These are his words: ” At thirty, I succeeded. Financial security, beautiful apartment, wedding approach and international work in the video game. Above all, for a few years, I have won the Holy Grail: a CDI. Yet, it’s the blues: I decide to leave my work to start from scratch . ” Florie wonders: “a completely personal journey or a symptom of a generation? “. She tells her story in her uncompromising self-portrait that she agreed to broadcast again for Oser Dreaming Her Carrière.
There she is :
At twenty, I know exactly what I want. The world opens up to me and the possibilities seem endless. After leaving the benches of the medical school, a course recommended by my entourage, I embarked on language studies to become a teacher. I dream of traveling, of transmitting my knowledge and interculturality.In 2006, I’m going to Japan for a year. The adventure of my life. An experience that strengthens my love of languages and foreign cultures. At the age of twenty-three, I earned a master’s degree in Language, Literature and Foreign Civilization, a Japanese option. But you have to be realistic: no professor position will await me at the exit, even if I continue on a doctorate. Our teachers advise us to spend ten or fifteen years in Japan in order to gain credibility, but a year in Tokyo sufficed to know that I did not want to spend my life there. At twenty-four, pragmatism and fear of unemployment take over.I decide to branch out towards a master of communication, a diploma much more prized in the world of the company. Even if the passion for the subject is not there, I apply myself with as much eagerness to learn business management, finance and marketing as I had to memorize the necessary 1945 Japanese characters on reading the paper. I get a first internship in the communication department of a video game publisher. The amazement comes back: I work in the video game! Then follows a second internship, then a CDD. I’m starting to travel for work: Dubai, Las Vegas …
At twenty-six, I go to Paris for a CDI offered by another video game publisher. That’s it, I succeeded. I work in an international environment. I take the press to Singapore, Montreal and New York. I meet talented developers and make great memories with my colleagues. At thirty, it’s the blues. Yet I moved with the one who would become my husband in a large apartment with terrace, my salary has steadily increased since I was on CDI, and the work is still so rich in travel and encounters. I have a job that brings me social prestige and good income, I hold the Holy Grail of the CDI in my hands. I succeeded. I have everything to be happy.So why am I slowly slipping into depression? Had they not promised me happiness, once all this had been obtained?
CDI and personal accomplishment
With a good deal of introspection, I realized that the competitive, hypocritical and political atmosphere of open-space did not suit me at all. The trips, which rejoiced me at twenty-five, tired me at thirty, and as my marriage approaches, the idea of spending a week in Los Angeles while a future baby will stay at home alone with her daddy ‘hardly delights.
In search of meaning, several personal projects develop between my twenty-five and thirty years: literary chronicles, writing fiction, assistance to associations, creative projects or entrepreneurship to several …
This is where I realize how much my whole life is governed by my CDI : the time I leave in the morning and I return in the evening, at what times of the year I am magnanimously authorized to take a week holiday, when I am forced to go on a business trip for several days. My family and my projects must be content with the remains, those times when I am often too tired to accomplish anything productive. I live to work instead of working to live.
A few months ago, my parents, about sixty of whom were fast approaching, began talking about their retirement plans. It was when I began to envy them that I realized that I needed a change. How can we, at thirty years of age, wish to reach the end of our professional life? Will I really spend the next thirty-five years waiting impatiently for retirement, as a hypothetical light at the end of a huge tunnel?
We are sold the CDI as the ultimate goal to pursue in a professional life. And I am sure that many people are very satisfied with theirs, but for me, my CDI aspired to me my time, my energy and prevented me from accomplishing instead of bringing me the professional fulfillment promised .
Social Success and Happiness
The reality is that not everyone is satisfied with success as presented by society. A prestigious position in a private company and a good salary are the happiness of some but not all.
For me, the problem lies not in the CDI itself, but in the fact that society imposes it as a goal to be achieved for everyone , promising happiness and accomplishment to the key while agitating the fear of unemployment under our nose.
How many other young people have, like me, sacrificed a career they wanted to join in a business school with diplomas prized by private companies? How many of us get to their thirties with several years of career behind us and the blues of happiness that is not to go?
At thirty, I realized that social prestige and high pay did not make me happy. So I left my CDI and I went back to my reflection. The one that leads to eighteen years, bac in pocket: “what do I want to do later? “
And happiness, where is it, then?
I think that many of us censure ourselves, forbid ourselves from vocations because they are not sufficiently prized in our society. In six years of career, I have known others who have left everything. They became a pastry cook, a youth hosteler, a writer. Some have traveled around the world, others have become self-employed. Companies have been set up. Others left Paris to join a region where it is good to live.
Personally, I wondered: what are the paths that impress me most in my entourage? If the model offered by the company does not suit me, what are the alternative models that make me want?
My jewelery friend who went to CAP after a literary baccalaureat, who made services in restaurants to pay for her raw materials and galley to the market of Sunday artists to make herself known, she impresses me. She lifted her sleeves to follow her path, whatever the difficulties. She earns little but she does what she likes. I doubt she will wait for the retreat with impatience.
I am inspired by my violin teacher who lives by his music, my friend who graduated from ENJMIN (a video game school) who took over the management of a playtest box, a former colleague who has left everything to become yoga teacher.
To embark on such a change is not at all easy. Leave the security for the uncertain. Lean over the unknown and jump with feet together.Introspection can be cruel sometimes. But the result is worth it.
Today, I am married and I have no permanent contract. I returned to my first love and I prepare a competition to become a teacher of foreign languages. In the meantime, I dedicate time to my projects. Some may bring me money one day, all bring me a sense of accomplishment today. I no longer have the means to pay Diptyque candles or sweaters from the Comptoir des Cotonniers, but I do not envy the retreat of my parents.
