And the hottest ones have their own booth. Why I traded my dream job for a hamster-shaped, crypto-gaming gig.

Overhead lighting, the imminent threat of body odor, furries galore and the faint smell of free rum wafting from two booths over. If 3 months ago you told me I would be signing autographs at Comic Con – for a novel I wrote about a Neo-like saviour hamster for a crypto-gaming company – I wouldn’t have believed you.

I mean, it’s great, couldn’t be happier (BO aside) but it’s not exactly the trajectory I had imagined last year when I landed my dream job running socials for Isamaya Beauty. And yet, here we are. 

Here’s the thing: at Central Saint Martins, I had this expectation that I would “make it” within six months of graduating. Not rich – aspirations of financial success were too delusional even for me – but at least broke in an interesting way. Something along the lines of working somewhere that makes people in the smoking area of industry parties go, “Oh, period.” 

My strategy was: pick a niche and go hard for it. While everyone was assisting stylists or pitching to magazines, I was obsessively studying TikTok trends, creating mock social strategies for the sake of practice, getting ready for the day I got what I dreamt of. So, when that day came and I landed a job running socials for Isamaya Beauty, I was finally fulfilling the script I had manifested years ago. It was what I idealised for years: spearheading beauty campaigns for a surreal, latex-coated brand.  

When I got the role, everyone said it was the perfect fit. “It’s so you,” they said. “It’s cool, it’s fashion, it’s cunt.” I revered the prospect of immersing myself wholly into the last standing edgy beauty brand in a sea of clean beauty ones. And they weren’t wrong; it was all those things. I got to manage the socials of a brand that lived between performance art and penis shaped lip balms. It was equal parts exhilarating and exhausting, glamorous and grotesque.

So how exactly did I go from working on week-long Kloss Films shoots and hanging out with Tish Weinstock to the frontlines of crypto gaming? Why would I let go of the dream I had spent years barista-ing and random freelancing for? For a long time, the idea of quitting my social media job felt like the end of the world. That is, until it wasn’t. Creative industries, especially the ones surrounding the beauty and fashion world have a way to drag your spirits down. Suddenly, every TikTok I posted on the brand account was proof of my creativity. How an Instagram reel performed would dictate my mood for the day. 

Somehow, the initial thrill bittered,  turning into consistent headaches and a rampant increase in anxiety. I’d met my goal, fellow smokers at parties were mildly jealous of my job title but my mental health had never been worse. And then, an opportunity emerged.

One of the many freelance gigs I took on when desperately trying to find what I got was “crypto research” (read: pretending to understand DeFi while crying over rent). Well, as luck would have it, being a terrible yet creative personality hire would mean I would later be their top candidate for their newly opened creative director position. So when the opportunity came to trade my chrome-housed Isamaya penis lipstick for e-girl eyeliner and a crypto-powered hamster, I (reluctantly) took it, mostly out of self-preservation and entirely because my gut told me it was time.

When I finally took the leap, I told myself it was either going to be the biggest mistake of my career or the wildest blessing. A few weeks later, I found myself creative-directing the Hamieverse. We’re talking lore, character design, merch drops, and even a light novel and 2 comic books (written by yours truly, of course) about an anthropomorphic character called Hamie.

As any start-up would have it (especially one in the crypto-gaming space) “creative direction” was more of an abstract idea than a legit job title. In a world built on spreadsheets and e-wallets, anything that wasn’t data-driven felt like a foreign language. So when I showed up talking about colour palettes and tone of voice, they treated me like I was performing witchcraft. Suddenly, I was the go-to for all things vibe-related. There was no mentorship, no roadmap: just me, a Figma account, and essentially rolling with the punches while hoping I don’t get hit in the face. From building the brand deck from scratch to overseeing every visual aspect (socials, launch plans, even the visual direction for our upcoming game), everything somehow went through me. Basically, if it had colour, or lore attached, it ended up on my plate.

The learning curve was brutal — sleepless nights, caffeine shakes, and the constant feeling of Googling my way through a new job title. But somewhere between the panic and the Keypoints, I found a strange sense of creative freedom.

Months of work and a whole HCU – Hamie Cinematic Universe, obviously – later, naturally the only place to launch the Hamieverse was MCM Comic Con. The depths of the lore had the whole company seduced to move from a wholly crypto company to a gaming, and dare I say, entertainment company. With two comic books, a TCG game and a book as its hero products, we had become Comic Con material. Of course I grossly underestimated the amount of work required for it. Turns out you can’t just roll up to the biggest nerd (a term of endearment) convention with empty hands. What I thought would be a simple booth, at best a table with merch, ended up being an immersive experience into the HCU with a fully customized throne, two hired actors, a card game and a spinwheel. 3 weeks later and a combined over 200 hours of non-stop working, it somehow happened.

I brought in two of my CSM friends to help out for the 3 days and also moral support. While our 6×6 booth was massive I walked in pretty ready to be thrown pity looks as attendees passed by and ignored the vintage Dior boot-wearing author sitting at the table. But to my shock, they were eating it up. And you know what, I was eating it up too.

One of my friends said, “Comic Con could always be CSM, but CSM could never be Comic Con,” and honestly? She was right. Beyond the sweat and overstimulation only fluorescent lights cause there was a beautifully shameless celebration of self-expression. People cosplayed for themselves and the community. There was no competition – people dressed as the same character would get together to take photos or film endearingly cringey TikToks. No matter how fiercely they would’ve been chastised outside of Comic Con, these people were celebrating their passions unashamedly. That’s kind of the best thing you can do. 

Across three fever-dream days, I signed over a thousand autographs, including one on a baddie’s cleavage (career highlight), got told “I love you” by a man in a bright yellow banana suit and was shown a photo of someone’s dead hamster because it reminded them of Hamie. Between the cosplay, the chaos, and turning our booth into a full-blown rave on Sunday, I realised I was strangely creatively fulfilled.

Would I love to go back to beauty or social media someday? Absolutely. My love for that madness hasn’t faded, spent way too many years obsessing over it to just disappear. But that industry is a cruel mistress, especially when you’re a Palestinian-Romanian girl in her mid-twenties trying to survive London rent with gigs that barely cover a weekly pornstar martini at my favourite bar. 

I used to think that graduating from CSM meant you were automatically destined for greatness, or at least an unpaid internship that looked great as a mysterious Instagram bio. But the truth is, even when you think you’re moving forward, the best step forward can be a sideways one. 

Leaving my social media role was bittersweet. I loved the artistry of it — the thrill and chaos of a brand that felt more like a movement than anything else. And of course I don’t regret it for a second; I learned more in that year than any of the two degrees I got trying to get that gig taught me. But I also learned that even your dream job can start to feel like less of a dream and more of a nightmare when the lines between passion and burnout blur. 

Maybe I’m not where I thought I’d be, but clearly I am where I belong – signing hamster books for giddy cosplayers. So maybe creative fulfillment is the friends we made along the way.  

Words – Tam Duhair