The good side of corporate
The restorative years
For all the bashing I give corporate, I’ll admit: those two years were the most restorative of my life.
I joined an investment bank about a week after cutting off my parents in late 2022. I was angry that they weren’t okay with the gay thing. I was hurt that they refused to acknowledge the advocacy I was doing in the LGBTQ+ space.
But most of all, I felt relieved.
After 26 years, I made it.
I grew up just outside Jakarta, in a baby pink bedroom stacked with The Adventures of Mary-Kate and Ashley and A Series of Unfortunate Events. My school taught in Indonesian, but my mom had bigger plans: fluent English, cable TV, and a future abroad. I got my American accent from Disney Channel. I got my corporate ambitions from her.
When I came back for summer break, she’d take me to lunch with my godmother - her cousin - who led a research team at an investment bank in South Jakarta. My mom wanted that life for me: dollars, expat status, security.
And I got there. Oddly enough, in the same bank, too. But by the time I did, I wasn’t speaking to my family anymore.
Corporate gets a bad rep for capitalism, for profit-maxxing, for the chorus of “nothing to add from my end”. But for me, it was a lifeline.
For one, I had health insurance. Real, useful, gay-inclusive insurance. Same-sex marriage isn’t legal in Hong Kong, so signing a domestic partner form was enough to get Jin on my plan. We got x-rays. We did blood tests. We saw the dentist.
The hours were steady, too. Compliance rules meant I couldn’t access email or Teams on my personal phone. I didn’t bother charging the work one. So I just left it in the office. I don’t think I ever worked at 9PM the entire time I was there.
And for the first time, I had financial breathing room. I set up a savings plan. Maxed out my retirement contributions. Took proper holidays.
I even went to therapy.
Angie, my therapist, saw me every other Friday at 3PM. She did not let me off the hook. Yes, my parents were homophobic, but no, I hadn’t exactly warned them before I posted a photo of me kissing my girlfriend on Instagram. Angie pushed me deeper. One session uncovered a truth so unsettling I couldn’t eat for two weeks.
These were truths that I couldn’t have faced if I was still scrambling to survive. Corporate gave me predictability. Predictability gave me space. In that space, I started to rebuild.
Heck, I began thriving creatively when I was in an environment as anodyne as corporate. After writing about interest rates and supply chain movements at work, I had plenty of creative juice leftover to pour into these weekly essays.
I’ve thought about this many times. How corporates seem to look out for equality (like Jin getting spousal benefits) more than some governments do. How corporate became the bastions of physical health because I could get access to preventive care. How corporate was a safer environment for me than my biological family.
Corporate was never going to be forever. But it was exactly what I needed at the time. Once I found my footing - financially, emotionally, creatively - I was finally ready to leap into the unknown.
It’s just funny how the cocoon I rebuilt myself in looked a lot like a cubicle.
Update log:
🧟♂️ Watched The Last of Us season 2. Or parts of it. I ran away for the gorey parts. But how cute is Dina though??
📖 Reading Million Dollar Weekend by Noah Kagan (25% completed). It’s been on my mind ever since
mentioned he was involved in it but now here we are!🤒 Sprained my ankle ten days ago but today I woke up with it feeling like normal. It was very hard not exercising for a week…
🌐 Have been absolutely loving the Dia browser. It’s a bit iffy on the writing but it’s extremely useful to chat with the AI because it has your browser tabs as context
🎨 Handed in v3 of my book back to my editor
. I’ve got a good feeling about this version.📺 June creative updates: Hyrox, Book v3, essay series, new job, creative consulting
Book a call: Have a bite-sized creative project? Let’s give you a starting line boost a la Mario Kart - https://www.beckyisj.com/consulting
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Corporate provides a lot of security, and I also found it helpful to have before I launched myself out of it.
Yes! It's important to think about context and what you need right now. The bit on mental security is underrated and also gives space to work on ambitious projects in life.
Common advice is if you want to start a business you should work in a startup. Which i get (network, learning what small scale feels like) but not enough people say have a stable life to build off for more risky moves (whether work or life)