Sex and The City. Lipstick Jungle. Cashmere Mafia. Desperate Housewives. The most popular TV programmes for our demographic – successful, sassy and stylish female characters, jam-packed with hot male counterparts, dream jobs, fabulous parties and nice big houses, as well as adorable children. Add to this, our heroines who are usually neurotically flawed yet uber-glamourous in Phillip Lim and Jimmy Choos, not to mention working perfect manicures, a range of hairstyles (mine does straight or curly for work) and a figure that most of us can only achieve by spending days in the gym.

So, this horizontal jogging (and I ain’t talking about sex here – but add that into to the list above – just how achievable is it and is it really something to aim for? To quote Ms. Carrie Bradshaw herself; “Can We Have It All?”

I used to think so. Our whole lives we’ve been taught that unless we work hard, we don’t get what we want. But does working hard in all areas get us what we want, anyway? Until recently, I was a self-confessed workaholic party-girl with a penchant for pretty things, pretty boys – my friends would argue on the ‘pretty’ here – and an invincible attitude towards everything. I never quite got the manicured nails or perfect hair right, but I had the sequined Balmain jacket with sholder pads before Balmain, the Chloe IT bag and a Marc Jacobs discount card. If I got depressed or sad I got a massage, if I needed to find ‘myself’ I’d book a trip somewhere exciting, or indulge on weekend drinking benders, where I’d lose myself instead. I never found anyone good enough to deserve the role of a boyfriend with my unattainable ways, instead I relished a few unsuitable, yet fun nights of debauchery. Self improvement came in the form of gym-ing after work, pole dancing lessons, writing, cocktail lessons – I jest – painting easels and many other fads that could be added to my success. You don’t need to tell me how lucky I am, or how super-vacuous that just sounded – as a girl that grew up in a working class family and worked my arse off to get to where I got (head designer, buyer and account manager for a lingerie label) I ate it all up with deserved gratitude. Then foolishly, yet somewhat admirably, I stood up for myself and walked away when, it, and I, crashed and burned. Right out.

I cannot fathom how much my career has broken my heart. And I am sure that many of you have felt similarly about something else, or what with the recent economic crisis (sorry to jump on the bandwagon here) are feeling the same amount of loss as what I am, and feel as choked up as I do when you try to verbalise the situation. It doesn’t matter which path of life you’ve chosen, there are always times when something hard pulls you down and challenges you to get back up again. You can relate the situation to splitting up with a boyfriend of course, and I would be lying if I said I haven’t shed a tear in private for a boy, but I didn’t get into student debt, work for free to get up the ladder, move to several foreign locales building a life there, and jump up against those kick-in-the-teeth moments, for a man. It was worth it regardless, and to quote another cliché ‘it’s better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all’. As I had loved, I was later lost, certainly at first, lolling around in pyjamas, crying, sleeping (making up for three years of intensive socializing no doubt) and walking my dog for miles. Lost, even though I had to move home, where I should have been, found.

Time is a great healer. It’s seven weeks later, and although I still have no idea what I am going to do, I know that I can’t return to that life, the same one that was great on the outside but exhausted my insides. Time has taught me that I have amazing family and friends whom I love dearly because they make me smile everyday, but it has also taught me that I had some friends who actually weren’t friends at all, and that these people don’t need to be in my world anymore. Time has taught me that I deserve to be able to relax and just watch TV as opposed to filling every moment of my day with distractions so that I didn’t feel guilty for not doing something. Time has taught me that instead of bottling up the things I have longed to say to certain people, I am attempting to talk to them honestly even if it makes me unpopular. And both times – my career highs and my life lows – have taught me that life truly is a journey and it’s too short to have negative influences around you, or to forget the person that is yourself, your heart, therefore not being true to yourself.

So, having it all – who really wants to when the price to pay for ‘having it all’ is so high? There’s nothing wrong with high expectations, but it seems to me that the only way to have it all is to have a balance, and take small bites rather than big massive chunks of everything to create it. Perhaps, had I realized this at the beginning, things would have turned out differently, but au contraire, I wouldn’t have done some of the amazing things I’ve done if I hadn’t. I’m lucky, I’ve now got the opportunity to work towards a balance in my life, and hopefully when I find my feet in this way, other things that I want, and perhaps my career, will follow. I have what I need for now, certainly. It’s not going to be easy – I’m still coming to terms with my body shape – after rejecting my body as sexy or desirable and pummeling it with drink and long gym sessions to feel confident and accepted in a slender thigh industry, I’m no longer doing a job that I trained so hard and loved so much, either, but the one I am doing enables me to earn money to still buy pretty dresses and pay off some of that debt I racked up. I also have to deal with the fact that although I feel I’ve failed, I haven’t. But, I’m enjoying chilling out properly without a laptop in front of me whilst watching Gossip Girl, and on a Saturday night enjoying a drink with my compadres and feeling their comfort so I can be myself, and give myself time to get back in my Westwood’s again.

It was hard to write this article as a Sassy Minx, but the truth is, we all have moments where we just don’t feel fabulous, and that’s okay too. Self-acceptance and that relationship you have with yourself is the knowledge of being a Sassy Minx – and some of those clichés like; taking the rough with the smooth, swings and roundabouts, horses for courses – are there to be explored, relished and learned from.

And the best teachers never stop learning, so listen to yourself, and give your all to that, first and foremost.