I left the perfect job for this?

This is not some clickbait post, although it sounds like one. This is just an honest view of the transition that I am going through personally and professionally.

Life IS strange. It is. One day you are a 15-year senior iOS developer writing React Native code, and the next day you stare at the blank page of your first (hope-to-be) novel.

For the last 6 years, I was working full-time as a mobile developer in one agency (and I have been a mobile app developer for 15 years in total). In the Agency, I had everything that I needed: freedom to arrange my time and workspace, interesting projects, working with cutting-edge technology, and above all, great people around me. In that period, I also had a lot of ups and downs in my personal life: becoming a father of two kids and having health issues with one major surgery. During these tough periods, I felt support and understanding at every step. I felt a personal connection and made some friends over there, even though we worked remotely and never met in person with most of them. Because of that, I was comfortable. I was happy. And I was telling everybody that this is what I wanted from the job. I rejected all offers that were coming and did not look back.

But then, something shifted. I was still happy, and I still did not think about leaving the Agency for some other company. Maybe it was entering my 40s and searching for life’s meaning. Maybe it was AI that was taking over my job. But inside, I felt the urge to do something on my own. To make something that I want. Something that will be just mine… I naturally have a lot of ideas, and the note that holds the list of my app ideas is growing all the time. But there is something that I have wanted to explore for some time now. One of the ideas that I have is to write. Not to write code as I do regularly, but to write stories. Similar to the list of app ideas that I have, the list of stories that I would like to write is getting longer; some of them are novels, and some of them are children’s picture books. Every passing day is a reminder to me that my kids are growing, and the stories that I imagine will not be interesting to them soon. Working full-time for the Agency, being married, and having two kids is not leaving me much time to commit to those new areas in my life, and the time is ticking. When I informed my colleagues of my plan, it came as a shock to all of them (in a way, it was a shock to myself also), but I knew that it was “now or never”.

So, here I am staring at the blank page, picking up the courage to start a new journey and to try to prove to myself that I can be a writter/Indie developer or whatever the future may hold for me.