Career Break: When things don't go to plan

Let me start by thanking all those, who took the time to read the article I published at the end of last year . According to LinkedIn data, it has become the most widely read piece I’ve written so far – even more so than my teenage diaries, which (despite having been hidden or having a lock) were somehow read by almost anyone, who dared to venture into my messy room all those years ago. ??

That article was likely different from most of the others you’d find on LinkedIn – a dose of reality on a platform geared towards self-promotion… and (apparently) rather serious threads discussing whether that Calvin Klein ad featuring Jeremy Allen White and his killer abs was ‘on brand’. This made me laugh at a time when I had little cause for smiling.

Social media tends to provide us with a very ‘photoshopped’ view of other people’s lives. You're probably thinking about Instagram right now, but LinkedIn isn’t too different either. Hang around for long enough, and you'll begin to think that other people have lives (and careers) that have allowed them to sprint from A to B in a linear fashion. Meanwhile, you're hobbling down a windy path… with the grace of a drunk being made to 'walk the line'.

If you've ever felt like the latter, you're not alone. And so, I'd like to dedicate this blog to everyone who’s hobbling along one step at a time.

Navigating life’s unexpected journeys

Whenever we feel like we’re just hobbling along, it’s often because life has set us on a path we would never have chosen to take. It’s like walking down a cobblestone street in perilously high stiletto heels, which makes you wonder how the heck you got to where you are, and where that wonderfully smooth pavement suddenly went. Well, I’m in the middle of such a journey right now.

When health fails, everything stops

Some people have reached out to me privately about the health issue I’ve alluded to in my previous article . A few were former colleagues, who I’ve worked with over the past few years, or even more than a decade ago. Others were friends I made all the way back at primary school, who I haven’t seen since my pigtail-wearing days and who all live in different countries today. In the world we live in, I’ve become rather used to the ‘pretense of caring’. You know, when people only show that caring side of theirs when others are watching, which vanishes as soon as the spotlight fades away. And so, I’ve been very touched by all of this.

When I wrote that article at the end of November, all I knew was that something was wrong with me, but I still had to be referred to a medical specialist to find out what. A month or so later, my health deteriorated to a point where even staying at home (the thing you normally do when you're sick) became unbearable.

Yes, there were days when I felt well enough to get on with life, and on one of those days, I may have started a DIY project that taught me (among other things) how home renovations could lead to divorce . But the ‘good’ days were always followed by weeks of agony – which is why you haven't heard from me for a while.

Well, a lot has happened since. Just like the Princess of Wales earlier this year, I had to undergo major abdominal surgery back in March. And coincidentally, I was being treated at the same hospital that also played host to the princess… and later, the king.

It was a strange experience seeing someone in the public eye go through similar things and in the exact same place as me. On my way back home after yet another pre-surgery appointment, I’d check the news – only to find pictures of the same door I’d just gone through splashed across the media around the globe.

This made everything feel surreal, like I had accidentally copied and pasted a video clip of someone else’s life onto mine, and all I had to do was hit CTRL-Z to go back to where I was meant to be. While that might sound like the premise for another ‘Black Mirror ’ episode – this was real life, and there was no magical ‘undo’ function to be found.

To this day, I still can’t believe that I managed to function (and work) for years, while my body was apparently struggling. My surgeon told me that he 'saw stars' when he first looked at my case, and it took me an unusually long time to understand what he meant. If you care to know, the Cambridge Dictionary defines that idiom as follows:

If you see stars, you are partly unconscious because you have been hit on the head.

He mentioned that my surgery, which involved removing a tumor, was one of the most technically complex he has had to perform, and given that his experience spans decades across hospitals in New York City and London, that's rather daunting to hear. Warning: If you’re queazy about medical things, you might want to skip the paragraph below.

The tumor was the size of a honeydew melon, but astonishingly, it was the location rather than its size that made things difficult. According to research, tumors of this type and in that location represent only around 0.6% of all cases found. Finding one of the size that mine was is rarer still – they’re the stuff research papers are made of.

And so, when the histology report later confirmed that the tumor was benign, I breathed in a sigh of relief, and that’s probably the biggest understatement I’ll make all year. But it’s not over yet still.

Another issue was found in the run-up to my operation. A few weeks ago, my surgeon called to tell me that I needed to undergo another (thankfully, more minor) surgery to ensure that no stone has been left unturned. That’s how I ended up back on the operating table again yesterday, and I’m now awaiting more feedback over the coming weeks.

The aftercare I received from The London Clinic has been nothing short of amazing. From regular check-ups with my doctor to physiotherapy appointments that feel more like personal training sessions – it wouldn't surprise me at all, if I were in a far better shape a year from now than prior to this entire saga. I’ve been made aware by others that my treatment was ideal. Unfortunately, this was only possible because I had access to private healthcare – but even among those who have benefited from the same, the care this hospital has been providing me with appears to be better than what others have received elsewhere.

I can’t fathom what it must be like having to go through this roller-coaster ride under the intense glare of the public, which tends to be what happens when you marry into the British Royal Family. All I wanted to do over the past few months was revert back to ‘Lockdown Life’, meaning avoiding all human contact, while watching one Netflix show after another. Something tells me Her Royal Highness may have felt the same.

Of course, I know that unless I fully commit to living the life of a hermit, that kind of lifestyle isn't exactly sustainable. So, I'll probably have to emerge from my hobbit hole in the ground one way or another, and remember the below…

When the going gets tough, the tough get going

It’s nearly impossible for me to write (or read) the line above without hearing the tune of the song that bears that phrase as its title. And it’s not even the original version by Billy Ocean that my mind has chosen to play on repeat, but the one released by Boyzone in the dying days of the 90s.

