The Squiggly Career Path.

Careers are rarely tidy things. They loop, stall, veer sideways, then take off when you least expect it. Designers sometimes panic when this happens. They think the path should be straight. It never is. The mess is part of the craft.

Mags Straatman, Teacher at Shillington, sees it every term:

The old story says you climb the ladder, junior to midweight to senior to creative director. One direction. No wobble. Stay in your lane. Except that world has slipped away. Modern careers do not run in straight lines. They jump sectors. They crash into walls. They build range in places you would never plan.

Mags puts it without dressing it up.

Shillington has seen people arrive from law, retail, hospitality, childcare, medicine. They bring discipline, empathy, pattern recognition, leadership, resilience. Things they thought were irrelevant become the reason their work hits harder. Those so called detours often become the advantage no one else has.

So why keep pretending careers should look straight. A straight line is predictable. It is safe. Safe work does not change anything. The industry needs people with odd routes and messy starts. People who bring stories and scars. People who see the world from angles that cannot be taught.

There is no ladder now, no perfect sequence of titles and no right way through the chaos.

The squiggles are not a distraction from your career. The squiggles are your career.