Discover more from My Goodness! From Jo Elvin
The biggest move I never made
What happens when you realise you don't want the thing you're supposed to want?
First things first: I’m nervous about telling you this story.
I was presenting on Lorraine last week and was asked to weigh in on everyone’s favourite new obsession, One Day. Guest host Ranvir Singh wanted to know about a significant ‘sliding doors’ moment in my life. I talked about the night I got stood up by a date, and although I was furious and wounded by that, it then became the night I met Ross, who’s been my husband since January 2000.
It was a sweet, cute story to fill two minutes of telly. But it got me thinking, for the first time in years, about one of the biggest ‘what if?’ moments in my life. And I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it so I thought I would drag you all into a live therapy session. That’s OK, right? Great, thanks.
It’s a story I rarely tell because I find it quite embarrassing to think about what went down. But it all happened in 2006, so hopefully raking over a nearly 20-year-old grave will not disturb it too much.
I was five or six years into the job that most people still want to talk to me about - Glamour magazine, of course. Social media was in its infancy, the new magazine Grazia was getting some good buzz, but even though the competition was mounting, we were still riding high and pretty cocky with it. I still had this hair and did not yet need glasses 24/7.
I was also on a high for a more personal reason. I’d just become a mum. I had a job it was easy to love, Ross and I had moved into our ‘forever house’ and now we had our gorgeous baby daughter in tow. Life was great.
I was still on maternity leave, and visiting my family in Sydney, when I got a call from the US magazine company, Hearst. They wanted to know if I’d be interested in moving to New York to edit US Marie Claire.
I won’t lie - this phone call came at a time when I was grateful for the flattering reassurance. Being a human woman, I’d been having the normal, mini anxieties about whether or not I’d be viewed differently once I became a working mum. Would anyone assume I wasn’t really ‘on it’ as much post-maternity leave, or maybe just now getting a bit old to be editing a young women’s magazine? So to get that call, at that life stage, was reassuring.
I’d moved countries before, too. But it took 21-year-old me about ten minutes to pack up my life and haul it from Sydney to London. At 35, the baggage was more significant: A husband, a daughter, and a whole London life to re-home. Could I really ask Ross to move his entire life and career to accommodate mine? Did we really want our kid to have an American accent?
I’d been back from maternity leave for about five days when I had to make up a story and sneak off to New York for a meeting. I said something vague about needing to see the in-laws in Nottingham. It occurred to me that it would be quite funny if the plane crashed and my current employers would have to figure out the hard way that I hadn’t gone to Nottingham. I’m quite dark like that sometimes.
The New York meeting went well. I brought a ton of ideas with me but they didn’t seem that interested to hear them. It was more of what gets referred to these days as a ‘vibe check’. And I’d say the vibe was congenial - double thumbs.
Twenty four hours after arriving in New York, I was on my way back to the airport. I squeezed a quick drink en route with my friend Robert, who was working there for Wallpaper mag. He said I should take the job. I think he was mostly excited about having a friend in town. If I’m honest, my reasons for wanting the job were confusingly muddled with egotism.
It’s true, Marie Claire was a great magazine, a prestige title to get to run.
Since Glamour had launched successfully, many people had said to me, ‘You’ll get the call from New York one day.’ I never paid it much notice. It wasn’t something I was actively pursuing or hoping for. But it was seen as the sign that you’d ‘arrived’. American magazines were bigger in every sense: Bigger audiences, bigger circulations, bigger budgets, bigger visibility. Clothes allowances, drivers on call. Hearst were also being very generous about things like relocation costs and helping Ross get a work visa.
Many editors had trodden that route: Anna Wintour, of course, most famously, but so many more. There was Mandi Norwood who’d presided over the best years of UK Cosmo and was poached to edit Mademoiselle. The late Liz Tilberis, another British Vogue alumni, whose US Harpers Bazaar was the world’s most beautiful magazine. The great Glenda Bailey who launched UK Marie Claire and made it the country’s most influential womens’ magazine for more than a decade, before crossing the pond to edit the American version, and then Harpers Bazaar. I did not see myself in this league at all. So in hindsight, it’s fair to say that the flattery was a good 20% of my desire to do the job.
Ross, who has his own successful journalism career at a national newspaper, seemed up for the move. But I couldn’t shake the worry that his heart wasn’t fully in it, and he just didn’t want to be the man standing in the way of a woman’s opportunity. No matter how many honest conversations we had about the whole thing, I worried that he felt forced. His mother was heartbroken when we told her and I felt dreadful about that too.
But we decided to go for it. Which meant things were about to get uncomfortable for me. The rivalry between Hearst and Conde Nast was fierce. It still is, I’m sure. I had to tell my boss, Nicholas.
Considering that I had had to track him down to his house one Wednesday afternoon, and considering that I’d needed to interrupt the one damn hour he’d found for himself to have a rest in an 18-hour work schedule, he took the news with his usual grace. ‘I knew it must be bad news, but I was hoping you were going to say, I don’t know, one of your parents was ill and you needed to go to Australia for a few weeks.’ His sense of humour is also dark, it’s why we got on.
