The Career Change That I Never Regretted

Since childhood, creativity has come to me naturally. My primary school teachers often praised me for my creative ideas when crafting essays. Over the years, however, this creative writing has been hidden from me for reasons within and outside my control.

Anyway, to make a long story short, up until 8th grade, I thoroughly enjoyed writing and reading history and geography-related articles and got good grades in those subjects. However, for my Grade 10 IGCSE exams, my parents put me into a school that focused more on scientific and technical subjects such as physics and chemistry, and hence, there was no favorite subject of mine.

In that school, in a foreign country, I had to undergo discrimination and bullying that put me in a depressive state. However, life moved on after I returned to my country to continue the rest of my education.

Enrolling In Computer Science Degree Program

Still, I didn’t get what I liked to do because my focus was more on technical subjects. So, I ended up graduating as a Computer Science student majoring in Software development. During my studies for the degree, I realized that I was good at programming subjects like C, C#, PHP, and ASP.Net.

Hence, I invested more in learning more programming and wasted money on additional courses such as learning Java.

Soon, I realized that programming was not my everyday cup of tea when I got a trainee-level web development content update job.

From Programming to Web Site Updates

The irony is that despite studying Computer Science and programming languages for almost three years, I couldn’t land my dream programming job for one and a half years after completing the degree. And that, too, was in updating HTML websites.

Anyway, I made up my mind not to lose focus, concentrate on website maintenance, and move to web development from there. Having spoken to the company’s management about moving into web development, they offered me several chances to get involved in web development projects.

Unfortunately, I failed these projects, so management concluded that I was not good at web development. They put me back into website maintenance, which I continued for five more years without any promotion or significant salary increment.

Finally, I lost my job due to an argument with a client. It was depressing then, but now I realize it was a blessing in disguise.

Moment To Pause And Analyze What I’m Good AT

Then, when I was analyzing what I was good at, it came to me that writing is a promising career, given the success I had earlier in my childhood crafting essays. So, I considered the following options because I also interacted with content writers in my previous job and saw what they were doing:

• Copywriting: To be a good copywriter, I need creative writing, marketing, and persuasive skills. I needed them because I worked in a technical-related role for six years as marketing and creative writing were very different from web development. Furthermore, I lacked experience in this field, which is necessary to land a job in copywriting.
• Technical writing: Technical writing in particular, resonated with me due to my involvement in website maintenance. This personal connection made me more interested in the role, despite the requirement for knowledge and exposure to the Software Development Life Cycle that I discovered in job ads.

I thought both the above career options were out of reach as I lacked experience and exposure. At that time, I decided to move into web development as I already knew it during my first job of website maintenance.

Mild Success With Further Failures

Ultimately, with a brilliant CV, I got calls for interviews for some web development opportunities, which brightened my prospects of getting a web development job.

Guess what? I finally got one. I was delighted, but this was short-lived. At the same time, I also took a marketing course to gain fundamental knowledge in Marketing, which I successfully completed. The web development job only lasted for one year, which once again proved that web development wasn’t the right career for me.

After that, I did further work related to web development as a freelancer and even a marketing job as a business development executive. But all of these jobs ended in failure. Nevertheless, I learned valuable lessons from them.

Beginning To See Some Light….

At this juncture, I was somewhat frustrated and depressed, although I didn’t give up hope.

I saw a comprehensive job ad for a software documentation writer on a Sunday morning. I was not keen to apply, but my wife said to revise my current CV and give it a go. Although I never heard from them, I was somewhat motivated to learn a thing or two about copywriting and content writing in general by following some YouTube and online tutorials. This was a substantial learning curve as I learned through:

• Re-writing whatever ads that I came across.
• I rewrote headlines that I found on famous websites such as Cosmopolitan and BuzzFeed.

Then suddenly, I got a call from a job that I applied for after applying for a software documentation writer position. That job asked for a content writer with IT knowledge to document some courses for a Computer Science degree program. I was the sole candidate out of those with a bachelor’s degree in IT coupled with writing skills. This truly made me happy. From there, my writing career was born.

New Path Was Not A Bed Of Roses

From then on, my writing career was not a bed of roses. Initially, I was in unknown territory, trying to find my way. Thus, I learned things the hard way, which is analogous to learning how to swim from the pool’s deep end. Ultimately, due to my commitment and lessons learned from my past experiences, I got through the course writing assignment of 24 units for the entire degree program.

But then again, after the contract with this company was over, I had to think of other modes of income. Luckily, due to the skills gained in my first writing assignment, I got a freelance article writing assignment as a freelance writer related to the tech niche.

This was my first proper writing job. Through adequate research, I learned how to write tech content related to Proxies, VPNs, Cybersecurity, and Machine Learning. Furthermore, I learned how to make each sentence more engaging and meaningful to the reader. This contract, too, was over after two years, and later, I wrote articles for a company related to pet care products. However, this company didn’t last long for reasons beyond my control.

Now, I can write in any niche, and I began writing as a hobby on Medium. Initially, I know I had to put in a lot of effort with a consistent publishing schedule before joining the Medium Partner Program.

Conclusion

I hope you liked how I got into writing. I intend to cover more articles related to the lessons learned in my writing journey and how to stay motivated in the most challenging times. Now, I enjoy my life as a writer rather than a stressful web development career. By the way, web development is not a wrong career.

It is a lucrative career path if you love coding, can work long hours, and manage stress and pressure effectively. I’m not saying there is no pressure or stress in content writing, but for me, it’s more manageable than what I went through in tech-related jobs.

Finally, if you like this article, please engage with the article, and I’ll reciprocate. Also, don’t forget to follow me and read more articles related to my life lessons.