“A Client’s Story”
A client of mine wrote this brilliant and brave article on their personal transformation and I had to share it here. Whilst I am not specifically a ‘career coach’, working with transformation, being stuck (and becoming unstuck), reaching the next level in your career and finding your purpose or developing your leadership are frequent topics among my clients.
Total Deconstruction
One day, during the summer of 2020, I sat down at my desk, logged onto my emails like I have done every working day for nearly 10 years and said aloud to nobody; ‘Why am I doing this job?’
The sounds of my own voice surprised me. I had recently got back from a six-week secondment to Sao Paulo, Brazil for the UK Government’s Department for International Trade. I thought this whole experience was dazzling, loved the excitement of diplomatic life, and genuinely considered whether a permanent placement, serving Her Majesty’s Government abroad was for me.
But, as 2020 lockdown drew in and the dazzle of my Latin America adventure dimmed, the full ramifications of the past five years of my life began to catch up with me. In the next year, I went on to spectacularly and permanently break my career in what would be the final “boss level” of a five-year quest for total identity deconstruction.
Read on, if you’re interested in a story of change; of how continuous questioning of constructs of gender, identity, success and career can lead you to surprising, life-giving paths…
Level 1: “Whoopsie, I’m actually Queer”
In 2018, at the age of 29, while working my arse off and enjoying feeling important swooping around parliament as a Private Secretary for a UK Government Minister, I came out as gay. No big deal right? A little late maybe, but then I’ve always been a late bloomer.
Well, the bigger deal is that this came as a surprise to me at the time. You see, as well as being a dutiful public servant I had been a faithful Christian volunteer and leader (even a one-time preacher) for nearly 15 years.
My history in the church is a story for another time, but it probably isn’t a spoiler to tell you that I had got the message loud and clear from the age of 14 that being gay wasn’t okay. As a result my gay repression was so masterful, so comprehensive, that I genuinely didn’t realise that I felt this way. Until, one day, I did.
Coming out didn’t just mean awkward conversations with my family that went something like ‘whoopsie, I’m actually queer’. It meant leaving behind a whole life I’d had built for 15 years, challenging a decade worth’s of terrible views on everything from sex and relationships to eternity and hell, and, finally, welcoming my whole self with kindness and love rather than self-hate and judgment.
It included getting my hair cut short, a re-entry into the sci-fi geekery of my teenage years (hello X-files rewatch) and actually reading a book entitled “How To Be You” (by the beautiful Jeffery Marsh, which I highly endorse). It involved falling in love with a woman for the first time and learning how to be a committee, romantic relationship.
But it didn’t stop there. In 2020, while I was congratulating myself for completing level one, I met some beautiful people who identified as Non-Binary. The more time I spent with them, as I listened to how they referred to their gender and themselves, the more I realised this was me.
I’ve explained what being Non-Binary means before, but in case you don’t know, it means seeing your gender as neither male or female. To some, it can mean being ‘other’, beyond male or female; a third, even countless, numerous options. To others, it can mean operating in a space, fluidly, where you can both explore embracing both the masculine and feminine. To me, it’s an indefinable mixture of both. How Enby of me to flit between the definitions.
The revelation of being able to think of myself as Non-Binary had far larger consequences for how I saw the world than I ever expected it would. Coming out as gay made me face up to the prejudices in my life (including my own). Comprehending gender as a much more transient concept than I ever thought, made me reconsider my entire worldview and the constructs I had filled it with
Level 2: “There Is No Spoon”
Do you remember that scene from the 1999 Matrix (I told you I had reconnected to Sci-fi geekery) when Neo is told by the kid that “there is no spoon”? For non-Matrix fans, what the kid is doing is reminding the main character Neo, that the life he thought was real isn’t. Everything from his name, his job, the good noodle shop down the road, to gravity, air and even the dinner spoon in his hand is actually an artificial computer programme that he’s trapped in. Neo stands, spoon in hand, fully realising that the world isn’t at all what he thought it is and for a long time he’s been stuck in an existence that’s a lie. In that moment the spoon bends.
This is what claiming my Non-Binary status felt like. Understanding, for the first time, that the western hetero-normative, gender binary world I was born into, which had been so awkward and spirit-crushing to try and get along in, didn’t have to be the only way to live. There can be other, alternative, ways to be. Ways that are life-giving rather than restrictive. Ways that look different to others, ways that are truly unique.
Realising that there wasn’t anything wrong with me, just the worldview I was trapped in, caused other preconceptions to start to fall from my life. I began to challenge long-held assumptions about myself and whether these were coming from me or the system I was part of.
