Future Work/Life is my newsletter in which I explore the changing relationship between work and our personal lives. Every week, I share something I’ve written, a few things I’ve enjoyed reading, and something great to listen to. If you find it interesting, please share it!
The seventh series of the Future Work/Life podcast is back today.
I've got some amazing guests coming up in this series. We'll be exploring all sorts of themes related to redesigning your career with some of the world's leading experts on goal-setting and motivation, hybrid work, luck and serendipity, and flow and peak performance. I'll also be speaking to some people who have pivoted their careers and are now running fast-growing and award-winning businesses.
In today's episode, you'll hear the incredible and inspiring story of the writer, Laura Price.
As you’ll probably know by now, I'm writing my first book, Work/Life Flywheel, which will be published in January 2023 and probably my favourite aspect of putting it together has been the connections I've made along the way. Or, in the case of Laura, remade because we actually worked together at Bloomberg just over fifteen years ago.
Since my book explores why and how people make career transitions, Laura and I recently reconnected to discuss the twists and turns of her work/life since we last spoke.
Laura spent seven years at Bloomberg moving from London to Sao Paolo and then to Buenos Aires, first in management roles before becoming a business journalist. In 2012, she decided to leave South America and move back closer to home, taking a job at Facebook in Dublin, where she would continue being able to use her Spanish and Portuguese language skills.
But that's when she received news that would change the course of her life and, ultimately, her career.
Soon after she arrived in Ireland, doctors told her that a previously misdiagnosed lump in her breast was cancer. She moved back to her parents' house in Yorkshire for six months to start her treatment and began blogging about her experience on Huffington Post. After positive feedback from friends and other readers, she made the call to pursue a passion she'd had since she was young and applied to go back to university to do a masters degree in magazine journalism.
Nearly ten years later, after initially working full-time for The World's 50 Best Restaurants, she's now established herself as a successful freelance journalist, and as of this week, she's a published author. Her new novel, Single Bald Female, is available in the UK from the 14th of April.
Laura and I discussed how her cancer diagnosis changed her perspective on life and work. She explains how she's adapted to freelancing, including its various ups and downs and why she decided to dedicate so much time to writing her novel and now her new podcast, Life in Food.
Listen to our conversation, HERE
LINKS:
If you enjoy listening, check out these episodes from the archive:
Alison Jones - Writing For Business (And Pleasure)
Annie Auerbach - FLEX in Work and Life
Daniel Pink - The Power of Regret