Maybe you’ve experienced this too: a moment in your career when the story stops making sense, when you feel like you’ve lost the plot.

The last few years have been a bit like that – the story I began with is no longer the one I find myself in.

My career (out of necessity/opportunity/circumstance/curiosity) has taken quite a different turn: from the world of children’s literature and education to industrial logistics and batteries. From working mostly with women to working mostly with men. From feeling confident unpacking poetry and literature in a lecture room to navigating the unfamiliar terrain of cold chains and materials handling — and, quite honestly, not feeling very confident about it at all.  I can discuss the evolution of fairy tales over time or what stories like Matilda and Charlotte’s Web still teach us about fairness, friendship, and quiet rebellion. But telling the difference between a lithium-ion and a lead-acid forklift just by sight? Let’s just say the sales team still steps in to rescue my image choices.

It’s learning both the language and the logic of a new industry and trying to find my place within it. It’s figuring out what to keep and what to let go of.  It’s accepting that far from being logical and linear, careers bend and give around life’s turning points: having children, a terminally ill parent, moving countries. 

There are plot twists. Change is inevitable. 

In this general messiness of life, it’s easy for the story to get lost. On the one hand I write adventure and mystery stories for children. On the other I work on marketing lithium-ion battery systems for industrial logistics. I’ve often found the gap between these two worlds confronting, even a little embarrassing at times – especially when I imagine current colleagues scrolling through my LinkedIn profile and wondering how any of it fits together or makes sense.

I can’t claim to have figured it all out yet, but digging below the surface reveals that the stories haven’t gone. I’m still writing them; it’s just the setting that is different. Whether it’s engineers working to cut emissions from transport refrigeration units, forklift fleets navigating a busy warehouse, or two girls unravelling a spy’s plot in a race against time to save a rare butterfly — the principles remain the same. Pacing, rhythm, balancing action with depth, finding the right voice or point of view, and knowing when to show rather than tell all matter. It’s still about making something complex understandable, relatable, human.

Storytelling, I’ve realised, is slowly stitching these disparate worlds together.