So, 2018, right? Man, what a year that was for me, a total Pisces just trying to figure things out in the career world. I remember going into it, reading all those horoscopes that said something about “creative breakthroughs” and “following your intuition.” Sounded good on paper, but turning that into actual practice? That was the real messy bit.
I started 2018 feeling a bit… stagnant. My old job, it was fine, paid the bills, but it wasn’t really sparking anything. I’d been toying with this idea for years, maybe even a decade, of just sharing my own stuff, my own projects, my own learning journey with a wider audience. Like, a blog, a journal, something more than just talking to my dog about it. I kept thinking, “This is it, this is the year I actually do it.” But you know how those promises go, right? Mostly just hot air.
Then, early January, something just clicked. No big dramatic event, just a quiet evening staring at the ceiling, and I thought, “Enough dreaming, just start the damn thing.” I literally jumped out of bed, fired up my ancient laptop, and the first thing I did was open a notepad file and just brain dump ideas. What did I want to talk about? What had I been working on in my spare time? What failed experiments had taught me the most? My fingers just flew across the keyboard for an hour.
Once I had a rough list, the next big hurdle was the platform. I’m not a tech wizard, never claimed to be. I knew I needed somewhere to actually put these words. So, I grabbed my phone and started searching. “Easiest blog platform,” “how to start a blog for dummies.” You name it, I probably typed it. After a day or two of comparing options, watching some YouTube videos, and getting thoroughly overwhelmed, I settled on something that looked straightforward enough. This was me, diving headfirst into WordPress tutorials, most of which felt like they were written in a foreign language.
I distinctly remember one late night, maybe February, I was trying to figure out how to install a theme. The instructions were like, “FTP into your server, navigate to public_html, upload the zip, unzip, then activate.” FTP? Server? Zip? I was sweating, literally sweating. It took me a solid four hours of Googling every single term, watching about ten different videos, and almost throwing my laptop across the room before I finally got it. The site looked like pure garbage, just a default template, but it was there. It was live. That feeling, man, that was a rush.
Next came the content. This was supposed to be the easy part, right? I had all those ideas. But sitting down to actually write for an unknown audience? That was a whole different beast. My first few posts were so stilted, so formal. I was trying to sound smart, profound, whatever. But it wasn’t me. I’d read them back and just cringe. So, I took a deep breath, remembered why I started – to share my real experience. I trashed those formal attempts and just started writing like I was talking to a friend. I began sharing my struggles with learning new coding stuff, my thoughts on productivity, and even the ridiculous kitchen experiments I was doing.
The consistent effort was the killer. I was still in my day job, so every spare moment after work, every weekend, was dedicated to this. I’d come home exhausted, eat dinner, and then force myself back in front of the screen. Some nights, I’d just stare at a blinking cursor for an hour, totally drained of ideas. But I pushed through. I made a commitment to myself: one new piece of content a week, no excuses. There were plenty of times I felt like giving up. The traffic numbers were pathetic, comments were nonexistent. I’d think, “What’s the point? Nobody cares.”
But then, something started to shift, around mid-summer. I got my first real comment. Not a spam bot, not a friend, but a complete stranger. They said my post about simplifying a complex task had really helped them. Man, that was fuel. It made all those late nights, all that frustration, suddenly feel worth it. It made me realize that even if it was just one person, I was actually connecting. From there, I started to embrace connecting with other folks online. I reached out to a few other small bloggers, commented on their stuff, and slowly, very slowly, built a tiny community around what I was doing.
By the end of 2018, looking back, was it my “best year” for my career? If you asked my old company, probably not. I wasn’t climbing the corporate ladder. But for my personal career, for carving out my own little corner of the internet, for actually taking that massive leap from dreaming to doing? Absolutely. It laid the foundation for everything that came after. It taught me grit, it taught me patience, and it taught me that sometimes, the best moves aren’t the ones that make you rich overnight, but the ones that just make you start.
