The Mentor

Excerpt of A Day in the Life submission to MBA Quarterly Magazine:

4.44am: I wake to the sound of breaking glass. The source of which I will reveal later. I sit bolt upright. I kiss my sleeping wife on her exposed left inner calf – my favorite part of her smoking hot bod. Rising from the bed, I disrobe and seamlessly move into Modern-Dance-Tai-Chi; a freestyle eastern movement infused with contemporary hiphop. My apartment is still dark as I move. The blinds on the windows are motion sensored and open at .2 mm per second to allow for night vision adjustment. I conclude my dance routine with a series of breathing exercises. I then collect my perspiration from the floor, rinsing it from a cloth into my nutribullet 3000 blender.

5.15am: Using the gathered sweat, goji berries and genetically modified fish spawn, I make a smoothie. I once read that Steve Jobs drank 4 litres of his urine per day. Many see excretion of fluids as weakness leaving the body, but Jobs was the world’s first true “self-recycler”. The sweat thing is next level. The circle of life.

5.30am: I turn on the outside light to alert my personal therapist that I am awake and ready. She enters but I do not see her. I have blindfolded myself with an eye-mask made of Arianna Grande’s underarm hair which I purchased at an auction for a GoFundMe campaign in aid of Denis O’Brien legal challenges. My therapist proceeds to fellate me. This fellatio is not a sexual act but step #2 of the Inner Body Cleanse ™. As I am being cleansed, I listen to Enda McNulty’s ode to self-help, Commit. This centres me and keeps me from impure thoughts. Once I have finished, my therapist will empty the collected ejaculant into the slop-bowl for tomorrow mornings smoothie. The Circle of Life. I shower using CR7 soap.

6.00am: In order to stimulate my creative juices, I watch two Paul Thomas Anderson movies on x1.5 speed. He first came to my attention in a 50 under 50 feature I read in The Economist in the waiting room before an intensive cupping session. His movies make no sense to me, but they are cool. The blinds in my apartment are now 47% open. I watch the movies from a half press-up position.

6.30am: My loser children now awake, this is the signal for me to record a series of motivational videos for them I will insist be played by their teachers to them during the day. Although they want to play with me now, I dismiss them. Dismissal is part of the circle of life. I record the messages using a professional camera I bought at an online charity auction for the GPA benevolent fund Mé Féin.

7.00am: I look in on my smoking hot alcoholic wife, still comatose asleep.

7.05am: The first of my 34 daily subscriptions arrive on my iPad. I subscribe to the FT, NYT, WSJ, WP, and others. I subscribe because my MBA (which I completed 12 years ago and cost me €67,000, my then fiancé and my relationship with my mother) came with two-week free trials for all these publications. My accountant has encouraged me to give them up, as they consume 56% of my monthly take home pay, but I always say to him “there is no accounting for who influences you”. I think this line is funny – the “no accounting” part – as he is an accountant.

7.15am: After not reading any of the publications and continuing to ignore my children who just desperately want to play with their dad, I check in with some key influencers on the Gram. Influencers have really influenced me. I love how they speak with such clarity on how we all have it in us to achieve absolutely anything. All we need to do is be deluded enough. I read some really crappy motivational quotes aloud to myself – something I googled from Churchill, or “The Man in the Arena”. I love that one.

8.55am: After an hour and forty minutes of looking at pictures of other grown men sitting beside fake gas fires in soulless reading rooms at private clubs, I realise I will be late for work. I kiss three of my business cards (ivory platinum, raised braille) and hand one to each of my children. I tell them to email my intern, Brúúlíáchaóén, if their mother does not wake before 11. I begin my walk to the office.

8.55 – 9.30am: As I walk, I listen to Sun Tzu’s Art of War, narrated by Russell Brand. I love this book because I read in one of Brian O’Driscoll’s six biographies that Sir Clive Woodward quoted it during the 2006 Lions tour. I have a copy of this book on my desk at work, alongside a signed copy of the King James Bible, a first edition Quran and the Torah. Eddie Hobbs once said during a four-day seminar I attended in the RDS in 2007 that you don’t just need one side of the story, you need all sides of the story. I agree with this.

9.31am: As I enter the building, I point at a lot of people, shout their names, and wish them good morning. I take the lift to the seventh floor, ensuring I hold the door and allow everyone else out of the elevator before me. I then fart. This asserts my authority not just over those people and the physical space of the lift, but on the day itself and counts as step #3 of the Inner Body Cleanse ™.

