A corporate job - we call it STABILITY. But that’s just a nicer word for STUCK

Opinion
28 Jul 2026 • 11:00 AM MYT
The Poolside Writer
The Poolside Writer

Retired insurance practitioner. Storyteller and LinkedIn ghostwriter.

Image from: A corporate job - we call it STABILITY. But that’s just a nicer word for STUCK
Photo: Mohamad Afendi (at 17, impersonating a teacher)

Growing up, people used to tell me I looked like Anthony Perkins. The one from ”Psycho”.

As an Anthony Perkins’ look-alike, I wanted to be a teacher. I wanted to PSYCHO my students to be better people.

I actually meant that in the best way possible. I pictured myself standing in front of a class, shaking up the way young minds thought about the world, leaving a mark the way a good teacher does.

But God had different plans.

Furthermore, I just didn’t have the natural inclination to become a teacher.

Life, as it does, took me somewhere else entirely.

I had no idea how I got myself locked-up in the corPARAT prison.

It’s a corporate prison not for no reason.

Corporate life has its own version of solitary confinement.

Meetings that go nowhere.

KPIs that don’t measure what actually matters.

Bosses who forget your name but remember your mistakes.

You know the drill. You clock in, you nod along in meetings that could’ve been an email, you chase numbers that don’t reflect the actual work you put in, and somewhere along the way, you stop asking why.

I stayed anyway because I didn’t know there was a door.

Turns out, there always was.

It just took me a while to notice the handle.

Sometimes we build our own prisons out of fear, not walls.

We call it STABILITY.

We call it BEING RESPONSIBLE.

But that’s just a nicer word for STUCK.

And once I could finally name it, I could finally leave it.

I didn’t become a teacher. But I found another way to change minds (hopefully not like Anthony Perkins’ character psycho people).

These days, my classroom is a blank page, and my students are whoever stops scrolling long enough to read.

One story, one post, one sentence at a time.

You don’t need a classroom to teach people something worth remembering.


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