is an entirely different story. This crazy man,
religious, fanatic, openly anti-gay, who believes he answers to God, and that
God speaks to him, will actually have quite a strong influence over my life. Especially
that
So far so good, my partner can come
to the
My actual Manager, who I called
Master Bitch of
I have fears that perhaps this will
not turn out to be true. I fear rejection, like what I have experienced in
They are so insignificant compared
to what I hope to achieve, and I would never act like they do no matter the
degree of success or failure I achieve. A small part of me wish to succeed so I
can go back to that fucking pub called Richmond’s Arms, and tell them all to get
lost!
It is more important to me than I
would like to admit. They certainly played a big part in my decision to move
out to
And I need all the motivation
possible, since there is not much else left to motivate me in succeeding in
What are my motivations? What is it
that I wish to accomplish in
Surely there must be other ways for
me to achieve that freedom? I have been searching all my life, and I have
assessed that perhaps succeeding as a writer must be my best shot at reaching
freedom. Which is certainly odd, since the probabilities that I will ever
succeed as a writer are so slim. I might as well wish to win a million at the
lottery. However, this is all that I have left. I will live out of writing and
I will earn enough to do whatever I want whenever I want. Do my job anywhere on
this planet at any given time.
And then I hope to be happy. Giving
me the chance to study and write more important stuff, like philosophy and
theoretical physics. I guess that is my ultimate goal. My only goal. Anything
could give me that chance, I only need money falling from the sky.
Why do I feel that my only way out
is to succeed in
My life has to be more exciting and
interesting than the average block, if I wish to stand any chance to be read. I
would not be talking like this if I had not written already more than 20 books,
you can rest assured. I stand some chance to be remembered, at least in Québec,
where I come from. Though they are barely aware of my last two published books,
since distribution has mainly been in
I feel my destiny so far has been
distinctly different from any of my colleague writers. And I feel I am about to
experience the ultimate life in
So my success in
As long as I live through enough
bullshit to write about it, either in French or in English, nothing else is
important. It can all come from the famous conference world as far as I am
concerned, whether it is in
Oh dear, I have now mentioned the
word
The fact is, I have no idea where I
will end up doing in my life. Is there a reason for me being shipped to
I have not work at all on my
scripts in the last year, not even one line. My websites were not updated at
all, even if I wrote two books in that year. Let’s see, what can one surmise
from this? Well, assuming that none of the two books I have written will ever
go anywhere, which is what is most probable since I won’t bother sending them
to publishers from a lack of time and money, and they are not in the field or
language of what my actual publishers publish, then there must be a more
logical reason to all this.
Working in conferences is a mean
for me to achieve some sort of ultimate goal, which must be accomplished in
How could I not now believe in
destiny? In some sort of higher power, be it God or deterministic laws of
nature, leading me somewhere? Could it not be related to the film industry?
Could it be something entirely different? Am I to believe that I am sent to
L.A. to write about how I wish to succeed and then fail spectacularly, just to
write about it and discourage a whole generation of people to not abandon
everything, sacrificing their life in the process, in order to avoid the only
town in this world which could make their dreams come true, but would
ultimately destroy them completely to the point where only suicide remains? Better
that than going back home, wherever home is.
No, I feel I am destined to something
much larger, with a much higher purpose. And I am reading right now what it is
that would qualify as what it is that I wish to achieve with my life. It is
called Rama. Four books written by Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee (but keep
the first one for the end, since it is the least interesting books of the four).
If I can write something like that before I die, then I feel all will be ok.
However, if I do not feel I can reach out like Arthur C. Clarke can, then it
will be a failure.
I do not write for a few thousand
people, not even a million. I want to write for the masses. I want to have a
deep impact. I want to change the ways of a whole nation, of a whole country, how
they think. I have no small ambition, otherwise I am ready to die right here
right now. It does not matter whether I live or die.
However, in the 20 books or so I have
written until now, I do not feel I have reached my goals. I have not yet
written my Rama series. And would it be sufficient anyway? Rama is not
considered like the best work of Arthur C. Clarke, we barely hear about it. But
God, there could not be a better series in science fiction to help you
understand what this world is all about. What we, as human beings, are actually
doing which will definitely lead to our ultimate destruction. Reading that
series, I am ashamed of being a human being, I really am. I feel powerless to
change this world. Do I have to do something to change it for the better,
changing people’s mind, activating something in their brain? What a goal.
Perhaps I should be killed now,
before I have to think too much about how I will ever achieve that impossible
task. I wouldn’t mind, death has always been welcomed in my lair. Ultimate
freedom, liberty, even if it is just about turning the machine off. I would
love it more than you will ever understand.
What possesses me to continue and have
these weird passions about achieving something grand and universal, is beyond
my comprehension. Perhaps we all have a role to play in this existence, in the
destiny of human kind. And even though it is not simple, we still have to play
the game. And I will play it, to a certain extent, but it better happen soon or
else I will lose patience.
I am tired, I am fed up, I better
get myself somewhere quickly, I better see that big scheme in action, which I
suspect, or else I will lose faith, abandon everything and never look back. Or
can I? Perhaps not. Must be in my genes, in my nature.
There is no escape, and that is
what this higher power or these laws of nature know, that I don’t. I don’t even
have the freedom to kill myself or retire somewhere alone in a forest. I just
can’t. I am moving to
All that I have said in the last
paragraph assumed that I believe in some sort of higher power or some sort of
deterministic laws of physics. It would not be completely true to say that
these are my beliefs. I do think I had a strong part to play in everything that
is happening to me right now. I wished for it and then it happened. No mater if
somehow it happened completely out of my conscious control.
I did not apply for a job in
In that case I would have certainly
planned for myself a few interesting experiences in
Sometimes I think that I think too
much about the significance of everything in one’s life. At this time I feel
justified, because it is too weird, too impossible. I have beaten the odds, it
must be significant, it must mean something. It could lead to an understanding
of what the mechanisms of existence are all about. Is there a structure
regulating what one must live?