18 with 32 years of experience

Join me on my quest to find out what I want to be "when I grow up"

The week I turned 50 earlier this month, I climbed up a ladder into the leaking roof space at my parents’ home in Northumberland. Wearing a headtorch, I retrieved a dusty box my sister had marked “E’s ethnic stuff”. Inside I found a Tibetan-style grey wool coat with an embroidered collar, a bright purple and gold sari, several bolts of printed cloth and stripy, itchy wool socks and hats with earflaps. These were all gifts I bought when I went travelling after I left school in 1991. In my hurry to prepare for university on my return, I must have packed away this treasure trove of souvenirs and forgotten about them for more than 30 years.

I went through a hippie phase as a student, planting trees in Ecuador, visiting Buddhist monasteries in India and working on environmental projects in Spain in my holidays. I turned up at university in a headscarf and toe rings I had bought in India, with fading henna patterns on my hands. Then I started studying politics and economics. By the time I joined Reuters as a graduate trainee three years later, I had adopted a more serious, professional and rational persona that I inhabited for much of my career as a journalist. My inner hippie only occasionally peaked out. Once when a Reuters colleague came round for dinner, he was surprised to find me making my own bead jewellery. Up until then, we had mostly talked about economic data and foreign policy. Most of the time I suppressed such urges, except when I did crafts with my kids. The girl who used to love brightly patterned fabrics donned dull trouser suits in the hope of being taken seriously in an industry dominated by men. I packed away my creative, spiritual and feminine sides in that box for too long.

I have decided to start this newsletter to share my experience of finding a new direction in the hope of inspiring others at turning points in their lives.

Since deciding to leave Reuters last year, I have been trying to rediscover the 18-year-old backpacker who was brave enough to set off from Newcastle with no firm plan. That is why I went on a long hike, that I write about here. My identity had become so subsumed by being a Reuters journalist that it took me years to pluck up courage to leave the company that had been my home for most of my adult life. I lost my own voice as I pared back my prose into the facts-only news agency style that Reuters champions. In recent years, I had started to feel more comfortable about expressing my own values when I got involved with diversity and mental health initiatives at Reuters. I wrote this blog about the burnout I suffered in 2014 as part of a campaign to reduce stigma around the issue, the first time I had published something personal. I set up a global mentoring programme for Reuters and I trained as a leadership coach, a course which included lots of creative methods and mindfulness exercises.

Initially I even felt uncomfortable calling myself a “coach” – it seemed to lack the gravitas of my journalist identity. But I wanted to try out something different before I turned 50. When I finally left Reuters, I agonised over how I should describe myself on LinkedIn. Was I still a journalist? Or should I call myself a “writer”? I have since decided that I will never stop being a journalist at heart, even if I take on other roles as well. When the news broke that Swiss bank UBS had taken over its rival Credit Suisse, I wished I was back covering the latest financial crisis. But it has been liberating to try out new roles. In the last few months, I have worked as a trainer and a consultant on a project supporting journalists in exile. The latest label I am experimenting with is “social entrepreneur” as I test a media literacy concept called the Brightside Labs to introduce young people to journalism that focuses on solutions rather than problems.

This week’s LinkedIn profile..

Nowadays, we expect our jobs to give us meaning and a sense of purpose that often seems quite unrealistic and even unhealthy. That can make us undervalue or neglect the rest of our lives. For a job application for an NGO, I was once asked to describe myself in 50 words or less, without mentioning my profession. This was my answer: “I am a multilingual European with strong roots in the north of the UK that drive an interest in social justice; a feminist who has lobbied for a more diverse workplace; a mother, who sees parenting as my toughest job yet; a highly organised smartphone-addicted multitasker, who needs nature’s stillness too.” Looking back, that seems rather self-important and I didn’t get the job anyway, but it is still an interesting exercise. Nowadays, I would have added: “I am a vegetarian who is quite partial to bacon.”

I also like this thought experiment a friend shared with me: you can think of the different roles you adopt in life as being like the various pieces in a chess set: one moment you might play the pawn, the next the Queen. Meanwhile, the chess board represents your underlying personality or values.

Chess sketch by Oscar Shaxson

I am calling this newsletter “Just One More Thing” because my coaching training has taught me that this is my most powerful inner driver – I am always in a hurry to squeeze in something else to my day. That explains why my biggest challenge since leaving Reuters has been to take a proper break. In a panic about money and identity last year, I applied for a series of jobs that weren’t suitable and packed the weeks with travel and family projects. A wise friend set me the challenge of holding off from the job hunt for a few months and in that time, I have taken several courses that have indirectly resulted in me winning a place on an EU-funded fellowship for women entrepreneurs. It includes three weeks in Spain working on a community project, similar to what did when I was a student. I have come full circle. I am delighted that one of the other women on the programme who has also just turned 50 still sees herself as 23.

I have no idea where this path will take me, or where it will end, but I am much more comfortable with that uncertainty than I was when I left my job last year (although still plagued with self-doubt every other day). I am glad you are joining me for the journey. I welcome any feedback or questions.

Unnecessary and unchosen suffering wounds us but need not scar us for life. It does mark us. What we allow the mark of our suffering to become is in our own hands… growing up is at heart the process of learning to take responsibility for whatever happens in your life.

bell hooks, All About Love.

What I am reading:

Wintering - Katherine May (she is also featured in this podcast)

Four Thousand Weeks - Oliver Burkemann (see my visual summary below)

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