In 2012, me and a close friend of mine found ourselves in a compromising position; we were lagging behind our peers and unfamiliar with the path we found ourselves travelling. Almost everyone in our age group had found a well of financial comfort, either by tricking the system or pure discipline and hard work. Regardless, everyone seemed to be on top of their game and enjoying the fruit of their labour — all while waving good luck to us from the rearview mirror.

Though never communicated verbally, we knew things changed while we remained the same. It was not like we were unable to advance ourselves more than it was, perhaps, we’d let life catch up when we were slowly drifting to old methods of making a living. We were both in our second years of diplomas, he in marketing and I in cost and management accounting. Things seemed fine, except the career choices were not really aligned with our passions and abilities. Even though I had a moderately successful entrepreneurial venture on the side and my friend with a bursary that made it easier for us to afford our lifestyle and education, the people we met who were either in the process of joining or already in the rat race, didn’t excite us. The careers were neither our first nor second choices, but what we could afford off the menu with return on investment. Both our hearts were in creative media. The only disadvantages were the fees for our preferred courses were way more than we could afford, and with uncertain chances of stable employment.

Later that year, we felt a sudden realization; we needed a change or else we will find ourselves in the same trap as our parents — old and passionless. We started scrutinizing our choices and their likely outcomes; our parents, friends and community, and identified a pattern — tradition and other historical factors conditioned us to loathed change. Though something new could be rewarding if easy to learn and applicable to immediate problems, when newness is too foreign and challenging to accustom to, you risk being socially exiled for being weird. Still, what awaited us ahead in the future was a nerve wrecking hangover as our short-term solutions were preventing us from realizing our long-term prospects. So, we decided not to follow the traditional, tried and tested, ways to make a life. We decided to change, and so we came up with a new way of living for us: DON’T BE AN OLD DOG, LEARN NEW TRICKS.

THE RED OR GREEN PILL. At the beginning of 2013, I folded my business venture and did not register back at school. My friend incidentally found himself a financial windfall, and used almost all of it to finance a new course at a different college. Yet again there we were, refreshed and excited, with our new found ways ready to take on different challenges. We cut almost all our conections with our previous states, socially and otherwise, and held to what was left for the better.

Fast forward two years later and my friend graduated with a diploma in journalism, and just got hired by a renowned national media company to join it’s successful team and get paid for a hobby he was already enjoying — talking about football. And well, me, I learned (and still learning) myself HTML, CSS and a bit of JavaScript. Not much, at the moment, to secure a good job or commercialize on but enough skill to get my hands dirty creating and developing for the better.

And thanks to platforms like Medium, which I see as the AA for the creative, whatever the outcome, I’ll be good.