courting a career change.

Have you ever felt a gaping void within you? A void created because you were dissatisfied with or enervated by your job or line of work?

The past few months (especially the last) have been pretty eventful. Perhaps the most of my life.

For one thing, I was fired.

*pause for dramatic effect*

I enjoy observing people's reaction to that statement. In actuality, my company was winding down and I was let go along with all my colleagues a few months ago.While serving my notice period, I gave some serious thought to what to do next. Was social media marketing what I really wanted to do until the Next Big Thing came along, whatever that was? Hark! An epiphany! No, it wasn't. I realized then how crucial it was for a person to have goals. At the time, I had none. No purpose, no direction. What would I do if not continue pursuing a career in marketing (my major), I wondered while listlessly browsing bayt.com for job openings that fitted my profile.

The fact remained that I no longer cared for marketing, commercialism or the corporate world, and felt far removed from them all. It isn't in me to spend over 8 hours shackled to an office desk doing something I'm not interested in; thankfully, I'm not in dire financial straits or family obligations because of which I'd have to. I learnt a ton of stuff from my awesome manager and colleagues and gained an incredible amount of exposure and insight into the inner workings of the industry, but it was time to move on to another field. What I really wanted to do was take a break from working (yes, I had been working only for a year and a half and had travelled several times in that duration) and retreat into a shack on some God forsaken island and write. I could write but I am nothing if not realistic and brutally honest with myself: writing wasn't going to get me very far, especially considering how underdeveloped my skills are, and it wasn't going to help me sustain myself financially.

I needed to find an alternate career when my notice period ended, but came up blank. I was plagued by insouciance and cared about nothing. I felt my mind wasting away which frustrated me beyond measure.

It was in the midst of all the uncertainty that my life is so often afflicted with that I was asked, "since you love grammar so much, why don't you get paid for it?"

And that's how I stumbled upon the CELTA*.

*Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults. More to come in upcoming posts.