A brutally honest account of a working life spent confusing motion with meaning.
Careering Off Course
Paperback launches 1 September 2026
What it’s about
Careering Off Course is a darkly funny, brutally honest account of a working life — and side hustles — spent mistaking activity for progress.
From dead-end jobs and corporate misfires to ill-judged ventures and half-formed ideas, it charts one man’s talent for choosing the wrong path with absolute confidence.
Alongside offices, factories and call centres sit failed start-ups, passive income schemes that refused to be passive, and business decisions driven more by optimism, impatience, and pub-level logic than planning.
Effort was rarely the problem. Judgement usually was.
Rather than a story of bold success or tidy redemption, it explores how careers and businesses quietly unravel: through overconfidence, avoidance, poor judgement, and the comforting belief that wanting something badly is the same as knowing how to do it.
It’s about trying to escape employment without fully committing to entrepreneurship — and failing at both.
Part cautionary tale, part confession, this isn’t a guide to success. It’s a record of how to get things badly wrong — and why recognising that might finally count as progress.
You’ve had a “brilliant” business idea at 11:47pm.
You’ve confused being busy with being effective.
You’ve stayed in a job too long because it felt safer.
You’ve blamed timing, luck, or “the market.”
You’ve called avoidance “strategic patience.”
You’ve promised yourself you’ll start properly next month.
You’ll recognise yourself if…
If this feels uncomfortably familiar, this book was written for you.
Quote Sampler
Short excerpts from a career in confident misjudgement
‘Truth be told, it’s really just a vague attempt to fend off any potential legal challenge to my version of events.’
-Prologue
‘to avoid the embarrassment of being put in a half-nelson in the Holiday Inn reception by Mrs Bowelbreaker until I surrendered and agreed to sign the Security Guard Employee Shafting Contract’
- The Great Security Escape
‘But… you don’t smoke, Andy?’
‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘but I don’t see why people in the call centre should get more breaks than I do just because they’ve got a filthy addiction.’
- New Snow
‘It taught me how to stay calm while being called a useless corporate prick by someone who hadn’t paid their bill.’
- First Line, Last Nerve
‘He had that unblinking confidence that came from knowing HR wouldn’t touch him unless there was CCTV footage and a signed confession.’
-The Cult of Brown Brothers
‘The call-centre chairs were as cheap as the call-centre staff and woefully unfit for motorsport.’
- A Night At The Races
‘Four mags sold, one novelty shipped, and five hundred and forty-eight quid in the red.’
- Viz-ionary Thinking
‘If your water bill crept up in Wiltshire after 2012, there’s a fair chance I share a sliver of the blame.’
- A Plot to Quit Teaching
‘The ‘plan’ was simple: stage an accident, make a claim, and wander off into the sunset with a cheque and a very punchable grin.’
- Perfect Pitch
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