Somewhere Between a Book, a Brilliant Idea and a Room Full of Interesting People

On careers, curiosity, and the feeling that perhaps I am meant to be somewhere slightly different.

I have been thinking quite a lot about what I want to do next.

Not in the grand, five-year-plan, colour-coded-spreadsheet sort of way. More in the way a thought keeps quietly returning to you, appearing at rather inconvenient moments until eventually you realise it probably deserves your attention. Mine seems to have been turning up in the form of books. Publishing. Stories. Ideas. The people behind them. The little worlds that gather around them.

My career so far has lived more comfortably within the worlds of fashion, branding, visual communication and creative projects. I have always liked making things, organising things and, perhaps most of all, noticing things. I collect references almost without meaning to. I will become disproportionately excited by a good visual identity, an interesting shop window, a beautifully designed magazine or a concept that makes me stop and think, oh, that's clever.

But lately I have started to wonder whether the common thread has less to do with the thing itself and more to do with the world around it.

I like stories. I like ideas. I like the process of taking something that begins as a thought and helping it become something real. I like the organisation that sits behind creativity, but I also like the slightly less tangible things - atmosphere, experience, conversation, the little details that make something memorable. And perhaps that is why I keep finding myself drawn towards publishing.

Because, when you think about it, a book is rarely just a book.

There is the person who wrote it, obviously, but then there is the person who believed in it. The editor who helped shape it. The designer who decided what it should feel like before you have even opened the first page. The publicist, the events team, the bookseller, the people talking about it, recommending it, writing about it and eventually placing it into the hands of someone who might need it more than they knew.

I find that whole ecosystem rather fascinating. There is something wonderfully human about it. A story begins somewhere very small - a thought, a sentence, an idea scribbled down - and somehow it travels. It passes through the hands and minds of lots of different people before it eventually arrives on a shelf or beside someone's bed. I like the idea of being somewhere within that journey.

Perhaps that is the part I am really interested in: not necessarily the book itself, but everything that helps an idea find its people. And perhaps that is why I don't feel particularly concerned about knowing exactly what job I want.

What I am more interested in is finding the kind of work that makes me feel awake.

I want to work with clever, curious people. I want to be challenged without feeling defeated by the challenge. I want to learn things I don't know yet. I want to organise, create, contribute and occasionally have that lovely feeling of being completely absorbed in something because I care about it. I want to feel as though I am part of something, rather than simply completing tasks that disappear into the ether.

I suppose I am looking for somewhere where all my slightly disparate interests might overlap. Creativity and organisation. People and ideas. Books and culture. Experiences and storytelling. And then there are the things that seem, at first glance, to have absolutely nothing to do with any of this, but which I suspect are somehow connected.

I have recently become rather interested in wine and coffee. I have downloaded a vocabulary app because I like being introduced to words I don't know and discovering that there are apparently very precise ways of describing feelings, ideas and things I have been trying to articulate for years. I read Substack pieces that lead me down completely unnecessary rabbit holes. I like learning for the sake of learning. Perhaps that is another reason I am drawn to publishing. It seems to sit in that lovely space where curiosity is not only useful, but necessary.

I don't think I am looking for a career that requires me to have one singular passion and pursue it relentlessly until it becomes my entire personality. I think I am much more interested in having a life where lots of different curiosities can sit beside one another. Books next to wine. Publishing next to events. Creativity next to organisation. Work next to the things I simply enjoy because they make my world feel a little bigger.

For now, I am quite happy following the breadcrumbs.

That might mean volunteering with a book charity, going to more literary events, speaking to people who work in the industry, or simply reading more and paying closer attention to what I am drawn towards. The trick, I suppose, is allowing yourself to find out which is which. I know that I want to learn. I know that I want to work with people and ideas. I know that I want to feel challenged and interested and, ideally, a little bit excited to open my laptop in the morning. And I know that I keep coming back to books.

Either way, I think it is worth following. Because maybe the next chapter of my career isn't waiting behind a job title at all. Maybe it is somewhere between a book, a brilliant idea and a room full of interesting people. Perhaps, for the moment, I am quite happy not knowing exactly which door I will walk through.