This is the first episode of Formerly Known As, and I am the guest.

It covers the period that follows a big decision, before the next chapter has taken shape — the stretch where you can be certain you were right and still mourn who you used to be, often on the same day.

I spent years building a career I loved, and then I left it to travel for a year with nothing lined up on the other side.

What I didn't expect was how much of my sense of myself went with the title.

I talk about:

• Why the goodbye was far easier than living without the structure around it. No Monday morning. No forecast. No number to tell me whether the week had gone well.
• What happened the last time I changed direction, from law into sales, a move I never intended, and why it barely registered at the time.
• How those two identities compounded rather than replaced each other, and what that means for anybody going through the same right now.
• Where ambition goes when the old measures of progress disappear. Mine stayed. It sat there like a sleeping dragon, waiting for me to point it somewhere.

I'm recording this from the middle of it, without a tidy conclusion. If you're somewhere in between as well, this one is for you.

And remember: it only needs to make sense to you.