How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - S2, Ep4 How to Fail: Otegha Uwagba

Episode Date: October 24, 2018

This week my guest is writer, podcaster and all-round megawatt woman, Otegha Uwagba. Otegha joins me to talk about her failures at getting a job, dealing with sexism at work, living with depression and why she just can't seem to help being petty on Twitter (her words). We also discuss racism and how she handles daily micro-aggressions: 'I’m so conscious to be overly polite if I encounter a sort of older white person lest they then leave with a bad impression of black people generally,' Otegha says. 'I’m constantly having to code switch.' Along the way, we cover myriad other subjects including her briliant best-selling career guide for creative women, Little Black Book and why she resolutely refuses to wear florals. How To Fail With Elizabeth Day is hosted by Elizabeth Day, produced by Chris Sharp and sponsored by 4th Estate Books Otegha's brilliant podcast for working women In Good Company  features practical advice, fresh ideas and inspirational interviews.Little Black Book by Otegha Uwagba is out now published by 4th Estate Books Social Media:Elizabeth Day @elizabdayOtegha Uwagba @oteghauwagbaChris Sharp @chrissharpaudio4th Estate Books @4thEstateBooks      Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. Hello and welcome to How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, the podcast that celebrates the things that haven't gone right. This is a podcast about learning from our mistakes and understanding that why we fail ultimately makes us stronger. Because learning how to fail in life actually means learning how to succeed better. I'm your host, author and

journalist Elizabeth Day, and every week I'll be asking a new interviewee what they've learned from failure. I'm joined this week by Otega Uwagba. Otega is a writer, speaker, brand consultant, and all-round powerhouse. She's the founder of Women Who, a platform that connects, supports and inspires creative working women, and the host of the In Good Company podcast. She's also the author of the brilliant Sunday Times bestseller, Little Black Book, a toolkit for working women. Otega was included on the 2018 Forbes Under 30 Power List and is, quite frankly, one of the most intelligent and charismatic people I've ever met. She also rocks a pair of crop jeans like no one

else. And today, here you are in my flat. Oh my gosh, thank you so much for that intro. I was just sitting here blushing. You're heightening the style quotient by 500% just by sitting on my sofa. Honestly, this is so brilliant you also have such a lovely radio voice don't I yeah you really do you've got like

a really silky tone I think you can kind of give Christy Young a run for her money oh you're so kind I always get really paranoid

when I'm talking into a microphone do you get that on a podcast no but I remember when I first started doing the podcast

I hated editing it afterwards. And it was fine listening to my guest, but listening back to myself just felt like the most painful thing. And it was awful, but I've kind of gotten used to it now. And I think I've also learned to talk in a slightly different way that I think is probably more kind of audio friendly. But it's always weird hearing your own voice back, I think. Well, you've got a lovely voice, I have to say. I didn't mean to be facetious there. No weren't I love it I love it but when I was

talking about your style because it is one of the things that I really admire about you thank you that's so nice no I don't think anyone really I've never really thought about that as something that I love fashion I love clothes and I love shopping I always have I got that from my mum she loves shopping even when we didn't have huge amounts of money we'd always just get on the bus and go to Oxford Street and me and my sisters and her would just kind of buy things she's very chic and everything matches and she she's Cameroonian and so she sort of has the kind of French influence and she's always kind of looks at me in my like cropped jeans with like rips at the end and she's just like oh god because she's very about everything being proper and like a blazer and like shoes and

handbags but yeah I think I got my love of shopping and fashion from her. And have you always had a strong style identity because I often think that that reflects a strong sense of self. I think I've probably only developed that in recent years I think I used to spend a lot of time particularly in my early 20s and my sort of late teens just kind of trying to copy what other people did and just finding that I would go through my wardrobe maybe a few months after I'd bought something and just hate everything in it and I think a couple of years ago I just got sick of hating everything in my wardrobe and so now my style is a lot more kind of paired back and minimal I have sort of like a list of things that I don't wear like it's really funny it probably

sounds quite diva-ish but I've like done the occasional shoot for fashion magazines and often the stylists will get in touch in advance and say what sorts of things do you like to wear so we can pull something accordingly and I have this long list that I've pre-prepared and I say don't wear this I don't wear florals I don't wear this I don't wear that and it's all stuff that looks amazing on other people and that I look at I'm like wow that looks gorgeous but I always remind myself when I go into a shop like you will not like that in six months time so I always kind of describe my style as like fashionably boring so it's very plain very sort of neutral but I kind of feel like that way I will like my clothes for longer than six months no florals then no florals on the list no florals I think I put I don't wear purple

I don't wear red I don't wear I only ever wear sort of black grey navy white and everything else is gone I don't wear patterns I don't wear flowy skirts like it really goes on it makes again these aren't things that I think look bad I think they look amazing but I would never wear like a huge floral maxi dress just because I think I feel like I'd only get like one or two wears out of it before getting bored whereas if I buy which is what I do now like I'll bulk buy the same item in like a couple of different colors I can just wear it repeatedly and feel fine about it. So it's really just about being more sort of economical with my spending. I feel like I could just devote the whole podcast to this. Yeah, let's just talk about fashion. I have definitely had some fashion failures. So maybe let's skip over those. But it sounds like you've learned from them. I have

