PART 1

Dubai, October 2013. The weather was scalding, stultifying, and I was busy working for one of the world’s biggest PR agencies, heavily engaged in the final few weeks of run-up to a major sporting event. The project, whilst glitzy, glamourous and interesting, was incredibly stressful and taking its toll. Seven day working weeks, commuting daily from Dubai to Abu Dhabi. Leaving the flat at 7.30am, not back before 10pm. Tough certainly, but with the event only a few weeks off I knew I could get through it and then look forward to some (relative) downtime afterwards.

There’s a catch though – when you work for a PR agency you are constantly at the client’s beck and call, obeisant to their every capricious whim. That means phone calls at midnight and missed meals to fit in ‘emergency’ meetings (to all those working in PR and Marketing, an emergency meeting is needed when there’s a risk of a terrorist attack, not to decide which radio DJ is going to offer your event’s tickets to listeners). Most PR agencies also aim to work for as many clients as possible – more clients, more money – and look to get their staff working at optimum capacity, corporate speak for hopelessly overstretched, under-resourced and yet still expected to deliver. Day after day. Week after week. Can’t find the time? Work late. Still can’t find the time? Work weekends.

Thus it was that I got a phone call from my line manager while at the event site, working overtime comme d’habitude and in the middle of showing journalists round the premises. She was checking in to see whether I’d completed drafting the latest press release for one of our construction industry clients, without doubt one of the most soul-destroying accounts I had the privilege to work on in my time in the UAE.

I was honest with my manager, and told her I hadn’t been able to draft the release as I was working flat out trying to keep the Abu Dhabi clients happy. This wasn’t good enough. I was still expected to write some inane fluff about the exciting new developments in the world of construction.

Things became remarkably clear in that moment. I finally got it.

The work never stops in the PR industry. There’s always another story to concoct, another release to distribute, another account to service. Even if all this constant hamster-in-a-wheel tail-chasing is to the detriment of whatever other work you are doing. It was never going to stop. I might be lucky and get a break of two or three days after the F1 weekend; following that it’d be straight back into the thick of things, nose to the grindstone.

Realisations like this tend to pose questions of a profound existential nature – was this what I wanted to do for the rest of my life? Hell, was this what I wanted to do for the next few months?

The answer, irrevocably, was no.

Life, in its most sublime, simplified essence, consists of experiencing the joy of each moment. The sheer bliss of simply being. It is diametrically opposed to the constant stream of social media chatter, the corporate rat race, the ever-revolving hamster wheel that we are told time and time again is what we should all aspire to.

I knew right there and then that I needed to quit my company, leave Dubai and pursue a professional path more likely to bring me happiness. And yet in all honesty the thought terrified me. I had no real idea what the next job could be. My Dubai friends virtually all worked in PR and saw me as another PR professional, someone defined by their job. I’d been in Dubai for less than a year, and didn’t know whether I should look for another job in the city, head back to the UK, or look to find work in the part of the world where I really wanted to be based – Latin America.

Decisions, decisions……