9:40am: As my computer boots up, I laugh aloud inwardly (a skill I mastered during my MBA) at the notion that this machine – deemed so important to so many – is only booting up now, some four hours and 56 minutes after I hit CTRL-ALT-DEL on my brain. Man 1, Machine 0.

9.45am-12.00pm: I take and post several selfies on the Gram. Mostly desk shots of my view from my cubicle window. I average 76 likes per post, which has grown steadily since I guest-spoke at the ten-year alumni reunion of my MBA class in New York two years ago. You can’t quantify the benefit of such events. The reunion cost $6,400 per person. My speaking fee was $950, which reminds me I have yet to pay it.

12.00-12.30pm: I leave the office and walk to my lunch date with my mentor Willis Willis of Willis Willis Willis & Willis. As I walk, I read a hardback copy of The Lord of the Rings by JK Rowling. It is hard to read and walk, especially with a large hardback in a crowded city, but Elon Musk once said it is important to project ‘intellectual humility’, so I project.

12.30pm: I arrive at the Le Veritas Members Club, which is an invite only €12,000 per year oasis of capitalism for likeminded ‘super-succeeders’. My mentor Willis will have already ordered. Still-live pickled Sea Bass for him. Always. Willis often brings one of his subordinates with him to lunch, as a way of auditioning them for my mentorship. I will be a mentor soon, he tells me. Before lunch we each take selfies of ourselves, always with gas-fire in the background. And books. Always books.

3.40pm: We end lunch. People always ask me; do I ever tire of this, and honestly, I laugh. You cannot quantify the benefit of mentorship, and especially of these lunches at the Le Veritas. As a nod to me, Willis always allows me pick up the bill. You can never put a price on professional friendship. With a 10% members reduction it’s usually just north of €1,276 per lunch. Screening calls from my sister (a nurse – I am exhausted trying to push her into a more worthwhile career), I walk back to my office. En route I check in on my property portfolio. I bought my apartment in Tbilisi in 2007. The apartment was eventually found in 2016 by a not-for-profit NGO Domicile sans Propriétaire (founded specifically to help MBA graduates actually find apartments they bought in mid-to-eastern Europe), and I hope it will be finished by 2023. My cousin, who perhaps is property developer based in Manchester, will oversee the build.

4.00pm: I spend the next three hours emailing the Times, Business Post and others asking do they want to do a profile on me. Of my 2007 MBA class, twelve of the 22 graduates have made the Post. Willis told me when he was profiled it cost him 7.5k. One lesson they will teach you on the MBA, but nowhere else, is that you have to spend money to spend money. I am not panicked that I have not been profiled yet, but lately I have been anxious as I realise I can only mentor somebody once I myself have been profiled. The circle of life.

7.00pm: After checking the number of likes on my recent Gram posts, I curl up in the fetal position and sob quietly for 15 minutes. This is recommended by Enda McNulty and is step #4 of the Inner Body Cleanse ™. I gather the tears for tomorrow’s smoothie.

7.15pm: I send nothing emails to my siblings and public-sector employed friends. This exercise was taught during the Project Management phase of the MBA and is known as “emotional cuckolding”, the purpose of which is to remind them that I am still at work while they are at home putting their children to sleep. Probably with stories of their working day! Losers. I go back online and order a case of Proper Twelve whiskey. I quickly tweet about the purchase.

8.15pm: I change my shirt – I always keep a crisp new shirt in my cubicle – and head to Constantinople, a cool networking bar where people like me exchange business cards like STIs during rag week. You will meet a lot of alumni there, and many injured rugby players. My new go-to drink is an Old Fashioned. Cuz.

2.26- 4.43am: I sit alone at home, browsing LinkedIn, re-watching American Psycho, believing it to be a biopic. Afterwards I will watch some new social media content from Dan Bilzerian. The man is a visionary. I check ticketmaster.com for anything on the next Fyre Festival. Delete WhatsApp message from my sister without reading.

4.43-4.44am: I fall asleep, deliberately holding a glass of water (French, room temperature). My sleep lasts only the length of time it takes the glass to leave my hand upon my losing consciousness, and smash on the cold tiled floor. As the glass breaks, so does my slumber. Deep sleep is for the weak. I sit bolt upright. I kiss my wife on her exposed left inner calf. The circle of life.

~ENDS~