learned from them. Yes, exactly. The whole ethos of this podcast, I've definitely learned from my fashion failures. What is your relationship more broadly with failure? When I approached you to be on this podcast, what was your immediate reaction? It's funny. I remember when you told me about this podcast before you approached me, when you were just kind of telling me about the idea of it. And I thought, oh, well, I couldn't possibly be on that because I've had, by all accounts, a pretty charmed life. Not that I've had an easy life, but look, I've kind by all accounts a pretty charmed life not that I've had an easy life but look I've kind of landed on my feet professionally and I couldn't really think of any setbacks that would instantly come to mind so I just kind of thought oh that's not for me but then actually having

listened to your other guests I was like oh I completely get it now and I've had loads of failures and it's funny I think my relationship with failure is quite I'm still working on it and I think I've definitely got better in recent years since I became self-employed which for anyone listening is just a series of hard knocks and I've had to learn to deal with setbacks and become a lot more robust but I think I used to and sometimes still do take failures and setbacks really really really personally and really, really hard. And, you know, I'll take to my bed for a week just to kind of ride it out. And I'm definitely getting better at that now.

It's kind of just like a day. But I think because I was a certain type of student at school, always got great grades, you know, then I got into Oxford and I didn't really have to try that hard at school to do well. Oxford and I didn't really have to try that hard at school to do well so it wasn't really till I started working that I had any form of failure and so I think the fact that that happened to me perhaps a little bit later in life than most people I didn't really have anything in my teenage years meant that I actually wasn't as prepared for how to deal with it because like I said I'd always kind of done well I'd always if I applied for a job I got it if I went for something at school I got it I applied to be head girl I got it so I was I got into Oxford like I didn't have to deal with it. Because like I said, I'd always kind of done well. I'd always, if I applied for a job, I got it. If I went for something at school, I got it. I applied to be head girl, I got it. So I was, I got into Oxford, like I didn't have to deal with any of those kind of knockbacks. So I think I came to a bit later in life.

I also think that working as we both do in creative industries, it's a tricky balance because you need to stay emotionally connected to be creative. And yet you need to have a degree of resilience to not take criticism so deeply personally. And that's a very difficult line to tread and to learn. Completely. I've always liked to think of myself as someone who takes constructive criticism quite well. I think I'm a bit of a sucker for punishment. I remember when I used to have kind of appraisals at work, know they always start off with here are all the things you're doing well I'd be like okay right skip all of that I just want to get straight to the stuff that I can do better and I was like I'm fine with criticism but I think now that I'm doing something that is you

know creative and writing I am also learning to filter out certain types of critiques because you're not going to be for everyone you know my mum the best bit of advice she's ever given me once I I think I pitched something and it you know wasn't picked up and she said well not everyone's going to clap for you and I always remember that and it's so true not everyone's going to like what you do you're going to be into what you do or appreciate your ideas and you kind of have to learn to filter that out and I think that's where the resilience comes in I think I'm much more resilient now I've been self-employed for three years and I'm way more resilient now than I used to be I remember when I first started Women Who and I reached out to a few women to ask them to be on my first panel and as is the case

with any kind of event sometimes you get people saying no, sometimes people just not replying. And it affected me so deeply because I took it as an indictment of what they thought of what I was doing. And they must think, oh, this isn't very good or I don't like this girl. Whereas now I just think, well, yeah, they probably don't have the time. And I just kind of move on pretty much straight away. And I just see it as an organizational thing. But I really used to take that sort of no as in, no, I don't like you. No, what you're doing isn't good.

And I've just had to learn that also if I kind of carried on with that mindset, then I wouldn't ever really have the courage to do stuff. Like I'd work myself up and spend days plucking up the courage to email someone that I admired to ask them to do something. And that's just completely unproductive because you just leave yourself less time to kind of come up with a backup plan. I still appreciate criticism and constructive criticism, but I've also learned to filter out the kind of criticism that I don't think necessarily comes from a good place. And I promise we are going to get on to your three failures soon, but I just want to ask you, because it's so interesting hearing you talk about work assessments,

because I'm a compliment monster. Like, I need loads of compliments. Really? I think, yeah, to manage me properly you need to like say all the good stuff that I do and then potentially something that I could do better but maybe sandwich it the shit sandwich they call it but I really admire people like you who don't need that and I think it's a much better way to be but does that come from just having an innate sense of self and where does your innate sense of self come from?

Is that something your parents taught you? I'm not sure whether it comes from having an innate sense of self. I think it comes from being just quite hard on myself in general, especially professionally and, you know, when I was at school in terms of schoolwork. And just really striving and wanting to be, I wouldn't say that I want to be the best. I've never thought of myself as a competitive person. But I never want to leave room for things to be the best like I've never thought of myself as a competitive person but I never want to leave room for things to be better which is another thing I've kind of had to get my head around

through running Women Who because there are so many things that I think could and should be better and I just kind of have to let them slide I also think of it as just being efficient like I probably already know what I'm doing well but I don't know what I'm not doing well it's the stuff you don't know you don't know so I just want to cut straight to that so I can improve on that. And that to me seems like a more efficient way of working. So I think it is just about that. It's just about my kind of brain just thinking, all right, let's cut all the fun stuff.

