Did it my way
If you’d asked me fifteen years ago whether I’d one day become an internationally bestselling author, I’d probably have laughed it off as absurd. You see, although I’ve always been a prolific reader, I was faced with a crossroads at the age of eighteen: should I pursue a career in the creative arts (at that time, by applying to art school) or should I pursue a career in something more practical (by applying to study law). I come from an idealistic family, where we often volunteered our time for good causes, and one thing that came from this was a desire to try to help people through advocacy; how terrifying, I thought, to feel unable to stand up for oneself in court and seek justice or provide a defence. I believe in balance, in ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, and, bearing all of this in mind, I took my post-high-school idealistic self away to King’s College London, where I studied undergraduate and master’s degrees in law, following which I trained to become a barrister.
Great, I thought, aged 22. That’s my professional life sorted.
Except, I’ve found that reality seldom matches up to the ideals we develop in our own minds, which I soon discovered after a few years of working in healthcare and then financial regulation. Case upon case of self-serving individuals trying to defraud old people and negligent corporates desperately trying to wriggle off the hook… over time, it wore me down, and I began looking at the concrete pavements of London, rather than looking up at the blue
