Permanently Knackered Professional

Navigating corporate corridors with a lanyard, a conscience, and at least three open therapy tabs.

There’s the LinkedIn version of me - put together, passionate, “results-driven” - and then there’s the version who stares out the window of a skyscraper wondering how I ended up performing professionalism for a living.

Realms of Existence II by Beatrice Wanjiku, 2020

Some days, I feel like I’ve done everything right: got the degrees, ticked the boxes, climbed the ladder. Other days, I’m not sure I even want what’s at the top. The performance gets heavier. The metrics more hollow.

I’m tired. I’m grateful. I’m ambitious. I want more. I want less. I miss the younger me who thought work would be about impact, not inboxes. Who thought success would feel like freedom.

This little satire is for him and for anyone else trying to hold together the person you are, the person you’re expected to be, and the person you might still become.

Welcome to my honest LinkedIn profile. The one with sarcasm, stress, and slightly too much self-awareness.

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Name: Noisy Ghost

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Current Role:

Strategic Bullshitter in Global Impact | Decent at Slides | Emotional Support for Colleagues with Fragile Egos | Excellent at nodding while dissociating.

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🧠About

Corporate chameleon. One foot in ESG, the other in existential dread.
I’ve built strategies and emergency decks at 2 am for directors who forgot the meeting was today. I care deeply about justice — but I also care about PTO.
Fluent in buzzwords, burnout, and boundary-setting (I lie about this one). Also fluent in corporate dialects: DEI-speak, ESG spin, KPI myth-making.

I synthesise data into sides that suggest certainty and suppress panic. Host the awkward inclusion conversations that no one wants to be at, but everyone wants credit for attending. If you need someone who can navigate a 10-person stakeholder call, defuse passive aggression, and make sense of chaos before the next time the director says “all hands on deck” — I’m your guy.

Also: probably the only person on your team who knows the names of the security guards and the receptionist teams. Ask yourself why that’s rare.

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📉Experience

Multinational Impact-Flavoured Institution
Senior Stakeholder Strategist (aka. Emotional Support Hire)

• Designed engagement frameworks that no one reads but everyone cites.

• Organised global events on equity while navigating team meetings where no one made eye contact.

• Took on invisible labour, and then made it visible through “light touch” updates.

🗨️ Anonymous Colleague Says:

“Always calm under pressure. Or maybe just numb. Either way, we depended on him.”

Corporate Intelligence Behemoth
Analyst (aka Diversity Ornament)

• Balanced market insights with internal trauma.

• Turned industry jargon into 10-slide decks and 3-sentence summaries for executives who only read the title.

• Helped others feel comfortable while never quite being able to exhale.

• Balanced stakeholder expectations, personal values, and unpaid emotional labour.

🗨️ Anonymous Colleague Says:

“Honestly, he made our inclusion strategy sound like a Ted Talk. HR still quotes him. We just didn’t promote him.”

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Generic Global Consultancy (International Focus)
Graduate Consultant (aka Junior Advisor in Things I Had Just Googled)

• Learned that “local ownership” usually means explaining your ideas in someone else’s accent.

• Overbilled dodgy politicians in poor countries and sent the invoice to Her Majesty’s Government.

• Dodged power dynamics.

🗨️ Anonymous Colleague Says:

“You could tell he was clever because he always had oat milk before it was a thing.”

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🎓Education

Elite London University (MPP)

• Mastered the art of saying “it’s complex” with gravitas.

• Graduated with distinction and undiagnosed anxiety.

• Learned the difference between power and influence — one you write about, the other you answer to.

Internationally Overrated French Institution (Exchange Year)

• Tried to explain intersectionality in French. Settled for red wine and polite nods.

• Developed expertise in looking deep in cafés while pretending to read Foucault.

• Studied post-structuralism, but the real deconstruction was figuring out French men’s sexuality.

Respectable British University (BSc)

• Thought I’d be studying economics and geopolitics—ended up realising empire was basically a chaotic group project gone wrong: overambitious, poorly planned, riddled with power struggles, and inevitably doomed from the start.

• Learned the fine art of casually footnoting genocide.

• Perfected the skill of switching accents mid-seminar.

• Was very posh. Still emotionally recovering.

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🛠️Skills & Endorsements

• Strategic eye contact in open-plan offices

• Surviving restructures with grace and Spotify

• Written Communication: From policy briefs to passive-aggressive emails

• Facilitation: Can sense tension before it has a name

• Adaptability: Can change tone mid-meeting based on who just joined the Zoom

• Pretending the printer jam isn't symbolic

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💭Interests

• Writing the shit I can’t say in meetings and sending it to my work hubby on Teams

• Explaining ESG to my aunt

• Being three different people depending on the Zoom link

• Watching BBC Question Time for sport

• Hedonistic weekend recoveries after clubbing like it’s a coping mechanism

• Jazz, especially when it sounds like a protest

• Observing class performance in Pret queues

• Reading radical texts I pretend I’ve finished

• Living between spreadsheets and spiritual crises

• Looking at job listings I’ll never apply to

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🗣️Recommendations

“Incredibly sharp, reliable, and emotionally intelligent — honestly, I don't know how he hasn't snapped yet.”
– Probably Someone in HR (Off the record)

“Absolute asset. Once led a strategic alignment meeting and fixed the office Wi-Fi while microdosing disillusionment. Truly multifunctional.”
– A Manager Who Forgot My Name in the Exit Interview

“He once made me laugh in a 4-hour meeting about compliance. I’ve trusted him ever since.”
– A Colleague I’ve Only Met on Teams

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📬Open to:

• Roles that don’t involve “circling back” 14 times before doing something mildly useful

• Work that lets me be clever without constantly auditioning for my own humanity

• Projects, people, and paid gigs that don’t make me question my will to live

• Co-creators who are kind, a bit chaotic, allergic to jargon, and still believe in doing something meaningful — preferably with coffee and well-placed memes.

❌Not Open to:

• Offices that call themselves “a family,” job descriptions written by AI, or anyone who thinks “professionalism” means emotional repression in a blazer.

Reflection

There’s a line in Frank Ocean’s “Lost” that lingers:
“Now you're lost, lost in the heat of it all.”

Sometimes I wonder if he was singing about all of us - drifting through “professional” spaces and quarterly goals, chasing titles like mirages in the desert of late capitalism. This rhythm has worn me down. The meetings, the milestones - all markers of movement, but not of direction. Somewhere along the way, I stopped asking where I was going. I just kept going.

“Lost” isn’t just about drug runs and distant cities. It’s a prophecy. We’ve become couriers of ambition, pimping out slivers of ourselves for praise, promotions, productivity - or just enough stability to keep going.
But somewhere between the endless meetings and burnout, I lost sight of where I was headed.

Maybe you have too.

P.S. If you know someone polishing their LinkedIn while quietly falling apart, send this their way. And- I’m building this slowly, essay by essay. Subscribing means a lot — it tells me someone’s out there.