Because I think you kind of tend to know maybe what you're good at, or I tend to have a good grasp of that. But it's the stuff that I'm not aware of that I'm really interested in. I bet you were such a good head girl oh well you know if my if my friends could hear that now they still take the piss out of me for I took it really seriously actually I was banned from coming into school before 7 30

a.m because school wasn't insured to have students on the school grounds before then because I treated it like a job. So this is in sixth form. I'd come in at 7.30, I think it was 8, we agreed on in the end, and do an hour before my school day and then do kind of all my lessons and then stay from 4 till kind of 6, 6.30 when my mum was leaving work and then we'd go home together. So I did all my kind of head girl stuff around the edges. But I really enjoyed it I

really enjoyed school I felt very kind of enamored of the school I felt really lucky to be there and I had a lot of ideas I wanted to enact and you know I wasn't willing to compromise on my schoolwork you know I had the energy to do it as well I cannot fathom how I was getting up at the crack of dawn to get in to school at that hour but it was just because I was so enthusiastic about it so and did you grow up in London and go to school in London yeah I did I grew up in South London which is where I still live and I went to a private school in in the Barbican which is a school that I really loved I had a scholarship to go there and it was such a great experience it was a really great seven years I think I got really lucky in that I think a lot of private girl schools probably really tough environments to be in if you're not from the same socio-economic background as the rest of the girls there

but my school was really big on bursaries and scholarships so there were lots of us and to be honest your social ranking was entirely dependent on your grades it wasn't about what bag you wore or you know where your parents lived like it was if you got good grades people wanted to sit next to you so I was fine on that account so I was I think I got really lucky with that school. So you did incredibly well at school you got into Oxford and then after Oxford you applied for the WPP fellowship. Yes and that is my first failure that I can really recall having an impact on me so the WPP Fellowship is this super prestigious swanky advertising grad scheme and it's a three-year long scheme and the first year you do it in London the second year you kind

of get to pick any kind of location in the world because WPP has companies all over the world so a friend of mine went to New York another one went to Shanghai you know Mexico Brazil and then the third year you do in another foreign country as well so and it's super competitive I think in the year that I applied there are about two and a half thousand applicants it's a written application first of all and then they narrow it down from that to 75 people who they bring for interview and I worked so hard on that application I remember sending it to a friend who'd done it the year before and getting feedback and I spent weeks working on it it's quite a long application as well they ask you all these quite probing questions and kind of want to see how your mind works so I got to the interview round and I

was like fine but then I just messed up the interview because I'd sort of written this application that implied that I wanted to be a strategist with an advertising but then I just messed up the interview because I'd sort of written this application that implied that I wanted to be a strategist with an advertising but then I got this like terrible careers advice from some company who I won't name who essentially were like no no they don't want to speak to people who know what they want to do they want to speak to people who are sort of open to exploring different things so I kind of went in and just kind of waffled quite a lot I knew it hadn't gone well I think you canled quite a lot. I knew it hadn't gone well. I think you can kind of tell with interviews. I knew it hadn't gone amazingly. It wasn't terrible, but there were lots of sort of pauses where I didn't have anything to say. And then obviously

I got rejected and I was gutted about the rejection because I don't plan for failure. I think that's another thing of me, especially at that age when I hadn't failed yet. I kind of assumed things will go the way I want them to, not because I'm arrogant or assume I'm back great, but my brain just doesn't work that way. I don't really think about or plan for the worst case scenario. So it came as a bit of a shock to me to not get it. And then as part of the process, they quite kindly offer up, if you make it to that last 75 you get individual feedback from a very very senior person within WPP who at that time was based in Australia so I had to stay up till midnight to have this phone call with this guy who just gave me some incredibly brutal feedback which in hindsight I don't think was fair or warranted but I remember getting off the phone at like half midnight and

just sobbing just absolutely sobbing because he'd essentially just said all this stuff about me and my brain and the way it worked. But then the funny thing is, after that, I think, like I said, I'm such a sucker for punishment because when I was thinking about this and thinking about this podcast, I actually went back and found this document that I had, which I'd written afterwards. So I'd written half of it after the interview and I knew it hadn't gone well. And essentially it's called What Went Wrong? what went wrong oh my gosh feedback great title

by the way yeah I know I know I was like it's quite sort of Hillary Clinton-esque I kind of thought it's sort of like a book in the making exactly oh my god imagine if my memoir was called what went wrong mine's gonna be called day by day I love that so yeah I made this document called what went wrong and some of it I wrote after the actual interview, kind of based on what I thought went wrong. And it was sort of things like I'd written down the question they'd asked. And so the first one says, question, tell me about yourself. And I've written error, waffled on about life history,

instead of talking about why I wanted this job, et cetera, et cetera. Then the next one is question, give give an example where something has gone wrong error didn't give a specific or convincing enough example you know and it just kind of goes on and on in that vein and then at the bottom I've written prose interview went on a while good insight into the Kit Kat ad so that was the stuff I thought had gone well how old were you at this stage 21 oh gosh yeah so hard on yourself so so hard on myself and then after I had the feedback from this super senior guy I just straight away wrote down everything that he'd said and under the pros I've got interviewers thought I was pleasant

slash confident that's the only pro that I've put down I can't remember whether that's the only pro that he said but I think that's all I remembered and then under cons I've put down. I can't remember whether that's the only pro that he said, but I think that's all I remembered. And then under cons, I've got rated around the middle in selection criteria, personality fit, unable to articulate thoughts clearly, didn't say anything surprising or original. There were no wow moments, average unoriginal thoughts, no unusual or unique points of view, need better quality of thinking more clarity seemed under prepared and unambitious need to be clearer on my intended career path and it just goes on and on like that oh my god and i thought that was a productive way of being because at the bottom of that i've written application version two and then i've put at the bottom just kind of tweaked

