Something I can touch💙

why it feels like work isn’t working anymore

“Work is love made visible.”
Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

Hi Friend,

A couple of weeks back, my friend Tiffany Philippou wrote an eye-opening piece about work. Breaking the unspoken assumption that we’re all operating with chronic burn-out, Tiff suggested we’re grieving.

Grieving for work as we once knew it.
9 to 5, water-cooler moment, Pret sandwich lunch work.
I-can-steer-my-own-career work.
Work that infuses our productive days with purpose.

She writes: “Work as I once knew it no longer exists.

“My relationship with work has had a quiet ending. It’s like we’re in a relationship that’s over…I can’t recall a conversation I’ve had recently with someone who’s told me that they’re enjoying their work. There’s a collective feeling of stagnation and despair. Is anyone thriving? Growing? How wild, in this climate, to ask: is anyone feeling fulfilled?”

I always say I can take me a moment to catch up with where I am.

Reading Tiff’s piece I realised that since the pandemic, I’ve been trying to get back to that feeling I used to get after a “good day’s work.”

Accomplished. Complete. Maybe a little wired even.

I simply hadn’t caught up with this new world of work. One that feels more nebulous, a little shapeless.

And that I’ve been chasing a ghost.

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Trying to get back to something

This newsletter isn’t about hybrid working, or whether we all need to be in an office (although the wave of return-to-office mandates suggests a hankering for an old-world order).

I also have to caveat that as a creative business, my work life is entirely of my own making.

I have the privilege of working from a laptop in a safe home office I love. With clients I care about. I built my business so I could work at a level I wanted to, while also having a cup of tea at 3.30 as my kids download their school day (or not).*

And while nothing fundamentally changed about how I worked – scheduled weekly client calls, delivering solid PR strategies, securing strong comms results – it feels like the fabric of what made up my work has somehow got thinner.

The relationships feel more fragile.
My network less robust.
Ghosting has become a thing.

It’s bewildering to navigate a world where the sand constantly shifts beneath you as you move.

Weeks are filled tracking tasks, and to-dos, issuing client pitches, sharing updates – the regular rhythm of PR. Still, I move through the workday with no sense of arrival at the end.

It still feels like I’ve been trying to get back to something. Something I can’t quite reach.

*I’m also massively glossing over the real and stressful childcare challenges that informed this decision now I’m at the other side of the parenting journey.

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The end of work?

Conversations around me are fuelled with redundancies and “mutual partings of ways.” News pieces are filled with the impact of AI and the end -of- the world predictions that come with it.

At a friend’s launch party last week, a software engineer I was introduced to said, “My job will be the first to go.”

Like in a recession when everyone says they’re in the front line (I’m in PR so I know the “budget cut” conversation well).

It’s hard to stay motivated when your work feels so precarious. How can headlines predicting the loss of 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs - using language like “AI bloodbaths” and “job killing” - not keep us awake at night?

Hattie Crissell recently named it as FOBO: the fear of being obsolete. At a time when we should all be thriving in our careers and reaping the rewards of all those career ladders we climbed, are we all reaching for ways to stay relevant? The irony of wanting to do our best work as we operate from a place of low-grade existential crisis.

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Work as reclamation

Like you, work has never been “just a job” to me. It sits deep in my DNA – I overidentify with it.

I want to say “to a fault” but I don’t know if it is.

From my first day as a Saturday girl in my local library at 15, I knew it was something I was good at. It became wrapped up in who I am. If I think about it, I wonder if it was already who I was?

Growing up, I watched my grandfather rebuild his life - devastated by the 1974 war in Cyprus – through hard work. Brick by brick – first his home, a shop, a second one. Rising at 5am each morning to work at putting his life back together. How, through his work, he could return to his sense of self, create a new legacy.

When I was 8, my mum went back to work as an editor for a government organisation. I watched her reclaim how she moved through the world. The identity and definition her work gave her as she leapfrogged her male colleagues from one promotion to another. How she became more of herself.

Work has always been about the fullest of expression of who we are.

Of possibility. Of potential. Of becoming.

I wouldn’t know who I was without it. It’s hard and confronting to type here.

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Into a brave new world

A couple of years ago, I learnt this magic trick: how not to spiral when the s**t hits the fan in my business. If a long-standing client served notice on a contract, for example, a project didn’t go through, or I missed out on a pitch.

I learnt to look at the data, at my own track record.

That somehow, I always worked out a way through.

To take the setback, learn from it, figure a way out how to move forward into something new – often more aligned. Often, better.

I learnt to trust myself in my business. In my work. In the creativity and resilience and persistence that had got me to this point.

And I know the narrative now is what’s worked before, isn’t working now.

Ok, but you. Your creativity and resilience and persistence – you’re working.

And while work may not feel the same, I’m also not the same person I was five years ago.

I’m someone who starts the day with a create first commitment most days– something I never would have given myself permission for previously.

Who blocks off most of Mondays to work on her business.

Who sends actual cold emails.

Who connects with her solar plexus before client calls.

Perhaps the ghost I was chasing was me.

And now I’m ready to create something new. Something I can touch.🌊

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Work stories are my lifeblood - literally. I’m in B2B PR. Tell me how you’re feeling about work; where you are with it and what you want from it and what you’re doing about that.

And THANK YOU for being here. I appreciate every ❤️, comment and reply.

See you all the time.

With love,
Antonia xo

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A Brand Story for a Brave New World

If you’re also catching up on where your business is/ who you are in this brave new world, I’ve opened a handful of slots for my 121 Brand Story Playbook sessions.

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This isn’t about trying to outsmart/outshout an algorithm. It’s about using your voice strategically, effectively so that you step into your next level of visibility and become your own sales funnel.🫶🏼

“If you’re looking for someone who ‘gets it’ and who ‘gets you’ when it comes to B2B brand messaging – Antonia Taylor is that person. Antonia’s curiosity, perceptiveness, marketing nous, sense of humour and magical way with words shone through every interaction we had.

They all combined into a messaging session that was well thought out, packed with aha moments and that was in equal measure cathartic and empowering. I loved it.”

Suzy Timms, Founder & Director of Insight Avenue