“Could it get any worse?” Turns out, that wasn’t a rhetorical question for 2025.

Because every time someone in the industry asked it out loud, the universe said, YEP, just give it a second. Plot twist after plot twist. Layoffs dressed up as ‘restructuring.’ Mergers and acquisitions playing out like corporate Hunger Games.

Which brings me to my accusation. Whoever told me, “Do what you love, and the money will follow” - why would you do me dirty like that?

You promised passion would compensate for instability. That fulfilment would make up for the lack of financial planning. So I listened. I followed my passion, in my own stubborn, romantic, borderline psychopathic way. And guess what? The big bucks didn’t follow. Sometimes they teased. Carrots were dangled. Appraisals were postponed. Eventually, permanently.

There was a point where I went on Reddit and watched 24-year-olds earn more in bonuses than I made in six months. Thank you, passion. I believe your knife is now lodged somewhere between my shoulder blades. There’s space for a few more. Still, I loved what I did. Who gets to imagine for a living? To make up worlds and words and problems and solutions? I told myself I was lucky. At least I didn’t work in a bank. (And other lies I told myself. Book out soon.)

Money was less - so what? I was a delusional artist (LOL). At least I had, imagine the audacity, ‘creative satisfaction’.

I repeated this spiel like a mantra until the day I wrote 50 headline options for a brand and the feedback was, “Did you ChatGPT this?”

That wasn’t downhill, baby. That was off a cliff. Free falling. The world was prompt in writing us off as prompts. “Just get ChatGPT to do it.”
“Try Gemini.”

“Why hire a human voice when you can get an AI voiceover?”

I’ll admit it. Before this, I was riding a very tall, very arrogant horse - convinced the creative industry ran on human everything. Human insight. Human stories. Human emotion. Human touch. Human, human, human.

Until I realised the horse I was sitting on was AI-generated.

Et tu, horse?

And then came the merger. The Red Wedding of advertising. I love using the word literally figuratively, so I will: there was blood and guts and fingers and heads literally everywhere. For an industry so woke about recycling and sustainability, we were tossing people out like disposable packaging. So much for humanity. So much for creativity. So much for ‘we’re all a family.’

Yes. A family from a horror movie - the kind where the ghost always wins.

Ambition quietly shapeshifted. It wasn’t about making money anymore. It was about staying employed. I once wanted to be on those ‘Something Under Something’ lists. Now I desperately wanted not to be on any list at all. Lists came every two weeks. Nobody knew who was writing them. Nobody knew who was deciding them. Think, an anti-Santa Claus making a naughty list of completely innocent people to be told,’ ‘byeee.’

We made bets about who would go next. Pathetically, I felt relieved that I wasn’t paid enough to matter on a spreadsheet. All those Instagram therapists had told me so. The long hours. The weekend emails. The emotional loyalty. I had tied my output to my identity and called it ambition. And nobody cared. Everyone just kept saying, ride it out.

Nobody knew what it even was.

2025 became the year of emotional exhaustion. Of existential dread. I questioned my purpose. I trauma dumped on ChatGPT. I tried to gaslight it. Manipulate it. Yell at it. I asked desperate questions like, What is the future of advertising?

It gave me bleak answers. There was no Plan B. What do you do when you go from being a colourful writer to a ‘resource’ overnight - in an industry you loved like a mother?

So I did the unthinkable. I Gen-Z’d it. Not because it’s trendy, but because I was tired of living with uncertainty. Maybe success means something different now. Something slower. Something quieter. Something more honest. Maybe it’s choosing consistency over chaos. Fewer projects, done better. Evenings without anxiety. Careers built to last, not just impress. 2025 broke my heart. But it also handed me a reset. It taught me that creativity cannot survive on love alone. That survival matters. That there is more to life than what’s next on the task list.

Once upon a time, I believed work is all it takes. Now I know things like, right place, right time, visibility, favourability, luck. Sheer luck.

Now I know better. And I don’t owe loyalty to an industry that replaces people faster than it replaces software. Neither should you.

2025 didn’t take my ambition. It made it sharper. I still want success. I just want it to come with a life attached. A life I can write about.

The author is head – creative and brand communication, Kult. This article first appeared in the January issue of Manifest, which can be purchased here.