the original application i wrote in big red letters resilient after making it to the interviews for the fellowship last year I've learned from my mistakes taken on board the feedback I received and come back ready to have another go like at the time I thought that was normal but looking back on it now about seven or eight years later I just feel quite sorry for myself what's so poignant about that is that a man in Australia has made you stay up late so that he can deliver his very brutal, very brutal feedback. And you, 21 year old Attega, are trying to process it in a way that is logical and makes it less scary, but you must have been really hurting. And the thing that I do distinctly remember him saying was just focusing on how unoriginal my thinking was. That is outrageous. Yeah, which I think is a

really damning thing to say to someone at that age and I like to think that has proven to be untrue with the rest of the work I've done with my career so actually he'd given me this inaccurate feedback he hadn't been the one that had interviewed me it was kind of collated and without any real sort of support or he hadn't nestled it he hadn't put it in a shit sandwich he just kind of gave me the shit but I thought that was normal and so I just thought well I have to change and I was you know completely prepared to apply for that scheme again but then in the interim I found like a really good job so when it came around to the next year I kind of thought about it and I just thought nah I'm kind of doing all right here and I'm really glad that that's how it worked out but that was

I think the first time and there were a couple of grad schemes I applied for at that age. I remember applying for one at Reuters, which, again, I didn't get because I wanted to be a journalist. And I didn't get that. But their feedback was sort of very nice and understandable. And again, I just walked out into the street. I was at work at the time. I called my friend. I just sobbed and sobbed and sobbed.

Like, I was so fraught at that time. I think graduating is a really tough time. You know, it's littered with job rejections. And it was the first time I thought, was it me? You know, was it the fact that, you know, I flunked economics in my first year? Like, is that what they're holding against me? I couldn't figure it out. And the answer is, that's just the law of odds. Like you apply for a certain number of jobs and you won't get them. And you also get better at applying. These were kind of the first adult jobs I'd had to apply for but yeah that was quite a tough period being told that I was unoriginal also how do you go about correcting that exactly the original exactly the thing is I had no idea so I

just remember thinking well just give it another go next year and try and be more myself because maybe it was something to do with dialing down what I really wanted to say because I'd been given this advice about being a bit sort of broader and more of a generalist but that isn't constructive feedback there is nothing you can do with that because those were my thoughts they were original to me but he could have given much punchier feedback around specifically what it was but I think he just really didn't think about the effect that would have on somebody who's just come out of university I would never do that myself to someone I think that's a real position of responsibility he was in and he really kind of cocked that up but I'm not bitter but also having done that thing that so many of us have been lucky enough to do which is do well at school get good exam results go to

a really great university and everything up until the age of 21 is quite prescribed and you know that the next goal is this and if I put in enough work I will come out with that and this being the first time when actually you were on your own yeah trying to be yourself I think it was also the first time that I found that working hard wasn't necessarily going to always result in the right result because whenever I had job interviews I prepared like a demon I prepared seriously hard for that interview as well and at school if you prepare really hard and revise really hard generally your grades will come out fine and that's what I'd always found so I treated it like revising preparing for an exam like I had this notebook that followed me around for the first couple of years of my career where I would just kind of like

have all these interview questions and answers and I would always kind of bring it out whenever I had a job interview but yeah I was completely on my own and like you say there's this prescribed path and so for me to not be getting these jobs when you know lots of my friends were in similar positions but also lots of them had gotten these you know swish graduate jobs I really felt like a failure and it felt like forever even even though in hindsight, I left at the beginning of the summer 2011. And I had a full time job by, I think, the September or November. So it really wasn't very long, but it felt like an eternity. And I was worried about running out of money and wanted to be self-sufficient.

I was living at home with my parents, but wanted to be self-sufficient. And it just felt impossible. And I really feel for people who are graduating now especially with far more debt than I graduated with because I think it's really tough out there I think if you if your parents aren't from London I don't know how you kind of getting the train back and forth for all these interviews and having to be the smiley happy person when actually it's a really tough atmosphere I think beginning your career in 2018 so, that was sort of my first taste of the failure apple, so to speak. Do you know what it makes me think of? So I did debating

at school, public speaking and debating. And in the sixth form, I got entered for this debate. And part of the challenge was you were given a topic and given 15 minutes to prepare, and then you had to stand up and debate it cogently. We didn't win. And the criticism that came back to me was that I sounded too prepared. Oh God. And I was like, there's no way I could have been too prepared because I'd literally had 15 minutes preparation. And I think you sound so fluent

that maybe that twat in Australia and maybe those stupid twats at WPP, because you sound so fluent and eloquent, they felt like they weren't getting the real you, or what they termed originality, but actually that's just a function of you being really good at what you're doing, and you've prepared, and you know what you think, and... Yeah, I like to think so, I think I've had that feedback as well about being too prepared, and it's like, what the fuck do you want from me if you're underprepared then you can't win in one way but if you're overprepared you also can't win so you kind of have to have this thing where you prepare really hard but kind

of give the air of like nonchalance that you haven't really tried at all and that's not me I want to look like I've tried like I do try hard and I think that is a really positive indicator. Hi, I'm Matt Lewis, historian and host of a new chapter of Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit. Join me and world-leading experts every week as we explore the incredible real-life history that inspires the locations, the characters and the storylines of Assassin's Creed. Listen and follow Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?

This is a time of great foreboding. These words supposedly uttered by a king over 800 years ago. These words supposedly uttered by a king over 800 years ago, set in motion a chain of gruesome events and sparked cult-like devotion across the world. I'm Matt Lewis. Join us as we unwrap the enigma and get to the heart of what really happened to Thomas Beckett by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit. Anyway, you did get a job and you went on to work for Vice. Yes.

