the NEW SUCCESS

i’ve always loved that point in conversation when one story has finished and received the appropriate laughs, and next comes that loaded question: “So, what do you do?” For the past 10 years, I’ve been confident of my answer: “I’m a journalist and an editor.” This was almost always followed up by “That’s interesting, who for?”, then I’d get to really flex, because I’d been the bigwig editor at cutting-edge media companies, from fashion magazine i-D to Refinery29, for close to four years. What came with that was an enormous amount of social cachet, demonstrated through nodding heads and whispers of “Cool” and “Wow” when I told new acquaintances.

You see, that was the bulk of who I was in my twenties, until I  realised that I couldn’t keep up with the fiercely ambitious and successful person I’d created. After all, it’s a vast space between how things sound at a party and how they feel day-to-day. And, at the too-young age of 31, after I’d worked so hard