My Career Switch.
Ann Landers said “Opportunities are usually disguised as hard work so most people don’t recognize them”. With benefit of hindsight, I can fully understand that quote now.
I had started my journey as a photographer, carved out my niche and had quite a steady career growth. I was not making 6 figures as i wished but it came with a sense of fulfillment because being a creative has always been the goal and that is certainly where my passion lies. The photography industry was not so robust as it is now and so I expanded my expertise by taking a few courses in Photo editing. That was a very defining step of my photography career. It opened up a few business opportunities as I had top collaborations with some very talented photographers globally. I also had the opportunity of connecting with a strong community of Black Women Photographers that proved very helpful in my journey. I was certainly supposed to be feeling very much fulfilled because indeed I was getting paid for what I loved doing.
You know, life comes at you really fast. I realized the passion was slowly fading, practicing photography in Nigeria is a lot, and I knew something was wrong. I had seen a few friends that were good product designers. We often talked about the emerging opportunities in UI/UX and product design at large. It was definitely an area that interested me as it had creativity and User experience as part of its core focus. Fast forward to a few years later, I’m now on the journey to fulfilling my dreams of becoming a product designer. The truth is that I was stuck in a dilemma for a period of time. I fought the thought of switching careers. I mean it was a whole new world, how was I going to get access to training?, how was I going to build a new business portfolio, what would I do with my photography brand (still haven’t figured this out lol) and most importantly, how was I gonna sell the idea of this switch to my immediate community. This was a huge decision I had to make coupled with the Herculean task. One beautiful thing I have come to understand now is that right in the middle of the difficulty in making this switch, there was a precious opportunity waiting for me. I am glad I took the right decision and grabbed my opportunity.
I can’t fail to make mention of the key inspiration I had on this journey; my training team, Uranus Academy, Cousera and lots of YouTube videos.Ofcourse The journey has only began but I am so proud of the work I have put in so far.
I had my first design project which I carried out solely and shared in my portfolio.
The reason I am writing this is to encourage someone out there to ignore the noise and make the switch if you want to whatever it is you desire. The world is full of endless opportunities and indeed, there’s never any harm in giving it a short. You are a lot better at it than you think.