Which leads us on to your second failure. It's a place that you described to me in an email as a certified hellhole yes and you quit vice in 2015 can you tell us why and what led to that decision god i just i really do hate vice so i started working at vice in the spring of 2015 and i wasn't working in their sort of editorial department I was working within their agency arm which is kind of makes branded content so brands essentially come to Vice and say we want to talk to millennials we want to be super cool and then Vice takes you know a shed load of cash from them and I really thought that that position was going to be a kingmaker in my

career because especially at that time Vice was really cock be a kingmaker in my career because especially at that time Vice was really cock of the roost and everybody wanted to work there or be associated with them so I felt really lucky to get this job and it was just a terrible place to work as a woman especially a young woman I was 24 when I started working there and I remember realising that I'd made a mistake on the second day when I had a conversation with someone who essentially said to me, look, you're not going to get that far here as a woman. And I just thought, oh, fuck. And that was exactly what it turned out to be. You know, there was a huge New York Times, I say expose, there was a big article written about them in light of the Me Too movement last Christmas, which covered some of the experiences, but by no means all of what it's like to work as women there. And it was just really toxic culture.

I kind of call it the new old boys club. Like it's kind of exactly like the old boys club, but it's just that it's a bunch of hipster boys wearing new shoes. I was excluded. I was gaslit. I was thrown under the bus repeatedly by my boss. I remember at one point in time, he had this phrase that he was fond of using where he'd say, oh, if you want a brain on this, just ask this guy. And I just thought, do you not think I have a brain? And it was over things that I was really more than qualified to do. I remember one of the things was this kind of statistical analysis.

And I say that I kind of flunked economics first year, but I got enough out of it that stats I can do in my sleep you did PPE at Oxford exactly exactly and to be honest I didn't mind that much because stats are really boring but he would always give that work to an English grad and this boy who was first or better of uni and no disrespect to English grads but he just wasn't as qualified to be doing that work as I was and he'd always say oh well you know if you need a brain on this go and ask English boy and I just thought this is so wild and I felt so invisible and there was this real boys club that I felt like I couldn't penetrate and it made for a really really stressful I was there for eight months and I just remember crying to one of my friends walking home from the office at like 11 o'clock at night and other things I worked

crazy hours and I remember crying to my friend who lived in New York so he was a few hours behind and I would just for about a week I would just call him up when I left work at 11 and just cry down the phone to him and it was completely unsustainable and I think it came as a real shock to me because I think it came as a real shock to me because I think of myself as a fairly tough person so I'd heard a few rumours about what vice is like before going into it so I thought I'll be fine but it was just like nothing I'd ever encountered and I'm actually surprised that I stuck it out as long as I did. Can I ask quickly what kind of things they were asking you to do whether their sexism was evident in that?

Oh don't even get me started so I was sort of brought in as a senior brand solutions manager which is essentially a made-up job title and sort of within my first month and I did actually push back on this but within my first month they brought on this new project and they would essentially kind of give the sexy kind of creative strategic stuff to the guys on the team who are often junior to me and then I remember my boss bringing me and saying we just kind of needed to kind of babysit the client you know kind of send emails kind of do the organizational work so he essentially wanted me to be the team secretary and not there's anything wrong with being a secretary but that

was not the job that I signed on for and I actually pushed back and I was like look this really isn't what I came here for but again that sent alarm bells ringing and it was also tough for me to push back on that because I want to do well at work and I want to show that I can pitch in but even at that stage it sat really badly with me and I felt this isn't right so I kind of said look I need more substantial work but I was never given the kind of fun bits of the projects to do I would always be brought on at the last stage to just kind of sweep up everyone else's messes essentially and I remember specifically this one time I was kind of working with a few people on like a presentation and somebody else had put in these

ideas in there that were quite wacky because I was finishing up the presentation I then sent it to my boss and when we went through he was like all this? Like, what are all these ideas thinking that they were mine? And I was like, well, actually, they're actually this guy's. And he completely switched his demeanour. And he was like, oh, okay. And started to kind of give them a bit more airtime and actually consider them. But when he thought they were my ideas, he just dismissed them out of hand. It was that obvious.

And again, that happened within the first month or two. And I remember thinking, this is not a good situation. And I decided that I was going to try and stick it out for a year because I had this fear around having a gap in my CV or having been at a job longer less than a year you know you kind of hear all this wisdom about you have to do at least a year and then the thing that actually triggered me into quitting was that my landlord at the time, I wasn't living with my parents, my landlord at the time kind of screwed me over and I decided to move back with my parents temporarily for like a few weeks or a few months until I found somewhere new. And within a week of being at home, it just really hit home to me how much I hated my job. And I just remember

walking downstairs one morning and just saying to my mum,'m quitting my job today and then I went in that afternoon and just handed in my notice and it was absolutely terrifying like I had to go out just beforehand and call one of my best friends and say to her tell me to do this tell me to do this and I was really like if it all goes wrong it's on you I was sort of joking but I really really really needed her to really sort of hold my hand into going back into the office and having a meeting with my boss and quitting. And after I quit, I had such a terrible time of it. I felt like I'd failed because I didn't have a job to go to. Thankfully, I was able to live with my parents. So finances weren't a huge concern, although I still very worried about money and took on all these

