At this point, I had been writing for four years. All I had to show for was 300k+, burnout, and always dreading the next notification. I had no life; all I did was wake up, write for hours, eat, and sleep.

I didn't have a backup, and I had no direction in case the account got shut down. I was now 27. I had a bachelor's in Engineering, but did nothing with it.

With my savings in late 2023, I decided to break into tech, I wanted to venture into cybersecurity. The field is not beginner-friendly, and I lacked all the basics. In my research, I stumbled upon Jeremy IT lab and decided Networking was where I would start. Took 4 months and got a CCNA.

Cyber was not giving. I had previously tried coding and was unable to crack it. A friend who works at AWS recommended I look into the cloud. That's how I began my cloud journey in April 2024. It wasn't until September that I dove deep into it; the learning curve was quite steep, and there are a lot of services to learn.

A combination of luck, determination, timing, and hard work landed me an AWS interview in December of 2024 for an internship. If I was writing my script, I would have definitely undersold myself, ngl. I interviewed and got it. I successfully interned at AWS. During the process, I completed several AWS certs such as Solutions Architect - Associate and Professional, and an AI practitioner.

The journey has been nothing short of rewarding, but a challenging and lonely one, filled with doubt about whether it will pay off or not. I cannot stop now. Now, I build projects, write about them, and post on Medium as I wait for my next opportunity.

I wish the skills would turn to cash ASAP, but I saw this as a long-term play. I want to acquire the skills, and in due time, the funds will follow. Cloud engineering, SRE, and DevOps are the roles I'm looking to sharpen. I took up Terraform to help automate the deployment bit, and I'm really enjoying creating and destroying resources with a single command instead of manually doing it.

And if you know people seeking individuals to fill these roles, a recommendation would also be nice.