let's talk about the time I couldn't write.

life lessons lately #1: what I've learnt since I quit my job.

some time in November 2024.

It’s been 444 days since I quit my 9–5 job. 63 weeks. A little over a year with some weeks to spare. That went by rather fast, but if there is one thing we know for certain, it is that time flies. I used to work in PR & Marketing with an agency in a faraway place. I like to say it like that because it sounds dramatic. Working in that agency was a very short-lived experience, but it taught me a great deal about the kind of work environment I’d thrive in if I ever worked another 9–5 job — and it wasn’t there. I also learnt that I am my best self when I enjoy the work I do, so constantly daydreaming about all the beautiful stories I could be writing instead of working a job I didn’t enjoy made me very miserable. I did what seemed like the most natural thing to do at that time - I quit my job to figure out how to be a full-time self-employed creative. For this spiel, let’s assume employment isn’t necessarily tied to actually earning an income. I was not sure what being a ‘full-time self-employed creative’ meant or what it would look like. I didn’t have a plan of any kind. It would be untrue to say I had zero expectations, but I was very clueless about how much I was about to learn in such a short time, especially about the different paths to becoming a ‘full-time creative’.

You would think that wanting something your entire life and finally staring at it would be all the vim you need to make your dreams materialise. This is the point where I hold your hand and tell you that it isn’t so, not all the time, and not immediately. Staring down the path that will hopefully lead you to your lifelong dream can be incredibly scary, and I was eventually crippled by fear. Taking the first step towards the dream is unbelievably challenging. And that is honestly the summary of everything I am about to say.

do not be deceived - I did some really great things, like sell my work in print.

For a very long time, all I had imagined was the bliss and fulfilment that awaited me once I devoted every hour of my day to something I had always wanted. I was going into this fueled by a passion so strong it was almost overwhelming. I could imagine only a few things that could stop me from doing everything I had set out to do, and I was not one of them. I had spent a lot of days at my old job, and honestly many months before that, daydreaming about how different life would be : I would be happier; I would do very well; everybody would immediately understand why I took this insane leap of faith; I would never think of going back to a 9–5 because I am doing all that I will ever want to do and I cannot see myself doing anything else. Chale. Nothing prepared me for how challenging carving out the life I had dreamed about for so long would be. Looking back now, I cannot help but chuckle a little at the version of me who only felt the good kind of butterflies, warm and ticklish, before going down this path. And I don’t even say that to mock myself. It’s not that any of the things I had imagined before were impossible or laughable. I was just naive in a way that fascinates me now.

Naivete. Let’s talk about that for a bit.

I strongly believe that we often fail to acknowledge how naive we might have been when we look back on past versions of ourselves. We simply did not possess the capacity to see the world in any other way, and so whatever decisions we made then, whatever beliefs we held on to, as small-minded as they might be in retrospect, they were all framed by our understanding of the world at that time. And so they were also the best decisions we could have made at the time, given the knowledge we had. But because we often fail to acknowledge that naivete, we misname those phases of our lives, and sometimes, we look down on the versions of ourselves we were in those phases. We hold grudges against those versions, eventually resenting them because we think we were silly or delusional. We were just naive, and naivete is not always a bad thing. It is yet another universal human trait we will all possess at one point [or many points] in time that we will eventually learn to let go of. I had to let go of it at the point I realised what it truly meant to build a fulfilling life from a full-time career as a creative? writer? storyteller? Let’s go with storyteller.

Now, back to the matter.

When I first quit my job, all I could think of was all the different projects I was about to blow everyone’s mind with. I started working on a writing showcase called ‘I Am Loud. Deal With It’. There might be a TikTok of me talking about this briefly. I started an anthology of short stories called ‘Jesus! My husband is getting married.’ as my first project for publication. That was inspired by my entry into Happy Noisemaker’s Writing Prize that year. And then, I started a YouTube channel to ‘document the process’ so everyone could follow the journey in real time.

I even went all the way to another region to talk about one of my projects, in some capacity.

First of all, that was one too many things to start at the same time and keep up with while I explored my newfound freedom. Secondly, I can’t help but wonder if my desire to document the journey was a silent need to prove to everyone that I was not crazy for going down this path. I don’t think I would have admitted it if you had asked me then, but I think I subconsciously felt compelled to show everyone what this new phase looked like, so that I could come back to it later and shout, ‘see I wasn’t crazy?’ when it all worked out. The dangerous thing about that was that a part of me started growing attached to the idea that this was going to play out in a somewhat linear yet very poetic way by some imaginary deadline, and that was torturous.

