Writing

Bi-monthly essays and interviews about career transitions and the process of finding meaningful work. Think of these essays as a letter to a smart friend.

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EssayWhy a career transition feels so damn existential. It’s not just a change in job title. It’s several changes arriving at different depths.The difference between change and transition, and how to meet yourself againReadInterviewFour pivots, across four countries over nine years, without the risky leapNadia Bruyere built every exit from inside the job she was leaving.ReadEssayThe search for a calling was never really about work. It’s about something larger than you.How meaning migrated, from God, to the self, to work. The theology fell away, but the work ethic didn't.ReadEssayJob, career and calling explained. Why the same work leaves one person satisfied and another unravelling.Your dissatisfaction is likely a mismatch between what you want work to hold and what that job was built to hold.ReadEssayKeeping a creative practice alive when your craft becomes your livingWhy part of your creative work should answer to no oneReadEssayPortfolio careers are a stepping stone, not a destination. The label is keeping you small.Most portfolio careers aren't businesses. They're a more sophisticated form of employment.ReadInterviewReinvention after lossKasia Hamilton spent thirteen years as a designer. Then her life rearranged itself, and she began again not by choosing one path, but by planting many.ReadEssayI thought it was ambition. Guilt, achievement and the debt I didn't know I was repaying.An honest account of the years I spent trying to repay a debt I didn't know I'd inherited.ReadEssayOutgrowing what I've built. You don’t just do this once.Loosening the grip on the story you tell yourself about who you are, because of what you do.ReadEssayThe coaches worth choosing. A guide for the sceptics, written by one who became a coach anyway.What coaching actually is, who it's for and how to find someone worth trustingReadEssayIt’s getting really loud in here. So I started building something you can only experience in person.A personal reckoning with the noise of modern life and the quietly radical act of gathering people in a room.ReadEssayWork Worth Doing and the developmental threshold you didn’t know you were crossing.What career ambivalence is actually asking of you.ReadEssayA letter to myself about what comes nextWhat your body knows before your mind catches upReadEssayYour friendships are a portrait of who you wereNot necessarily who you're becomingReadEssayAt 35, I'm entering early middle ageAnd it's not the crisis I was warned aboutReadInterviewA choiceless choiceCeylan Kara was a partner at a top American law firm. Leaving wasn't a decision. It was a recognition.ReadEssayBrave decisions need boring moneyHow to fund a career change without blowing up your lifeReadEssayA job you can tolerate is the most dangerous job of allThe slow erosion of staying somewhere that's "okay"ReadEssayYou don't need a new job. You need a new story.The job is rarely the problem. The narrative is.ReadEssayYou find your path by walking itTen years of career pivots and what they actually taught meRead