kind of little side jobs. And I was tutoring for for a bit which just does not suit my personality to put it that way and you know so I was still kind of doing all these bits to earn money but I was very worried about money I felt like my career was over which sounds ridiculous because I was 25 years old but that just wasn't that kind of ending of a job just wasn't something that was in my frame of mind like the idea of quitting a job without a job to go to and I was considering freelancing and I was like what even is freelancing and I kind of had this weird negative stigma around it and you know I also had at that stage realized I didn't want to work in advertising anymore and I felt like I'd wasted the past five years I'd always wanted to be a writer always wanted to get into journalism but I'd deliberately

not pursued that towards the end of uni and when I graduated because frankly I didn't want to do a bunch of unpaid internships because I just didn't feel like I could afford to and I say this as someone whose parents live in London but it still felt like that wasn't for me like rich people do that it wasn't for me so I felt like I'd waste all this time and I became very very depressed and in hindsight I think I've had depression since I was a teenager but I had kind of kept it at bay in various ways but I remember that last week of working at Vice I don't think I had a shower and I would just get up and schlep to work and just literally zombie through it and then as soon as I was finished I was just at home in bed crying and I didn't see or speak to any of my friends except for one for about a

month. And he's one of my closest friends and I really have him to thank for helping me realise that the way that I was feeling was not normal. At that stage, I was suicidal. But the funny thing is that because me and this friend have a really dark sense of humor we were actually able to address it in quite a nice way like we kind of made jokes about it which probably sounds awful to people listening to it but that was very much the dynamic of our friendship so he was the only person that I spoke to or saw for about a month and he did eventually kind of say look I think you need to get some help, which isn't something that I'd realised. I think I'd clocked that I had depression because I was

reading all this stuff and was like sobbing as I read it. And I was like, that's me. And so he convinced me to go and see my GP, who was terrible. Unfortunately, I think, and you know, I absolutely love the NHS, like, so much. But I think a lot of the old, especially GPs, a lot of the old generation who work within it don't quite understand mental health problems. So I had this quite bruising encounter with a GP who, you know, was really reluctant to prescribe me talking therapy, which is what I went in there for. I kind of had a stigma around antidepressants, but he was really reluctant to do that, but he was quite happy to prescribe me antidepressants. And I went home and I called Nick and I was like,

oh God, it was so hard and all this stuff. And he really just kind of coaxed me. He was like, don't let this, you know, dickhead get in the way of you getting better. Convinced me to take the antidepressants, which worked wonders for me. And I think that's a very personal thing. I'm still on antidepressants which worked wonders for me and I think that's a very personal thing I'm still on antidepressants I've been on them for the past two and a half years on and off

with a sort of small break where I tried to come off and realize that I wasn't ready and they've really been a saving grace for me and I think it's really important for people to realize that because I went in with this perception of what antidepressants are like which is that I think you kind of hear these rumors of sort of lithium, the kind of really heavy duty stuff they used to use in the 80s. But I have SSRIs, which essentially just get your brain to create the happy chemical that it's not doing on its own. And I noticed a marked difference within a couple of weeks or a month of going on them. And my friend really just kind of helped me, held my hand. I got CBT therapy on the NHS eventually

which I think was useful it's just kind of been a process and a journey since like I have good times good months I have bad months winter is really really hard for me so I'm not looking forward to that just because of the weather and the lack of sunshine I've definitely had you know serious dips since and had to up my medication at one point but I think I found a really good level but it's something I've never spoken about publicly because even though I don't judge anyone who has depression or is an antidepressant I am still worried about being judged in that way myself and about associating myself with it like it's not something that I think I would ever write about like I think I feel comfortable talking to you about it because you're a friend of mine but I think there is a

part of me that feels that it might be useful for other people to hear that because I'm also quite aware that a lot of people think that I maybe have a slightly sort of gilded life because you know I'm doing well career-wise and not that I'm some sort of like Oprah superstar but you know things are going well for me but I think it's really important to realise that there's often a lot more going on behind the scenes and people shouldn't feel embarrassed or ashamed about seeking help but it's also really hard like I've been looking for a decent therapist for the past year or so and still haven't found one like I go for these meetings I just don't feel like the chemistry is there and that in itself is exhausting I remember when I used to have CBT I would just go for an hour-long session I would just sleep the rest of the afternoon like my thing I know

that I'm feeling not great is when I start sleeping a lot and when I'm getting into bed in the middle of the day and I know that that's not great I also love naps so it's quite hard to distinguish between the two but I can tell when I'm just kind of sleeping out of depression but right now I'm in a very well fairly good place and I've also learned so much about myself I think it's a weird blessing I'd almost say that I've learned so much about myself I've learned what sorts of people I want to have in my life and not I've seen who's been really supportive and really understanding and checks in with me and who hasn't been as much not that I penalize people for that but it just kind of does clarify certain friendships and certain dynamics I've learned to say no so easily because I can tell when going to an event or socializing just isn't something that I feel up to doing and I think

those are all things I didn't have before I got properly diagnosed or self-diagnosed I think it's just made me weirdly more self-assured because I'm like well I have this thing that I'm dealing with and I know I'm probably going to be dealing with it on and off for the rest of my life but it's a blessing it's kind of made me know myself a bit better and that's kind of the good side of it sometimes I have wobbles I'm like god I can't believe I'm gonna have to be dealing with these ups and downs for the rest of my life and is it gonna affect my romantic relationships do I want to have kids and possibly deal with how destabilizing the lack of routine and just that bombshell going off in your life might potentially be because I like routine I like being in control of stuff and I

don't think kids allow you to do that but for now I'm kind of just dealing with it. Thank you so much talking about it I'm really really moved because I'm really moved that you felt able to talk about it and what I want to say is that I think it was the second or third time I met you you told me very matter-of-factly I live with depression and it was such a beautiful thing because I just the matter of factness made it completely okay and it is okay and it just made me think of you with even more respect and awe because as you've just said I think it's such an integral part of getting to know yourself getting to know yourself is about getting to know the times that are ugly as well as the times that are good.

