#140: Wait, this feels familiar.
How this creative vagabond accidentally found her work family on a farm in Wales.
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As I stood in the 200-year-old vaulted glass train station, eyes scanning the departure board, a voice cut through the crowd: "Sue?"
Who the hell knows me at London Paddington?
I looked around until I spotted a familiar face… Lisa! I recognized her blonde hair and unguarded smile from the bios I’d just been studying. She was one of this year's speakers at Do Wales, the ideas festival I was heading to for the third time — first as a participant, then speaker, now host.
"Want to sit together?" she asked.
We spent the next four hours rolling through English then Welsh countryside, sharing terrible train coffee and easy conversation. By the time we reached the venue — a farm on a tiny road that overlooks the sea — we’d bonded.
Just like that, the Do community was working its magic again.
Here's what I don't miss about corporate America: The politics. The PowerPoints. The urgent weekend emails. The meetings about meetings.
But here's what I miss desperately: My work family. That feeling of working toward something bigger than yourself with people who genuinely have your back.
When I left corporate American last January, I figured that was simply the price of my new creative life. Freedom meant going solo. That’s just how it works, right? So I grudgingly made peace with the trade-off.
But since then, I've been looking for chances to be part of something again, even if just for a little bit.
So after speaking last year at the Do Lectures, I’d volunteered to founders David and Clare Hieatt that I’d be happy to help in any way going forward. A few months later, David sent an email: “I think you’d make a great compere.”
I had to look that word up in the dictionary. But once I did, I said yes.
So this year at the Do, I MC’d. I introduced speakers, asked questions, and connected dots for the audience, while also exposing them to silly American phrases like, “peace-out girl scout”. (You can take the girl out of Virginia, but you can’t take Virginia out of the girl.)
At first, I was nervous, feeling out of my wheelhouse. I’ve never been an MC or a compere or whatever the hell we want to call it. But after facilitating the first two speakers, I had a 'hold on, this feels familiar' moment. This was eerily similar to what I used to do as a senior exec: take in information from different teams, then ask questions to expand understanding on all sides.
With that realization, I settled into my role. Which really means that I stopped thinking about how well I was doing, and made it about the speakers instead.
When I was giving a talk in 2024, much of my energy had been directed inward — staying focused, getting my message right, not screwing up my one shot. MCing was the complete opposite. I poured my energy outward. I became part of a choreographed dance, designed from sunrise to long after sun down, with one focus: make this long weekend memorable, inspiring, and generative for everyone involved.
And I got to do it as part of a team! Christian mic-ing me up each morning with a grin. Lia orchestrating everything with calm precision. Alex capturing moments on his camera between our daily hugs.
After a long day of intros and Q&A, Paul — whose job on paper is managing slides and timing, but who's really the Chief Encourager for the speakers, putting them at ease with his chill vibe and sparkly smile — pulled me aside. "You're doing brilliantly, Sue. Really hitting the mark."
The full realization didn't hit until days later, decompressing back in London in a Piccadilly Circus bookstore before my flight home. My brother-in-law Richie texted to check in about the weekend. As I started typing my response, the words just tumbled out:
Wow, I feel part of a work family again.
There it was. The thing I thought I'd lost forever when I walked away from corporate America had found me on a 300-year-old farm on a bluff, overlooking the Northeast Atlantic.
I keep writing about how life fills empty spaces in ways we never expect (like here and here)… but apparently I’m still learning to trust life’s capacity to fill every void, no matter how niche.
I truly, naively believed a work family couldn't fit into my new creative vagabond life. It was too different, too individual, too... not corporate.
But belonging and shared purpose? Those aren't corporate perks. They're human needs. They're a part of our evolutionary impulse to band together, building something that helps us live better than we ever could alone. Which means they can show up anywhere, within any group of people crazy enough to try.
Back in the fold,
P.S. Do Wales is taking a fallow year in 2026, but if life-changing experiences interest you, register for 2027. Fair warning: you might also end up taking a plane, train, and then taxi to Cardigan Bay… over and over.
Love this Julia! What a great point - we should be open to our MANY tribes, not just trying to do a 1:1 swap. Thanks.
Great piece, Sue. One thing that has surprised me in my “new season” of life is the many different tribes I find myself part of…broader now then during my entrepreneurial season. Life is indeed filling that void!