This is what embracing your queer, minority or “other” identity feels like, at least to me. The years of heartache, misfitting, secretly feeling different to everyone, feeling like “there must be another way to do this” is just a consequence of being a square peg in a round hole.
Level three: Square Peg, Round Hole.
And so this is probably why, in the midst of lockdown, I sat down one day and shouted at myself that I was in the wrong job. Thanks to my continued search to reclaim my authentic sexuality and gender, I had reached Level three; my career.
When I first joined the Civil Service, I was in my early twenties. My fundamentalist Christian background combined with a lifelong interest in politics equated to a passionate, ambitious individual who believed they were destined to do the Lord’s work in government.
I’ll be kind to my old self here, as I tend to take the piss out of her a lot, she was hardworking and committed. Some days, I could use that driven side of myself.
Sadly, she was working so hard at a career in government because she felt like a failure as a good Christian woman and an impressive career somehow made up for this. Even more painfully, she believed strongly that things she secretly enjoyed (like console gaming, TV series, creative writing, drawing) were fruitless distractions and, for some reason, had a small infatuation with achieving “success” in the western capitalistic sense of the word.
Luckily, embracing my whole self and questioning the constructs I thought I had to live in, meant these beliefs and the person who held them, started to fade. But here I was, whole, finally full of self-love, in a career made for someone else.
So, what then was the right career for the new me?
Trouble was, like my sexuality, my authentic values and interests were also quite repressed. So one day, I sat down with a career coach to help me find them. After a few weeks of chatting, of me taking an academic and problem-solving approach to everything, my coach said something so gentle and simple to me that enable them to come flooding out. As I was halfway into explaining my sustainable development ambitions, she said to me “Alanna, if money was no option, what would you do”
“I’d like to tell stories” came out of my mouth before I had even thought about it. It was surprising for two reasons. Firstly, ‘storytelling’ hadn’t been on my spreadsheet of skills and secondly, the last time I wrote a story it was Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan fiction and I was 14.
But, I gave it a go nevertheless. I tried writing a few blogs (that didn’t go anywhere), a free online creative writing course and, finally, a Future Learn Screenwriting course. Thanks to a wonderful friend who works in the TV industry and was kind enough to talk me through what a screenwriter actually does, I decided this was something I’d like to have a go at.
Then came the hard part. The moment I realised I had to leave my old career to get on with the new one. The moment I broke my career, my eight years of hard work, commitment and toil to the world of government.
In December 2021, I shocked myself and a few others. I left the Civil Service with some savings in my pocket, a desire to try out screenwriting and zero other plans. It was often pretty hilarious describing it my colleagues, friends and family. I got a lot of quizzical looks, “oh wow” responses and, from one friend, “I thought I’d never see the day, you’d leave Westminster”.
I found explaining my childish desire to “write stories” almost embarrassing and the call of an impressive career lingered strongly. Letting go of the security, the ambition and the accolade (that I probably didn’t even have) was terrifying. I even wrote a bad poem about it.
Now, it’s six months later and I’m getting by. A part-time, a first script under my belt, a year’s playwriting program with the Young Vic ahead of me, and this strange little platform where I babble on to you all. I even introduced myself as a writer to someone for the first time last week.
I still don’t know where I am going and I certainly wouldn’t recommend the approach I’ve taken to everyone. And, I should say, that it’s perfectly possible to be queer and non-binary and work for the UK Government. Many of my friends do, and in fact, we need more of us.
However, I wanted to write and share my whole journey with you, because everything I’ve experienced in the past few years has taught me that it’s possible to break from things that you don’t want to define you anymore. There are invisible structures and norms that govern how we think and behave in this world. I promise that if you question them, theres a beautiful live giving journey ahead of you. One that ends up in unexpected and queer places.
I think we live in a world where we need more square pegs, in square holes. We need more people fighting to live the life that feels right to them, regardless of the fear, expectation and pressure to conform. In doing so, it might not only be life-giving to you but also help change the playing field for others and unlock heathier, more sustainable systems for us all
Here’s to the fun of exploring it all.
Some Cool Extra Reading:
Want your gender based world challenged in the most gentle and loving way? Check out the Work of Jeffery Marsh : jeffreymarsh.com.
If you like the idea of getting a life coach to support your wrestle with career aspirations, I’d totally recommend Helena Territt.
Source:
Alanna Reid at ahreid.org/alanna-reid/total-deconstruction
Primary article image by Jess Pemberton
