Lost and found: How taking a huge risk made me feel safer than ever

And my advice for those big, life-altering decisions we occasionally have to make

*A little early this week because why not!*

Did you ever wake up one day and just think HOW did I get here?

I did. For the past five or so years, I had the constant, niggling feeling that I was sleepwalking through my career.

My work has always, always played a huge part in my life, my happiness and my self-actualisation, my sense of content – for better or for worse.

Regular readers might know that after the magazine I was the editor of unceremoniously closed down in 2017, I was adrift. I was unemployed with a wedding to pay for in a couple of months and hadn’t time to think, let alone make a five year plan. I just had to ‘do’. So I did. I ‘went freelance’, as I told people, but I was forced into it. Truthfully, at the time, it sounded kind of glam and a bit freeing, and after many years as an employee I convinced myself it would be a great change.

And it was, for a time. But the thing is, I love a plan. I love a mission. I love calendars and spreadsheets and planning and pipelines and joint efforts and seeing things come to fruition. I didn’t realise just how much at the time, but I love working with a team and having a tangible end product to look at or read or admire. I love a goal, I love structure and I do NOT love keeping my own accounts.

In the new freelance life in which I’d found myself, I was more isolated than I’d hoped, and the majority of the work I did was completed and then handed off to an editor or manager or whatever, to be finished or added to a bigger body of work, never really feeling like the end product belonged to me – I was just a contractor, a contributor, a stopgap, a fill-in.

The money side of things is for a WHOLE other Substack piece – but reader: I was left waiting over a year for a payment that accrued to €10,500 by just ONE employer. Needless to say, once I kicked up a fuss, they suddenly found themselves ‘without budget’ to hire me again, although I know my work with them (for over three years) was solid as a rock.

But the main thing, for me, was the sense of bobbing from gig to gig, project to project, enjoying them as individuals for sure but never having a plan or a sense of ‘what’s next’. Never mind having absolutely not a CLUE where I might be come retirement age – I know I’m a while away yet (!) but I still couldn’t picture myself being a freelance journalist with a beauty and lifestyle slant when I’m 65.

I described many times to my husband and friends how lost I felt. I went to a yoga/meditation retreat and (VERY unlike me) cried in front of a room full of strangers about feeling that way. I wrote in my 2023 ‘hopes’ list that I would no longer feel that way.

I spent the year working away, eyes open for opportunities that might suit me, but nothing was really forthcoming. Maybe because the thing I wanted was so ambiguous. I didn’t even know the details of what I wanted, I just sensed there was something else that was for me.

I applied, during the summer of 2023, for a ‘head of creative’ role with a big company. It sounded perfect on paper. I presented my portfolio and my CV and I really hoped I’d hear. I even chatted to the person doing the recruiting who (as it transpires) lied about my chances of getting the role.