unhappiness

At the age of 4 I told everyone I wanted to be rich and everyone believed I would be. I had visions of success - though its been so long, I forget what they were exactly - just a golden haze.

I've always worked hard. Well, actually, I've always worked smart - working hard when I need to, and doing the bare minimum otherwise. But I've always been fixated on achievement. I worked hard and got good GCSEs. I worked hard and got straight As at A level. That allowed me to go to a red brick university, and I'm working hard here to secure a good grade. It's like everything I've ever done has been an investment toward this place - success.

I've never really done anything for its instrinsic value - it's always something I've done to enhance my CV. I 'faked' a lot of my involvement in a lot of activities just to get it on the CV. I picked qualifications which didn't really appeal, but got me on the right track to those golden gates of success.

Now, aged 21, sat on my bed in my dressing gown, I have an offer at a BB. I interned there last summer, and can't say I enjoyed it too much. It was life absorbing; and I was leaving before quite a few of the analysts - so I think that it's going to be worse hours + responsibility.

I say these worries to my friends and they tell me to apply to something else, I'm SO not a city boy, they say, blah blah blah. It goes in one ear and out of the other. I don't feel I have the ability to go into another career, I don't feel that's a realistic choice.

I don't want to go be a writter on £24k, I don't want to be a fashion designer on £18k, I don't want to be a barman on £15k. I've got a starting salary of nearly £50k - more than my mum has ever earned, and about the salary my dad was on (in nominal terms) when he died at 50 years old.

I feel like I have no choice, because I could go and do those things (writting, fashion, art, barman, entrepeneurship), but the people who do those things couldn't do what I do. It was very hard to get this job. Not many people are qualified enough to get it. This is an exclusive opportunity, and what's more this is the reward of my life long accidental investment; I say accidental because I never intended to go into banking. I'd never heard of banking until my first year at university. I thought all the rich people were doctors and barristers.

My whole life, all my life choices have been an investment to this end - success - which I, perhaps foolishly, defined as getting a high paid job. To go and do something else now, would be to admit that everything I'd done was a bad investment. I'd be cashing in at a net loss and going and doing something I could've done without the time and effort I put into getting this far. It would be to throw away everything I've built up on my CV.

I'm materialist.

I'm materialist in the sense that I'm currently unhappy, lonely, and unfulfilled and I think that material goods will cure one or all of those problems. Obviously, that's why I'm doing banking. For the money. And that's why I'm not doing something else, which I'd enjoy more. The money.

But at the same time I know that banking won't fill this hole in my heart. I'm just not sure what will.

If not material things - then what? How do I cure unhappiness and my lonliness if not through material accumulation? If surrounding myself with crap I buy of Amazon won't make me any happier, or bring any more intimiacy into my shallow isolated life, then what will?

I'm confused. I'm sad. I don't know who I am, what I should do, what I want to do, or what would be good for me. I have no future plan. I'm incapable of making one. I have no idea why I'm becoming a banker.

I just want success as a human being.

I've felt restless since I was born.