Is a forced career change the best thing for you?

In a week where I leave the place I've worked for 22 years, I thought it might be helpful to remember the last time my career hit a bump in the road

This is my last week at Hearst UK. A publishing company I have worked at almost all my adult life - 22 years to be precise. The content marketing agency that I head up within Hearst is being closed down and my role therefore no longer exists. It is how these things are positioned but the reality of your role no longer existing can be an enormous thing to take on board.

I remembered however that when my dream job within Hearst ended 6 or so years ago, I wrote about it all for my then blog. And at the time I had a huge response to it from people on Facebook, Twitter etc - people I didn’t even know reaching out to check I was OK. Having read it again today I am reminded also of the way my friends and family rallied round to help at that time.

This work shift weirdly doesn’t feel as seismic. My job as an Editor-in Chief totally defined me - I was it and it was me. Many other former magazine editors have written Substack pieces about the end of their careers and how it affected them and while I sometimes worry we all talk far too deeply about the ‘struggles and challenges’ of being a glossy magazine editor - because, realistically, lots of people have much greater work stresses to deal with that come with much fewer perks - it was at the time an undeniably pressured gig. But it was a gig and a great one and as Instagram took off as a medium we were also able to build personal platforms where people seemed to care what you had to say. You were showered with free tickets, free handbags and first class travel. And then it was gone.

I remained at Hearst so I didn’t even lose my income or my stability but I struggled to deal with this lack of self. This time around I am actually losing my income (and stability) but it is somehow still less upsetting. The role I leave behind is not something I have ever felt defined by - it was always more of a ‘proper job’ and much less about me as it was about me representing Hearst and what we could deliver for brands. So in a sense this is much much easier to walk away from. There have been no tears - well maybe a couple but only in moments of blind panic. There has been no need for friends to ‘distract me’ with baking or spin sessions (as I detail in the blog post below) and truthfully I’m not sure I’ve even really worked out yet what it actually means. At the moment I am mainly planning my days around Pop Master with Ken Bruce at 10.30am.

But reading the post below is reassuring as I know that very quickly some interesting stuff came my way - my friends at Hearst (Greg Witham, Lorraine Candy, Ella Dolphin, Lindsay Nicholson and Jude Secombe I’m looking at you) all rallied round and found me things to do to help on their brands. And finally I moved to run the Good Housekeeping digital network - where I got to learn new things and work with some amazing women before then ending up running a Content Marketing Division! And so 6 years more added to my Hearst total.

Already many people have been in touch to offer support, ideas of things I could do next or just to take me out for cocktails (all of the above are very welcome) and I’m finding it hard to just do nothing. But as I got my first ever journalist job while I was still at University (and juggled finals with working) - I have, since the age of 20 - never not worked! I reckon I am allowed a few months to just do nothing. And luckily it is summer - I can sit in the garden, go for walks and catch up on Love Island - I might see if there’s opportunity for an older bombshell to enter the villa - I’m at a loose end for a few weeks…..

All Change - first published September 2014

“Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

And so it was this summer…. After ten years as the Editor-in-Chief of Company Magazine, I returned from a short early visit to France, leaving behind my husband and sons for their third feral summer without me, to be given the news that the print version of the magazine was to be closed down. And in a strange way I wasn’t that surprised, not shocked, certainly not angry, but sad that something which has been part of my life for as long as my eldest son (I became editor shortly after giving birth to him!) was suddenly not to be. My team, some of whom I have worked with every day for 5-10 years, would be working on other mags, living their lives somewhere where I wouldn’t hear as they gossip about husbands, boyfriends, flatmates in my earshot every day. The walk from Charing Cross to my office in Soho that I have trudged through sunshine and sometimes snow for 10 years might now be a different commute. It might be no commute at all. And all those years of worrying about circulation figures or advertising revenues were for the time being a thing of the past.

But the news, which for the first few weeks I had to keep secret, meant that my summer being single had taken a very different turn. My usual three weeks of partying, seeing friends I don’t normally have time to see or just going a little big wild for a few weeks were off the agenda. I couldn’t really see anyone for fear of getting drunk and blurting out my secret. And, my emotional state was just too fragile to face most people anyway – especially not in a chi chi Soho bar/restaurant. So instead I stayed home and watched an entire season of 24 on Apple TV. I drank too much wine and to counterbalance this I went running a lot. Run, drink. Drink, run. And luckily I was allowed to bring one friend into my circle of knowledge, one of my besties who also edits a magazine within the same company so was deemed a safe confidente. And so every few nights I would go and stay with Lorraine and her four offspring – with my goddaughter Mabel donating her new bed to me complete with pink princess bedding. And then Lorraine and I drank wine together – which somehow doesn’t seem so bad as drinking wine alone. And Gracie, her second eldest said “do you two do anything except drink wine?” and so indignantly, we started going to ‘Pyscle’ (spinning in the dark!) together on a Tuesday morning before work to add to my extreme binge/purge summer. Or we baked with the kids and watched Johnny English. And we talked and talked about change and life and jobs and kids. So by the time I did announce the sad news to my team almost three weeks later – I had ‘worked through it’ as they say in the US. And I hope, in doing so, I was able to help them face this enormous change with a sense of strength and calm (and a weight loss of about half a stone!)

And then finally, I got to go back to my boys and my French home – where everything is always alright and Arthur asked if this meant I would have to give my iPad back and wether he would still get to go to X Factor. And Sebastian wondered what would happen to Tanita my Creative Director’s giant pencil that sits on her desk. And I realised that none of it really matters anyway except having amazing friends and family around you and a sense of self outside of what you do for a living. Most of all, I realised that what this actually marks is a new chapter. A new adventure and that can only be a good thing right?

“Just when the caterpillar thought their world had ended. They became a butterfly…” Anon