I graduated with a degree in Electrical Engineering. I took a sales job at a telecommunications firm, learned to pitch, lost deals, won some, and spent two years wondering why the part I liked most was writing the proposals — not closing them.
By 2017, I had certifications, a decent salary, and a quiet, persistent feeling that I was performing a role rather than building something. I wasn’t unhappy. I was just… somewhere adjacent to where I wanted to be.
The shift to writing didn’t happen overnight. It started with a content job at a tech company in 2017 — partly out of curiosity, partly out of necessity. I told myself it was temporary. Four companies and nearly a decade later, I’m a Lead Content Strategist who has written for hundreds of web pages, managed multi-channel campaigns, and built content strategies for clients across industries.
Here’s what I’ve learned from that pivot: the skills you think are unrelated rarely are.
Engineering taught me to break complex systems into understandable parts. Sales taught me that people don’t buy logic — they buy clarity and confidence. Both made me a better writer than any writing course could have.
The question I get most is: “Weren’t you afraid to start over?” Yes. But I’ve since realized that starting over is a myth. You don’t abandon what you built — you redirect it. Every presentation I gave as a sales engineer, every technical document I drafted, every customer objection I translated into a solution — all of it showed up, eventually, on the page.
The career pivot wasn’t a leap of faith. It was a slow walk toward something I should have named sooner.
If you’re standing at a similar crossroads, here’s the only advice I’d offer: don’t wait for certainty. Start doing the thing, even badly, even part-time. Clarity comes from action, not from thinking about action.