And I think you speaking about it will have a profound impact. And I am very close to several people who have been on antidepressants and every single time it has been a good decision for them. And I do think, if anything, the stigma should be around people not accepting help rather than the ones like you who quite rightly acknowledge that there's something that they need a chemical help with. And thank goodness for you

and thank goodness for your friend, Nick. Yeah, I know. He's been an absolute rock to me these past few years. How are your parents about it? Because you were living with them at the time. They've been really, really great, which I think has come, now I'm used to it, but it's come as a surprise to me because they're West African, very traditional culture. I don't really think depression is something that is within our culture, within our kind of mindset as much although it definitely is West African and black people do have depression that's like a whole nother issue that we don't talk about it that much but I think to them it was really really foreign I think initially they

weren't super keen on me going on antidepressants being perfectly honest but then they saw the effect it had on me and they also saw what I was like before I think my mum particularly was very very worried about me because I just couldn't get out of bed and I was like before I think my mum particularly was very very worried about me because I just couldn't get out of bed and I was crying all the time and like I said having these really dark thoughts and you know talking about my life being over and just not wanting to do anything I think one of the things that prompted me to go on antidepressants because after I left YS I was like right 2016 I'm going to take this year off and just try and make of it what I can and I realized if I didn't get

help I would just waste that time and so I needed to put myself in a better mindset to be able to just even try and do the things I wanted to do. I think they've seen how much better I've been since I've been on them and since I've kind of started addressing it and if I've ever been a bit flaky about taking my medication which I have on occasion but not anymore my mum just kind of reminds me she says it's just like being diabetic you don't see diabetics like deciding to try and come off their insulin and you know whenever I go away on holiday she always says have you taken your medication with you you've gotten to if you remember to pack it yeah they are really really great and I think I couldn't have navigated the past two or three years of life and work without them. You talk there about them being West African. And we're talking at a time when

Serena Williams has spoken out about sexism at the US Open. And there was a horrific cartoon in an Australian newspaper that I know that you've tweeted about depicting Serena Williams in a certain way. And I just wonder how you as a woman of colour deal with those kind of aggressions on a daily basis and whether you think that feeds into feeling really low sometimes. low sometimes. I think that it's only really maybe the recent four or five years where I've really been able to kind of unpick the various microaggressions that I have to deal with on a daily basis. I think the conversation around race and also around gender and sexuality and identity but particularly around race has really come on in leaps and bounds in the past few years, and I have the language to now talk about it. And I think that it is exhausting. And I remember I put up a photo on Instagram of this book

called Slay in Your Lane, which is also published by Forth to Say. It's sort of, you know, our label mates, I guess you might call them that, which is about race. And I kind of recounted a few incidents I've had to deal with over the past couple of years. And everybody who commented was super supportive. But for one woman who kind of recounted a few incidents I've had to deal with over the past couple of years and everybody who commented was super supportive but for one woman who kind of piped in a white woman who kind of piped up

and said essentially that maybe if I tried being a bit nicer then I wouldn't have to deal with this shit and I just started to fuck off and blocked her because I wasn't Was it someone you knew? No, it was just someone who followed me, not someone I knew God no, I think everyone who knows me knows better than to do that

I spent the rest of the weekend just fretting about how I'd handled that and it was just someone who followed me not someone I knew god no I think everyone who knows me knows better than to do that I spent the rest of the weekend just fretting about how I'd handled that and it was so exhausting and it's part of the reason you know I look at someone like Rani Edo-Lodge who's written about race and I just think I could never do that because it's so enraging I got involved in a sort of weird twitter spat the other week with this journalist who essentially insinuated that because I had been to Oxford and because I'd been privately educated, I am somehow less black or less qualified to talk about being black than her. And she is not actually black, which just blew my mind, the kind of arrogance of it. I spent a good day or two fuming about that and the energy of it and I don't think I did much

work on one of the days because I was just kind of I was responding to her tweets but I was so livid and also kind of sense checking with a couple of my friends and you know with people that I know who you know understand the issue whether there was anything in what she said or whether I was kind of overreacting and obviously they completely understood where I was coming from. But I was like, why am I having to give up my time to deal with this? And that happens all the time. And it's exhausting just kind of moving through the world. And I'm so conscious to be overly polite if I encounter an older white person,

lest they then leave with a bad impression of black people generally. I'm constantly kind of having to code switch and reduce certain aspects of myself and that is exhausting and I think that does contribute to mental health problems for black women on top of the fact that I think within our communities it's often not the done thing to talk about it as much and also when it comes to health care because we're you know little things like black women are perceived as having like a higher pain threshold and that also kind of relates to what sort of treatment you then get so it means that overall mental health isn't really something that black women not excel at but it's a real problem for us I think it's a bigger problem for us because we have the added burden you know the

more oppressions you have it's intersectional but the more oppressions you have, it's intersectional, but the more oppressions you have, if you're black and gay and disabled, then the harder your life is. So I do know that's another thing that I kind of wear on my shoulders. But I'm very proudly black and I get a lot of joy. It sounds weird, but I get a lot of joy out of being black and it's such a fundamental part of my identity. So I kind of try and tend to focus on the positives as opposed to any of the stuff that I deal with but yeah it is bloody tiring sometimes it sort of leads us on to the third failure that you identified um to me in this email to me which is about your you say you're petty on social media I've never thought that by the way I love following you on Twitter

