How to Become a Middle Manager?
Who the hell hired this bitch? [Shadow Work]
My dream was to become a middle manager — mostly because I’m not specialized enough to hold a real job, but still deeply committed to sounding important in meetings.
I never wanted to do the boring hard work that leads to excellence. I wanted to skip straight to the part where I “align expectations”, “drive synergy” and “facilitate growth” without really knowing what anyone does.
Since I was a little girl, corporate hierarchies fascinated me. People who barely survived the first semester of their dream studies, somebody’s cousin, an investor’s girlfriend. Professional responsibility avoiders who somehow drifted upward into roles nobody fully understands — but everyone has to tolerate.
That’s the job I want.
Learning how to do less while reporting better results.
Perfecting the art of looking busy.
Providing snacks as a leadership strategy.
Mastering invisibility whenever accountability walks into the room.
Will I understand what the company actually does? Absolutely not.
But I’ll “protect specialists” by pretending to manage things.
I’ll keep the top happily misinformed so everyone can keep feeling productive.
Is this a real profession?
Not really.
But apparently… it pays surprisingly well.
_ _ _
The joke is easy but the reality is less funny.
I did have a specialization. I was on a path. I worked hard, learned deeply, built real experience — and then life collapsed in a way that no training prepares you for. Sometimes people just die, relationships fall apart, mental health shakes, and life simply becomes too heavy to carry in its previous form.
So here I am, in Denmark, starting again.
Not because I never had something, but because I lost it. Now I am rebuilding, slowly, with shaky humor and self-mockery as emotional insulation.
If there’s anything middle-management-ish about me, it’s probably this:
trying to hold things together while not always knowing how.
_ _ _
Here is my scream.