Man, 2015. What a year. When I look back, it felt like I was just floating, you know? Like a fish trying to figure out which current to go with. My career that year, it was a blur of trying to make sense of what I was even doing.
I started 2015 pretty much the same way I ended 2014: glued to a desk, pushing pixels around for a small-time web design gig. The pay was… fine. The work was… there. But my soul wasn’t in it. Every morning, I’d drag myself out of bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking, “Is this really it? Is this my big career dream?” I knew deep down it wasn’t. I just didn’t know what “it” was supposed to be.
My daily routine was pretty much rote. Wake up, coffee, commute, stare at Photoshop for eight hours, commute home, microwave dinner, zone out, sleep. Rinse, repeat. I kept a little journal, nothing fancy, just a cheap notebook where I’d scribble down thoughts. Most entries from early 2015 were just complaints, really. “Another day, another bland banner ad.” “Feeling restless.” “Is there more to life than optimizing image sizes?” It was classic me, just drifting, sensing something bigger but completely unable to grab onto it.
Around spring, things really started to churn inside. It wasn’t a sudden explosion, more like a slow, internal pressure build-up. I’d come home and instead of just zoning out, I started digging. I started reading articles about people who’d made big career switches, watched endless documentaries about creatives who just packed it all in and started something new. I was soaking it all in, trying to find a pattern, a sign, anything that pointed to a way out of my own rut.
I remember one afternoon, I’d just finished a particularly mind-numbing task, and I just sat there, staring at my screen, and I thought, “Enough.” That was the moment. It wasn’t loud or dramatic, just a quiet, firm decision in my head. I wasn’t going to just float anymore.
So, the “practice” started. It wasn’t about quitting my job immediately; I still needed to eat. It was about what I did with every spare minute. I decided I wanted to get into writing, properly. Something with more substance than ad copy. I didn’t know if I was any good, but I knew I felt something when I wrote, even if it was just angry journal entries.
My evenings transformed. After clocking out from the day job, I’d come home, make a quick meal, and then I’d dive into it. I started by:
- Reading everything I could get my hands on about storytelling and creative writing. I literally went to the library every weekend and just checked out stacks of books.
- Setting a daily writing goal. Even if it was just 500 words of absolute garbage, I had to write something. I started a simple blog, just posting random thoughts, short stories, whatever came to mind. Nobody read it, which was perfect. It took the pressure off.
- Joining a local writing group. This was a huge step. Walking into that first meeting, I felt like such an imposter. Everyone else seemed so much more confident. But I stuck with it. I got feedback, some of it brutal, but it was honest.
- Taking an online course in content marketing. I figured if I was going to write, I should probably know how to make it useful for someone. I wanted to build a skill that could actually pay the bills if this creative thing ever took off.
The daily grind of this “side hustle” was intense. There were nights I was so tired, I just wanted to collapse. But then I’d remember that feeling of being adrift, and it would push me forward. I journaled obsessively about my progress, my frustrations, my tiny victories. I tracked how many words I wrote, how many articles I read, how many hours I spent on that online course. It became my anchor.
Shifting Perspectives and the Path Forward
By the time autumn rolled around, my outlook had completely shifted. That year, 2015, had started with me feeling lost at sea, just letting the currents take me wherever. But through all that daily pushing, that quiet, consistent effort, I started to feel like I was actually steering my own boat. I hadn’t landed a big writing gig yet, nope. But I had a portfolio of work, even if it was just my little blog. I had new skills. More importantly, I had a direction.
I remember writing in my journal around November that year: “The water still feels big, but I know where I’m going now. The fear hasn’t gone, but the certainty has grown.” It wasn’t about having all the answers, it was about knowing how to ask the right questions and trusting I could figure out the steps along the way. My career outlook for the end of 2015 was no longer about a daily horoscope prediction; it was about the path I was actively building, one word at a time.