People constantly commended me for being brave, but I couldn’t see it at the time. To me, it was a very simple thing - I wanted to do something, and so I did. I could afford to. It’s the one constant principle I have successfully lived my life by, for the most part. I look back now and realise how insane it was that I overlooked how much bravery it required to quit my job and ‘follow my passion’ simply because I believed I could. It honestly felt like a pretty regular thing to do. I just convinced myself that all I needed for the path I was about to go down was talent, passion and ambition. With a dash of crazy. But before my great act of self-belief could make the headlines, I learnt that I needed to be many more things besides talented and ambitious. I had to be consistent yet patient, resilient yet gracious, hardworking yet very forgiving, and then learn to balance ambition with practicality. It was very overwhelming discovering how many more sides there were to this thing, and letting go of my naivete meant juggling all of these things all at once, even though I wasn’t prepared to.

The next thing I had to grapple with a little more intensely was the mental work that goes into being an artist. One word to describe that? UH-GLEE. I was depressed half the time, and didn’t even realise it until much later. I am still trying to figure out why. I was suddenly very unmotivated and uninspired to carry on with my long list of works-in-progress. I was tired from doing nothing in particular, and tempted to give it up before the journey could even properly begin. It was a mix of fear, self-doubt, and a million voices that came out of nowhere. I had just come to terms with what it meant to be ‘in total control’ of my future, and the sudden pressure to get it right [on first try] filled me with even more fear. I was overconsumed by the fact that this could all turn out to be a big flop, and got stuck not doing anything at all. And that sent me down a different road.

It was very jarring when I realised I no longer had excuses for why I was not writing as much as I thought I would with what seemed like all the time in the world. My brain did not immediately comprehend how I was still not devoting enough time to my craft now that it was my full-time job. There was no room to say I’d been sitting in traffic for hours after a long day, or that I was drained from having to work on a report for 4 hours and then sit through a 3-hour meeting that had no head or tail. I realised that my buffer of a 9–5, a safety net of some sort, albeit unenjoyable and not-so-safe, no longer existed, and now, I had to take full responsibility for not writing. I could no longer say I was too tired, or that I had other deliverables for the job that put money in my bank account. Or that I didn’t have any extra time between waking up early to avoid the morning rush and getting home late. I was not writing because it was suddenly a very difficult thing to do. End of. And it was scary to admit that, even scarier confronting that fear without a single barrier between the two of us. It was very humbling when I realised that I was suddenly searching for the bravery I had started this journey with.

Building momentum as an artist has been an immersive course in understanding that the entire journey is split into phases, and I would like to think I am getting to the end of this one. It is not in any way a sign of weakness or lack of ability. It is not a reflection of my skill as a writer, storyteller, creative, or artist. Remembering that every time is where the real work is. Believing it as someone who only wrote as a hobby in her teen years and then did not write at all for many years after that is such an arduous task, especially when the fundamental basis of this struggle is not hinged on my perception of how good I am at what I do. Not beating myself up, giving myself grace to learn and make mistakes, taking time off to rest even when it feels like I don’t deserve it — they’re all part of the phase. It is hard because a part of me still expects to get things right on the first try, so I spend a lot of time in my head when I can sense there’s a challenge ahead. I imagined I’d be more ‘accomplished’ by now, but I think the mistake was in setting limits to what ‘accomplished’ would look like. But before I almost concluded that my first year of trying to do this full-time was a failure, I realised that year 1 was for jumping over mental hurdles I had never come across before then.

shout out to one of my most loyal fans ever [who is a doctor now] ! <3

A little over a year later since I quit my job, and here’s what I’m learning from living between the lines: at many points in the journey of going after what you really want, you will pause and ask yourself a barrage of questions, as if it is not enough that a lot of people around you are bombarding you with questions too. You will wonder if this is all a waste of time. ‘Who sent me?’, if sh*t really hits the fan. You might be scared multiple times over, and doubt your abilities more times than you can count. You might hear strange voices in your head and wonder where they came from. You might cry and ask yourself if you should just give up and ‘get realistic’. Be kind to yourself, and if you can, try very hard to remember the feeling that filled you when you decided to go down this road the first time. No two experiences will ever be the same, so my opinion should not matter at all, except this one time — you are doing the absolute best thing you could ever do for yourself. And while you may not be doing this for anyone but yourself, we are very lucky to have you share this part of you with the world. So keep going. Don’t stop dreaming, and surely, don’t start dreaming small. Have the audacity of a man applying to a job he knows very well he is unqualified for, if you will. But also remember that no one said it would be easy. It will scare you and stretch you and test you. But you’re here anyway, so you might as well make it count. Now go get ’em, tiger, or whatever the obronis usually say.

Rooting for you sorely & sincerely,

Seli.