What I Did the Past Two Years Instead of Writing
100-Word Writing Challenge, Day 5
- Got laid off from a supposedly stable job teaching journalism at a university— the course was canceled due to a lack of students
- Stuffed all my belongings into a storage unit and moved to Mexico with my wife and son for her Ph.D. fieldwork
- Ate an ungodly amount of tacos, quesadillas, and chilaquiles, as well as countless other national dishes with less international renown, but unparalleled deliciousness
- Developed a high tolerance for spicy food
- Taught English part-time to stay afloat
- Took a long, hard look at the job market and decided to give up on both journalism and academia
- Briefly considered following one of those How to Make A Fortune Writing Online Medium posts
- Read the Wikipedia article on survivorship bias
- Decided I should never trust those How to Make A Fortune Writing Online Medium posts
- Enrolled in a web development bootcamp to start a career in tech in my mid-thirties
- Actually learned how to code, to my surprise, and found out it could be quite enjoyable
- Became the kind of person who comes to Medium to read about tech
- Returned to the UK and got my first web development job
- Worked as a developer for a year (and counting), reading programming books and watching hundreds of hours of technical tutorials in my spare time
- Continued enjoying fiction immensely and wishing I had never given up on writing
- Went to bed every day thinking “tomorrow I will write”
