From Technical Support to Technical Writer

For just over 6 years, my job was to fix problems. Every morning I would wake up, get to work and the first thing I would hear when answering the phone was invariably a client that thought not being able to login to hotmail was the crime of century. Still, being technical support agent/advisor/drone was satisfying in it's own way; helping people has always been my passion after all. After a while though, the satisfaction of getting someone to type in their username and then explain that their keyboard was not broken - stars in the password field WERE normal - kind of dies down. There is only so much configuring Outlook Express one can take before being bored; I still know the Windows XP "New Connection" wizard by heart after over 3 years.

Changing fields did little to quench the feeling that I was going nowhere. Tech support for internal employees was just as bad, if not worse, because they could actually put pressure on me, they knew my boss after all... And one wonders why tech support people are often disagreeable! You're not their first client who doesn't know why torrents are causing 250 gigs of transfer on your connection, bub.

So anyway, when I was given the opportunity to switch careers, especially within the great company where I work now, I jumped on it head first. With the change of one single word in my title - from Support to Writer - everything had changed. It is amazing the perspective one can gain when discovering a new career that wasn't expected!

I finally realized that writing documentation was much better than doing support, because of the famous adage "feed a man fish and he'll eat for a day, teach him to fish and he will have food for a lifetime". I know, you may think people don't read user manuals and instructions, but in my field it is not the case. It's not a VCR from Taiwan we're talking about, it's a complex software costing in the 5 digits! Besides, people don't read manuals because they often "suck balls" as I have often put it myself. I've made it my new mission to pull a Midas and change that crap into gold with my magic touch.

On top of this, spending my whole day sitting on my ass getting paid to type on a keyboard about shit I actually like has also brought me new determination and confidence about my writing. As you've no doubt noticed, I have been blogging a lot more and not only on this personal blog (google "PlanetPress Tips blog") and there will be a lot more to come, no more excuses.

I may even start writing my book...