2. My Life Before The Leap

This is what success looks like, right?

PLEASE NOTE: Before continuing, make sure you’ve read the earlier parts of my journey. Click here to view all chapters.

2. My Life Before The Leap

I graduated in 2008 with a bachelor’s degree and what I thought was decent timing.

It wasn’t.

The global recession had other ideas. 

Jobs were scarce. Applications disappeared into black holes. Interviews were rare. 

There’s a particular kind of doubt that creeps in when you’ve done everything “right” — got the degree, followed the path — and the world still doesn’t open the door.

Eventually, though, I got a foot in.

A big company took a chance on me. 

It wasn’t glamorous at first, but it was an opportunity. And at that time, that was everything.

The catch? The commute.

My days started at 7am on a train and ended close to 8pm walking back through my front door. 

Long days. Long journeys. A lot of money spent on tickets. 

I told myself that was just the price of ambition. 

You pay your dues. You grind. You prove yourself.

And I did.

Over time, I worked my way up. 

I earned a role at the company’s head office in London — a blue-chip publishing company, the kind of name that looks good on LinkedIn and even better when you say it out loud. 

For someone in their early twenties, it felt like I’d made it.

An office in central London. A proper job title. A salary that sounded respectable. 

After-work drinks. Big nights out. The energy of one of the best cities in the world at your doorstep.

For a while, it genuinely felt like the dream.

Even when I was still commuting, squeezing into packed trains and watching a painful amount of my salary disappear on travel costs, I wore it like a badge of honour. 

This is what success looks like, right?

In my final year there, I moved into London.

I lived in a trendy area, closer to work, closer to the action. 

That year probably looked the most “successful” from the outside. 

Good job. Good social life. Great location.

But here’s the part I didn’t expect.

I earned a reasonable salary — and spent every single penny of it. 

Rent. Trains. Nights out. Living costs. 

The lifestyle expanded to meet the income. 

There was no space. No real freedom. Just a cycle.

And somewhere along the way, the spark started to fade.

When I first entered that world, I had energy. I wanted to prove myself. I was hungry for progression. 

Titles mattered. Promotions mattered. 

The idea of climbing the ladder felt exciting.

But slowly, almost quietly, that excitement dulled.

Nothing dramatic happened. 

I wasn’t miserable. I wasn’t storming out of meetings or counting down the minutes every day. 

On paper, everything was good. Better than good. It was the kind of life a lot of 27-year-olds would aim for.

That’s what made it confusing.

Because despite having the job, the city, the social life, the so-called dream — something felt off.

I couldn’t quite name it. I just knew that when I zoomed out and looked at my life, it didn’t feel like mine in the way I thought it would.

It felt like I was following a script I’d inherited.

I had security. I had status. I had stability.

But I didn’t have fulfilment.

And that was the beginning of the discomfort. 

Not loud. Not urgent. 

Just a quiet sense that if I kept going exactly as I was, I’d wake up in ten years and wonder why I ignored that feeling.

At the time, I didn’t know what was missing. 

I didn’t know what I wanted instead.

I just knew that something wasn’t lining up.

And that quiet misalignment eventually became impossible to ignore.

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