My software development career began in 1998. Over the following 25 years I worked in various industries including oil exploration, engineering, games and mobile development.

I really enjoyed the first 7 years of my career. After that initial period, increasingly negative experiences across companies quickly evaporated any energy and enthusiasm I’d previously had. About midway through that career, I’d already started to look for a way out.

Towards the end of 2012 I took a break from work for a few months. I returned to creative writing and wrote the first two chapters of a novel. The process of planning and writing that book was an experience I thoroughly enjoyed. I never got to finish that book. I had to take up another development job as we needed the income.

During my software development career, I wrote an extensive amount of documentation and technical articles for intranets, wikis and websites.

If I’d ever written a letter to family or a friend, I’d often have typed out several pages before I’d even realised it.

In my youth I’d enjoyed reading many books and writing my own short stories.

When I looked back at everything I’d worked on, writing was the one thing that stood out as something I’d often felt relieved to be doing. Writing was enjoyable. Tackling another mountain of development related issues or trying to tolerate agile processes that crippled my focus and productivity was not enjoyable.

Writing had always come naturally to me. Why couldn’t that be my profession now rather force myself into another development role I know I wouldn’t enjoy at all?

I finally decided to make a change during 2023. I took some online creative writing courses over the year and began writing again at the start of the following year. I soon rediscovered the profound enjoyment of writing and wrote the first three chapters of a science fiction novel which I hope to finish one day. That experience clarified to me it was well past time to leave behind my old career and instead do something that I do actually enjoy.

I’m keen to grow my writing skills and there are a variety of topics I’d like to write articles for. So here I am now on Medium, taking a leap of faith into a new world. Please bear with me while I find my way.

I hope one day you will enjoy or perhaps learn from something I have written.