Every time I go overseas for an international trip, I always learn a lot about this world. What’s more, I also learn a lot about myself and figure out how to become a better version of myself.
- During an international trip, I decided to change my career.
When I was in my early 30s, I became a retailer because I was unable to use my qualifications after the redundancy caused by the economy in 2008. Frankly, it was not easy to find a retail job. After being made redundant, I had to work in a call center in order to get some customer service work experience and then I got the retail job. In that retail company, I was the only person with a degree because other employees in that retail company never went to university.
Honestly, I loved the beautiful products and high-quality customers, but I couldn’t fit in. I thought that must be my fault, but now I know that wasn’t my fault because that retail company’s staff turnover was the highest in the industry – that happened for a reason – obviously, if most people couldn’t fit in, there must be something wrong in that company.
This is probably controversial, but I realized that for people who don’t have an education, their lives are objectively harder: They are unskilled workers. The most common decent jobs that they can find are call center agents and retail sales assistants. The pay is low and the stress level is high.
My line manager and the regional manager in that retail company were uneducated to the point that they couldn’t even spell; consequently, I was unable to understand the emails that they sent me, which made them mad. Well, they were also mad at other employees all the time because other employees couldn’t understand their emails either.
I was thinking about leaving the retail industry altogether; I used my annual leave to have an international trip. I needed some time and space to think about what I should do next. I went to Europe and spent 2 weeks there. I was eating exotic food in artistic restaurants, reading new books that I bought from European bookstores and writing journal entries every night. Then I decided to quit the retail job and became a freelance writer.
- Change leads to opportunities.
After quitting my retail job, I created a profile on a freelance website where I found some freelance writing gigs. At that time, nobody wanted to take that kind of risk because no one wanted to be a starving artist, which is understandable.
“I don’t want to be one of those poor writers,” my friend Lucy said to me, “I would rather have a day job that I can still put up with.”
Lucy loves writing, but she doesn’t monetize her writing at all. I guess there is a difference between being good at writing and being able to sell the writing.
Because I worked in retail before, I learned sales really well. As a result, that transferrable skill truly helped me to get more writing gigs. Within half a year, I became an established online freelance writer.
About one year later, my freelance writing business started to work reasonably well because the revenue from that online business was the same as the annual salary from my retail job.
Two years later, my freelance writing business began to generate a higher income than my retail job did.
Now I am a full-time freelance writer. This is the job that I genuinely love because writing is actually my passion.
Writing is also a type of meditation. I’m glad that I made the right decision, and that all started from a meaningful international trip when I had enough time for myself.
“An international trip is the perfect ‘me time’ when I am able to focus on my personal development.”