First thing the next morning, he texted me: ‘You know, it’s not too late to change your mind. We’ve been thinking about an offer we’d like you to consider.’
And suddenly I did not want to leave Glamour, or London, at all.
I can’t explain it other than to say, it hit me immediately that I had accepted the American job because it was something that I felt I was supposed to want. I started to think about all the other niggles that had been gnawing at my gut that I’d tried to push aside. Like the fact that Americans get two weeks’ holiday a year and somehow I would have to try and see family, split all over the world within that time frame.
It was also becoming clear to me that there was an expectation to be very ‘New York’ in my approach to a work/life balance - ie there would not be one. There was a famous industry story about a US editor who had a card from her daughter hung in her office that said, ‘Even though I might not see you, I love you.’ Maybe if my daughter hadn’t been quite so new, that wouldn’t have unsettled me as much as it did. And then, the easy, jolly chats with my new boss had also started to take a on a different tone. She sounded a bit shocked and disapproving when she phoned me one evening and I’d mentioned I was at home (rather than at some work event or another).
I was embarrassed to admit it - but I was suddenly overwhelmed with the feeling of not wanting to uproot our lives. Not at this point. Maybe this was the hormonal new mother in me, I don’t know, but I didn’t care either. Feeling wanted and appreciated by the company that had supported me so much, and having them put aside any annoyance they might have felt with me at that time, meant the world to me.
But this meant I had to tell Hearst I had changed my mind and woah, that was ugly. You see, at their behest, I had already signed my contract with them. A dumb move, as the Chairman of Conde Nast, Jonathan Newhouse, would politely point out to me in the coming days. He was right, of course, but they really had piled on the pressure about that. I’d found myself torn between doing right by the people who’d given me the job that had really cemented my career, and the people who would soon be my new paymasters. It felt like whatever I did, powerful executives were going to be angry with me. I buckled and signed.
So when I emailed Hearst to say, um, I’m no longer coming, well….. I have never ever felt more ill, or more scared, or more ashamed, in a work situation. Signing a contract is supposed to be the end of it. The industry mag, WWD somehow got hold of the story. I heard a rumour that there was a lot of audible kicking of furniture in a Hearst office. Whether that’s true or not, I think we can safely say they were not best pleased. Although I did laugh because the same WWD article quoted Hearst as denying I was ever in the running, saying they were looking to hire someone who had edited ‘a more adult-sized magazine.’ I deserved that. But ultimately, there’s not really any way of them being able to force me to get on a plane so after a few days of very shouty, all upper case emails, suddenly it was all over.
I stayed at Glamour another 11 years.
Do I regret not going? No. Of course I do wonder, from time to time, what it would have been like. Hopefully I’d have managed to do a good job. In terms of ‘sliding doors’ I’ll never know what friends I never made, what fascinating people I never met, what big triumphs and colossal mistakes I didn’t experience. If Ross and I ever think about it now, our overwhelming memory is the stress we felt in trying to find an apartment we could afford that was bigger than a cupboard. Even on a very nice New York salary, the rental prices in Manhattan were nuts. Any fantasies I might have been entertaining of living that Miranda Priestley life would have had a swift reality check. And from the stories I’ve heard I’m glad I’ve never had to put myself through competing with all those sharp-elbowed New York moms to get Evie into a good American school. At some point, I’d have needed an intervention for the J Crew addiction I’d have definitely developed.
But wondering about it is not the same as regret. Sometimes I think we probably should have done it and had that experience. And the editor who then did take the job, British-born Joanna Coles, has had a prolific career Stateside, including a turn at Snapchat when it was the hot new thing. But ‘regret’ would mean I wish I’d done it and I don’t feel like that at all. I just had a big decision laid before me, once upon a time, and I made it.
Sometimes, ambitious women realise that other things need to take priority. And sometimes, the thing you’re supposed to want isn’t what you really want.
I love my job, it’s an incredibly important part of my life. And I always thought I was ambitious, but I reached a point where I had a good life that I enjoyed just as much as my work. When the offer that I’d always wanted finally came, I turned it down.
I talked to the person who’d been in the job for years, he was great at his job, but just so unhappy and stressed, and I realised that I just wouldn’t be as happy there. And there’s been times when I’ve thought ‘What if? Was that a mistake?’ but I have a short commute, decent work hours, no drama/ no unhealthy levels of stress, a nice team of people I enjoy working with, ok money, and creative freedom. And then I smile and go about my day.
Our society prioritises career success over happiness, but it’s great seeing people like you Jo, people who’ve got to positions that so many aspire to, who have chosen happiness over prestige. Loved this, thanks for sharing xxx
I made the move to New York, also attracted by a bigger role above what I was really ready for. I hated it!
I was miserable all throughout the two years. Could never settle there. And it was my second expatriation (a French, I worked in London for 3 years before moving to the States) so it was not a question of not being able to be an expat. I loved England and was able to adjust after the usual six months of adapting to a new country.
In New York the values system was just too different from mine.
Not to say that it would have been the same for you but I thought it was interesting to share what happened to someone who got on the tube (re sliding doors) 😉