FROM THE EDITOR

What do you want to be when you grow up? I don’t know who first asked me this question, but I do know I was young enough to dream big and old enough to remember the answer. “I want to be a writer with six Great Danes, and live in a cottage in the country that has roses round the door, with a man who writes poems.” (True story. Recounted to me time and again by those who bore witness to this highly specific set of life goals.) Over time, however, that dream faded from view. Not because my ambitions changed, but because the world around me did. As I headed into my teens, my father, in the well-meaning but misguided way fathers often do, made it clear there were only four career options out there in the big, wide world: doctor, lawyer, engineer or… failure. School was little better. A writer? The very word appeared to send careers advisors into spasms of shock. Instead they would try to side-hustle me by gushing about the beige-sounding opportunities to be found within the civil service.* Good, solid careers crammed with prospects and a porky pension at the other side. “Writing is very hard to make a living from,” one advisor said to me, shaking their head. “Very few people ever make it.” And so I started to modify my dream, transforming it into something more palatable for those around me. But grand passions, like unfinished love affairs, don’t die quietly. They live inside you… waiting. Waiting and hoping that one day you’ll turn, look back and let them in. I was 24 when I decided to turn around and dare to dream about a career in journalism once more. I took the first job that would have me, and then set about moving swiftly up the ladder, grabbing what wisdom and experience those along the way had to offer. I had lost time, but I hadn’t lost passion or my goal. Someone who never let their passion be dimmed was our cover star, Tess Holliday. Tess always knew she wanted to be a model – but the world said otherwise. Too fat, too short, too much... was the message it repeatedly sent back to her. And so she found a way to make it happen. It wasn’t overnight. It took years of hustle, years of graft and years of searching to find another avenue down which she could travel to get there. Because there is always a way, as long as you accept that passion alone will not get you there. It will be the power in your engine, no doubt, but not the wheels that make the journey. Sacrifice, grit, keeping your head when the world seems cruel and forbidding – these are, in many ways, the things you ultimately need when chasing down a dream. I’ve had as many failures as I’ve had successes (and written about them all in my book, The Discomfort Zone, in case you’re interested in what they look like. Disclaimer: there’s a lot), and I have also made big personal sacrifices. Because the truth is, you can’t have it all. But you can have most of it – as long as you are very clear on what that looks like. I don’t have children and I don’t have a large friendship group, but I do live in a cottage with roses round the door, a man who writes and two oversized doodles that share my life. As for writing… well, you know how that worked out.

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FARRAH STORR Editor-in-Chief