I'm so petty Elizabeth I cannot help myself um when I first started using Twitter and I talk specifically about Twitter because I think Instagram is a very and Facebook are both very different mediums when I first started using Twitter I would see all these people who kind of subtweet other people which for anyone who doesn't know what that means essentially means when you tweet something kind of critical about someone but you don't name them but it's very clear who you're talking about so I could say something about that orange president and you'd all know I was talking about Trump something like that maybe a bit more subtle and I just thought it was the least classy thing someone could do and I would look at people doing that

and I just thought god you're so pathetic if you've got a problem with someone just say it to their face or just you know say it with your chest. And then I find myself now, a couple of years on, doing that. Not relentlessly, but I do do it occasionally. And I try not to engage in kind of arguments or beef on Twitter, but I do find myself just tweeting about things that have happened to me in my life, not necessarily on Twitter,

things that have happened to me that annoy me. I take to Twitter to kind of vent my frustrations. And I'm not necessarily sure that's the way I want to use social media because I don't really admire it in other people I think there's a way to do it and it can be funny but I also just kind of think why don't I just save that for my friends or for my whatsapp groups and you see people taking that to real extremes and you know sharing email correspondence and which is something that I've done in the past and have decided absolutely not to. I would never kind of name someone, but I have kind of screenshotted things when I know when people drop into my inbox

and spell my name wrong. But I just think it's just, I don't think that's how real life works. I think you get really wrapped up in this kind of social media bubble and kind of media bubble of how you should interact with other people. I find people saying things to me online that they would never dare say to me in person the thing

that I referenced about getting into a online fight with a journalist who was policing my blackness like she would never dare say that to me in person because it's just the most preposterous thing but when you're online and you know people are doing things for the retweets and and also offline as well I think I'm quite petty in the sense if someone wrongs me I won't be satisfied till I've gotten revenge which is such a terrible personality trait I'm not I wouldn't go so far as to seek revenge I guess but I I bear a grudge like yeah it's like I will never forget I will forgive I will never forget oh I won't forgive or forget and I probably will I'm a leo so I think that kind of makes sense yes um I won't forgive I won't forget and if it's easy

for me to exact revenge and not illegal I'll probably do it so yeah that's what everyone should probably watch out for I sound like such a psycho but I kind of want to be a bit more zen about things like that and not kind of rise to the bait and the more of a profile that I get the more people do try and bait me which I think is also something that's quite new to me but then you know I look at someone like Reni Edelord who handles herself with such class and such dignity and like well actually because she's had so much attention so much press and so much interest she's obviously learned to just ignore most people I think she does it really really well I don't even think she really uses social media that much

anymore which I think is something I could probably take a leaf out of but just trying to be a bit classier I think on social media so because I think you're so classy on social media um and one of the things that I love about your twitter feed is that you have strong but very elegantly expressed opinions thank you and these things can come back to bite you in the arse and I don't want that to happen with me and I can express those views to my friends and to you and to just privately in the whatsapp chat you know if my whatsapp threads got leaked I'd probably probably be a pariah. But you know, I could probably end up in jail. But I think there's a time and a place for everything like that. And I really like expressing my opinions on Twitter.

And I have a lot of strongly held opinions. And I'm not going to stop doing that. But I think just kind of ignoring people who are a bit annoying or a bit trolly or just kind of baiting you and just thinking, I'm just not going to dignify that with a response is how I'm trying to be. Do you ever not have opinions on something? Probably if you ask my parents they would definitely say no. I have opinions on most things but I don't always share my opinions because I don't necessarily always think that

often I find that somebody else has articulated much better than I have and I don't necessarily always think that often I find that somebody else has articulated much better than I have and I don't really believe in just kind of making noise just for the sake of it I think if someone else has kind of said it better than I'll probably just share that and kind of retweet or endorse that I have opinions on most things that happen culturally but the moment I'm also sort of supposed to work on my second book so I'm also trying to well I can't say much about it but I'm trying to yes it's not fiction but I'm trying sort of supposed to work on my second book. So I'm also trying to, well, I can't say much about it, but I'm trying to. Yes, it's nonfiction.

But I'm trying to kind of save my best thoughts for that because it is about a lot of the stuff that I have opinions on culturally. Yeah, I always have opinions, but I think it's just deciding when you're the best person to say them. And if you're just echoing what everyone else has said, are you really adding anything to the conversation?

I think the beauty of social media is that everyone has a platform and everyone can make their voice heard. But it's funny you talked about being a keen debater at school. I don't particularly love debating. Like I don't mind having my ideas challenged at all. And actually I think that's really good, but I'm not really prepared to sort of spend my time and energy trying to

change someone's mind I'm like do you know what you think what you think I don't agree with it but you just go on your merry way and I don't think it's really a good use of my energy so but I have a lot of opinions yes well Atega my primarily strong opinion right now is that I love you I love your crop jeans I love your style I love your crop jeans. I love your style. I love your openness, your honesty, your eloquence. Thank you so much for being on How to Fail with Elizabeth Day. It's been a total honour. Thank you for having me. It's been so lovely.