“Most people aren’t able to do this job for more than two years.” It was a strange comment for an introductory training session, but it wasn’t an average first day of a new job. I was 27, living in Herne Hill and learning how to be an online sex and relationships advisor for young people on a salary of around £24,000 a year. “There’s no shame in quitting,” my trainer reassured me. “This type of work really takes its toll on a person.”
But, despite her warnings, I was excited for this next step in my career. I’d worked as a journalist and editor at a youth charity website for three years and they’d asked me to step into this new role. It was my first time working on the ‘front line’ of the charity and I had a no-doubt idealised concept of what it would involve and how fulfilling it would be. Two years later exactly, I was handing in my notice - a shell of the person I was before.
