As one grows older, you become firmer and clearer on what you want, not what others want you to do. You become clearer that you really DO NOT want something, and you set out to do it. I am one of those passive defiant types of children that used to be very obedient and even look obedient on the outside when I was young. But in reality, I like to defy against things that I do not believe in. This trait in me showed up as I reached adulthood. But this journey was indeed not easy. Thankfully the more someone tries to bring me down, the more fighting spirit it generates within me. Thus through this journey of heeding my own voice I learnt a few things.
1. Career switch is never easy
First, at the age of 28, I finally decided marketing was not for me. I worked in a famous cosmetics company doing one aspect of marketing. The corporate culture at that time was totally fantastic, the colleagues were good and my boss was great – it was like working for a male boss except without the dick. I got work-life balance and it was my first regional role, except it was still related to marketing. I remembered walking out of the office on my last day telling myself I would never want to work in another marketing job again. I took a finance course and a Japanese course at the same time, and suffered from nervous breakdown as my health suffered from the intense schedule I put myself through. The next three years were spent trying to figure out my next career move and whether I was able to switch into it successfully. I freelanced at small PR sweat shops but I gained quite a fair bit of experience to know this was something that I like to do – research and writing. I also tried to get some freelance writing assignments. I knew writing was something I wanted to do, not the journalism hours but the pay that public relations practitioners could get. Hence I moved into public relations finally after three years of moving in and out of jobs to figure out. My ultimate wish is to be a full-time writer/blogger but I need the money to sustain myself and my parents. Hence, doing this website is one step towards my dream. However in total, I “wasted” three years during the transition period and also having to start off on a slower pace compared to my peers who have been in this line since day one.
2. There will always be people who say you CANNOT.
I had this boss that once commented that I was lousy in writing. I thought so when she sat me down beside her to correct my grammar. I got to admit I always had to pay attention to my subject-verb agreement but I refused to believe my writing was so bad. My instinct told me she just simply wanted this person to do the coordination work, administrative work and some of the bullshit branding work that she was responsible. I left after four months without a good job in hand. I knew it was risky but it was worse for me to stay on. Eventually, I still made it to a public relations agency, wrote a lot and even took on freelance writing. Had I chose to stay on, I think till now I would still be doing meaningless administrative work and branding work that I simply hate.
3. Working for others is meaningless. Only working for yourself truly counts.
I spent a lot of time at work since young. I hated and in fear of long working hours now because I simply refused to give my life away to work. Big corporations will continue to survive without you. So why should you spend so much of your time there? Why spend time generating ideas and writing a perfect piece of work, which subsequently will be dismantled and destroyed by someone else simply because of their rank? I rather use my ideas on my OWN work. If it works, all glory, money and credit goes to MYSELF. Some months back, I suddenly had this great urge to be my own entrepreneur as I read in the papers on the stories of many businessmen building their own wealth and networks. For me, I never dream of becoming a millionaire. I simply want to be able to sustain myself on my dream. Well, bread and passion are both essential in life. And I definitely do not wish to lead a life on bread alone.
4. Have faith in yourself and experiment.
If you don’t believe in yourself, who will? Right now, many jobs are rejecting me because I do not have social media background. To me, social media is not about how many modes/channels you are familiar with, but rather the content creation and generation (which I think the power of public relations in social media has been too belittled. But that is for another post). And I am determined to use this website to experiment and prove to others that CONTENT is KING. Not using Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin etc with the same story. IT DOESN’T WORK! You are just insulting your audience.
What are your thoughts? I would love to hear from my readers.
1. Career switch is never easy
First, at the age of 28, I finally decided marketing was not for me. I worked in a famous cosmetics company doing one aspect of marketing. The corporate culture at that time was totally fantastic, the colleagues were good and my boss was great – it was like working for a male boss except without the dick. I got work-life balance and it was my first regional role, except it was still related to marketing. I remembered walking out of the office on my last day telling myself I would never want to work in another marketing job again. I took a finance course and a Japanese course at the same time, and suffered from nervous breakdown as my health suffered from the intense schedule I put myself through. The next three years were spent trying to figure out my next career move and whether I was able to switch into it successfully. I freelanced at small PR sweat shops but I gained quite a fair bit of experience to know this was something that I like to do – research and writing. I also tried to get some freelance writing assignments. I knew writing was something I wanted to do, not the journalism hours but the pay that public relations practitioners could get. Hence I moved into public relations finally after three years of moving in and out of jobs to figure out. My ultimate wish is to be a full-time writer/blogger but I need the money to sustain myself and my parents. Hence, doing this website is one step towards my dream. However in total, I “wasted” three years during the transition period and also having to start off on a slower pace compared to my peers who have been in this line since day one.
2. There will always be people who say you CANNOT.
I had this boss that once commented that I was lousy in writing. I thought so when she sat me down beside her to correct my grammar. I got to admit I always had to pay attention to my subject-verb agreement but I refused to believe my writing was so bad. My instinct told me she just simply wanted this person to do the coordination work, administrative work and some of the bullshit branding work that she was responsible. I left after four months without a good job in hand. I knew it was risky but it was worse for me to stay on. Eventually, I still made it to a public relations agency, wrote a lot and even took on freelance writing. Had I chose to stay on, I think till now I would still be doing meaningless administrative work and branding work that I simply hate.
3. Working for others is meaningless. Only working for yourself truly counts.
I spent a lot of time at work since young. I hated and in fear of long working hours now because I simply refused to give my life away to work. Big corporations will continue to survive without you. So why should you spend so much of your time there? Why spend time generating ideas and writing a perfect piece of work, which subsequently will be dismantled and destroyed by someone else simply because of their rank? I rather use my ideas on my OWN work. If it works, all glory, money and credit goes to MYSELF. Some months back, I suddenly had this great urge to be my own entrepreneur as I read in the papers on the stories of many businessmen building their own wealth and networks. For me, I never dream of becoming a millionaire. I simply want to be able to sustain myself on my dream. Well, bread and passion are both essential in life. And I definitely do not wish to lead a life on bread alone.
4. Have faith in yourself and experiment.
If you don’t believe in yourself, who will? Right now, many jobs are rejecting me because I do not have social media background. To me, social media is not about how many modes/channels you are familiar with, but rather the content creation and generation (which I think the power of public relations in social media has been too belittled. But that is for another post). And I am determined to use this website to experiment and prove to others that CONTENT is KING. Not using Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin etc with the same story. IT DOESN’T WORK! You are just insulting your audience.
What are your thoughts? I would love to hear from my readers.
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