The first great love of my life did not come in the form of a person or a thing. It was a place. London. I grew up on the coast of England, a few hours by car or train to the capital city. Our family all lived in London so Every Christmas, Easter, or Summer Holiday was filled with seemingly endless car rides along the A23 spent fighting with my sister or rewatching movies on my portable DVD player. At night, on the drive home, I’d watch the twinkling street lights with awe as I drifted off to sleep.

Coming from a small town, London represented every dream I knew of. I thought it was beautiful. London was full of life and opportunity. I’d stare wide-eyed at the lovely women in long coats and black high heels, walking through the city as if they owned it. My Grandmother was the most glamourous of them all. She still is. I had dreamt of living there for as long as I could remember. To become one of the lovely women who worked in the city and strutted the streets as if they owned them.

My second dream was an accident. I was good at school, great even. I got the highest grades and did every club imaginable – Mandarin, Drama, Irish Dance, and Further Maths to name a few. I became the Head Girl of my community and knew only As and A*s. But I lacked direction. In my small town, there were no engineers or scientists. I didn’t learn the term entrepreneur until I was 18. I didn’t know the possibilities were endless, because no one told me what they were. I was too smart for my school and no one knew which way to push me. One day, my drama teacher told me I’d make a great Director because I was a good leader and a natural storyteller.

He gave me a dream. And I ran with it.

At 18, I moved to London and attended Film School. I was going to be a filmmaker living in my favourite place in the World. This was now my dream. But Film School wasn’t great. I found it restrictive and lacking in real-world application. The egos were also insufferable. By the end of my first year, I was confused, disillusioned, and completely lost. I wanted something to change. I needed agency. And so, in a moment of what can only be described as panic, I booked a flight to Peru. I spent that summer, aged 19, alone in South America.

The tldr: for the first time in my life, I felt like myself.

And so entered a new love. Travel. And in a sense, being alone. Something about being in a completely new environment with only myself to rely on gave me purpose. I had no preconceived notions of a place to fall back on, and the people I met had none of me. I was free to be myself. I loved the act of learning a new place and how to navigate it. I was living totally and completely in the moment and gained a confidence I had never thought possible. It turned out that before that summer, I hadn’t known myself at all, but by the end of it, I had learnt not only who I was, but how to like, even love, the purest version of me.

I wanted to travel. I wanted to work in Film. I wanted to live in London. And I did. For the next 4 years, I juggled an impressive film career with travelling the World, always returning to London. And then 2020 came around.

At that point I was living in New Zealand and working on The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power for what I had expected to be a 9-month stint. I was in Auckland for lockdown and Production was shut down pretty quickly. I went from 60-hour work weeks to nothing overnight. Literally. For the first time ever, I was waking up without purpose. There was nothing to be done for my career – no resumé to send, no networking, no dailies work to pick up. All flights in and out of the country were grounded by the end of that week so travel was more than out of the question. And London couldn’t be any further away. I had never not been actively working toward a dream before. I expected to fall apart. I didn’t.

Instead, I thrived. I decided my new ‘job’ was going to be as an author. I wanted to write a book. Not to get published, not to pursue a new career, but to prove to myself that I could. Until this point, I’d had a growing fear that I was incapable of seeing something through. Travelling had made me flighty. I would take off with little plan or hesitation and every personal project I’d begun had swiftly ended with distraction. The only constant hobby I had maintained was journalling. I was familiar with writing most days and felt a book would be a difficult but achievable destination. It wasn’t a dream, it was a challenge. And I’d always been told I was good at storytelling.

During the pandemic, I had been forced to take the time and space to reflect realistically on my life for the very first time. I had discovered that I didn’t need my job to feel fulfilled, and I didn’t need constant change to be myself. There, in my tiny Auckland bedroom, I found peace. Each day I meditated, worked out, wrote, and read. It was quiet. It was simple. It was nice. It was also, of course, against the backdrop of pain and suffering that was COVID-19. This was not a time I would refer to as ideal or blissful. It was wracked with fear and guilt. But alongside that, was an unexpected peace with my personal situation, alone and isolated on the other side of the world.

When lockdown ended in New Zealand, I went backpacking across the South Island before returning to work. I had moved back to London by the end of the year and took another job in Film. Life was ‘returning to normal’ and I was living out my supposed dream. So why did I feel so empty? What followed was a year of confusion. As I climbed higher and higher in my film career, I found myself more and more dissatisfied. The future I had so carefully crafted for myself was no longer welcoming. All I saw was dread.

The concept of a Career Shift seemed impossible. Film is an extremely specific industry and I believed I had no transferable skills and a worthless CV. Beyond the practical, was the personal; film had allowed me to travel between jobs, and even work abroad in both California and New Zealand. It had helped me replace the regular 9-5 with an irregular 8-7, a deal I had been happy to make. Film was all I knew. How could I imagine doing something else?

I couldn’t justify a full career change just yet. It didn’t make sense logistically, and I couldn’t identify a new industry to commit all my energy to. If you’re in the midst of a potential career switch, I’ll be posting my guide to navigating the process this Friday. What I decided to do was start a side hustle. I wasn’t creatively satisfied with my current job, so perhaps I needed to outsource my fulfillment. I began listing my services in Ghostwriting and Script Editing on a few different freelancer platforms and didn’t think too much more about it. Over the next year, I slowly grew my portfolio as a Writer. The first $1000 I made was more valuable than any other paycheck I’d ever received. I’d earnt that money. People were paying me to write. To WRITE! I couldn’t believe it.

The fulfillment gained from writing was like nothing I’d ever felt before. It was freedom. It was validation. It was fun! To me, writing is one of the purest forms of self-expression we have, and I was being paid to do it. As has become a theme in my life, it was yet another reminder that I am enough. Just as I am. And, in fact, the closer aligned I am with my purest self, the more powerful I seem to become. This was the realisation that led to me becoming a Creative Coach. I wanted to offer the same freedom to others longing to reconnect with their creative voice. Whether professionally or personally, full-time or as a hobby, I believe becoming comfortable with writing means becoming comfortable with oneself. A path I am honored to walk alongside my clients.

In mid-2022 I moved again, this time to Japan, and without a plan to return home to the UK. It was yet another challenge to myself as with limited Japanese, I couldn’t fall back on rejoining the film industry. Job opportunities in general would be mostly limited to teaching English, something I had no interest in, and so if I wanted to make my life here work, I had one option – make freelancing work. I had one year to invest in myself as a Writer and a Coach.

It is now 2024, and I’m still living in Tokyo.

This journey has not been an easy one, but I can confidently say that I have never been this happy. The things I used to base my life upon are still a part of me, but they do not define me. Now, I define myself.

I’m Jessica. I am a Creative Coach for an incredible group of clients, a Ghostwriter for storytellers across the World, and the author of my debut novel in the process of publication.

How will you define yourself in 2024?