According to the ‘Almanac of All Things for This Article’, i.e., the Cambridge Dictionary , that line is ‘said to emphasize that when conditions become difficult, strong people take action’.

I’m not a stranger to life’s sudden blows. You can try to dodge them all you like, and ‘float like a butterfly and sting like a bee’ like Muhammad Ali, but let’s face it: life can be sh*t sometimes, and you're bound to take a punch that will knock you off your feet.

When things don't go as planned, it's easy to feel as though you’re a mere observer in this thing called ‘life’. But it’s often the ‘unexpected journeys’ we take that truly show us who we are. Some people say it’s the things that happen to us that make us who we are, but I think that’s overly simplistic. Many people can go through similar events in life, and still end up being totally different people.

In my opinion, it’s not the cards we're dealt with that define us – it's how we play the hand we're given that matters. Or as the American poet Charles Bukowski wrote far more eloquently: what matters most is how well you walk through the fire .

When I decided to take a career break, my plan was to use my time to focus on writing fiction. But there's so much you can learn about writing stories that are applicable to life itself. In a well-written story, 'plot points' (i.e., big events that happen) aren't just there to drive the narrative forward – they should ideally also 'reveal character'. And it's often the choices that fictional characters make during these pivotal (and challenging) moments that can set the heroes apart from the villains.

You see, it’s incredibly easy to look like a hero when everything is going your way. The question is: would you still say the same things and make all the ‘good’ choices, when the odds are stacked against you? I like to think of the ‘unexpected journeys’ that happen in our lives as our very own 'plot points'. Most of the time, we have no control over them, but we can always choose how to respond.

Strong people take action. I could just sit around and sulk in my hobbit hole all day, or I can choose to emerge out of what has happened stronger and better than ever before. I don't know about you, but the latter option feels a lot more empowering to me.

Seeing the light at the end of the tunnel

I'm not saying that we should aim to be 'Pollyannas' , who only find the good in even the darkest clouds. Firstly, most people would find that very annoying, and there's no way I'll be there to shield you when they throw rotten eggs your way. Secondly, being overly optimistic typically means you're lying to yourself. I don't care how many life coaches tell you otherwise, but no... that's not a good thing. And thirdly, keeping up that kind of irrepressible optimism must be so darn tiring.

What we can do though is to remind ourselves that our brains are hardwired for negativity . We generally tend to emphasize the bad, rendering us almost blind to the things in our lives that are good. From an evolutionary perspective, this has likely helped us keep out of harms way – a burned child dreads the fire.

But we've all met (or at least know of) people, whose past appear to loom over them like an ominous cloud, and that has never been the life I wanted to lead. As I said above: I’m not a stranger to life’s sudden blows. And unfortunately, I had to learn very early on in life that letting your past haunt you will get you nowhere.

Acknowledge the bad things that are happening in your life, but try to refocus your brain on the good things around you. There are probably 101 ways of doing this, but personally, I think that keeping a sense of humor helps – I always try to find things to laugh about even when life looks bleak.

I also like to have things around me with hidden meanings, like that leather binder I used to take to work with me. Looking much like a Filofax, some colleagues found it amusing that I’d use what looked like a 1980s relic in the 21st century. It was made for me by a small Dutch company a few years ago, and I chose for the outer leather to be grey and the inner leather to be blue. This was to remind me that behind every grey cloud, there is a blue sky. Carrying it around with me was like carrying a secret. Of course, that secret is out of the window now.

Many people swear by a gratitude journal, but I'm the first one to admit that I don’t have the discipline to keep one myself! I guess it forces you to search for the good things that you may otherwise miss. But as I write this now, I do realize there are many things for me to be grateful about.

Despite being on a career break, I did have health insurance that allowed me to receive the medical care I needed. Against all odds, I also ended up getting an appointment with my first choice surgeon rather than being passed from one to another like many others. My recovery so far has also surprised my medical team. And I have friends and family around me.

Maybe there's still some hope for me to fill a gratitude journal after all…

So, what’s next?

I’m still on that cobblestone street I mentioned at the beginning, but I think my ability to walk on high heels has improved by quite a lot. And more importantly, I can see the smooth pavement sparkling on the horizon. After not having been able to think much about the future, I’ve now made plans for the coming months. This includes going back to writing, of course, but I’ll also be doing other things:

Marketing stuff: You can take the girl out of marketing, but you can’t take the marketing out of the girl. Or so they say. An event about the future of marketing will serve as the kick-off for my ‘Getting Out of the Hobbit Hole’ project.

AI stuff: I’ll be attending a course on how AI can be used in content production. I’ve been experimenting with AI over the past few months, and my experience so far has been that producing QUALITY content with AI requires a lot of human input and knowledge. However, AI isn’t going to go away anytime soon, so I’m trying to figure out how best to harness it for what I do.

Website stuff: I like writing these articles on LinkedIn, but I can’t quite do all of the creative things I want to do with the limitations provided by the article template. So, I’ve been working on a little pet project of designing my own website that’s a lot more flexible, where I hope to create more immersive content in future.

Travel stuff: I’m planning a solo trip to Asia this summer. Well, it’s not really a solo trip, because I’ll be meeting with friends and family along the way.

I hope to write about all of the above in more detail over the coming months, so watch this space!