Man, 2015, huh? Thinking back to that year, it was a real mixed bag for me. I was deep in the grind, clocking in and out, doing the same old stuff day in and day out. Felt like I was just going through the motions, you know? Like a cog in a big machine, turning and turning, but not really going anywhere special. My job was stable enough, sure, paid the bills, but I kept getting this nagging feeling, this itch that there had to be more to it than just that. It wasn’t exactly a bad gig, but it definitely wasn’t sparking any joy, as folks say now. I remember looking at my screen, the same spreadsheets, the same reports, and just feeling this heavy sigh come over me.
I guess you could say I was at a bit of a crossroads, even if I didn’t fully realize it at the time. I was comfortable, maybe too comfortable. That comfort zone, it’s a killer, isn’t it? It lulls you into thinking everything’s fine, even when deep down, you know you’re capable of so much more. My potential, if you want to call it that, felt locked up, tucked away in some dusty corner of my brain. I’d see other folks, friends, colleagues, doing cool stuff, learning new skills, and a part of me would get this pang of envy, mixed with a healthy dose of “why not me?”
Then, something shifted. It wasn’t a sudden earthquake or anything dramatic. It was more like a slow, steady rumble. My older brother, he’d been bugging me for ages to help him out with his small online store. Nothing fancy, just basic stuff – setting up product pages, tweaking descriptions, dealing with some customer service emails. He was swamped, and I figured, why not? It was something different, at least. So, I started dipping my toes in. I’d finish my regular workday, get home, grab a quick bite, and then settle down to poke around his website. Didn’t know much about e-commerce, or even websites, really. Just point and click, trial and error.
I remember the first task he gave me was to upload a new batch of products. Seemed simple enough. But then I ran into the image sizing issue. All his photos were too big, wouldn’t load properly on the site. I was stumped. My first instinct was to just tell him I couldn’t do it, or that he needed to get someone else to resize them. But then, for some reason, I didn’t. I told myself, “Nah, this isn’t rocket science.” So, I hit up Google, typed in “how to resize images for website.” That’s where it all started, I guess. I fell down a rabbit hole.
I spent hours messing with different free online tools. Some were clunky, some crashed, some made the pictures look awful. But I kept at it. I watched a couple of shaky YouTube tutorials, taught myself the basics of a simple photo editor. I wasn’t just resizing; I was learning about compression, resolution, even a little bit about file types. Slowly, piece by piece, I started understanding how these things worked together. It was frustrating as heck sometimes, I won’t lie. I felt like throwing my laptop across the room more than once. But when I finally got those images looking crisp and loading fast on his site, man, that feeling was something else. A small victory, maybe, but it felt huge to me.
That little win, it lit something up inside me. It showed me that I could actually figure things out, even stuff I had no formal training in. I wasn’t just limited to what my 9-to-5 job dictated. From there, I started taking on more for his store. He needed product descriptions that sounded better, so I started reading up on copywriting. Not fancy stuff, just trying to make it sound appealing. Then he wanted better visibility, so I stumbled into basic SEO – keywords, meta descriptions, all that jargon. I didn’t know what any of it meant at first, but I kept digging, kept trying to make sense of it.
I remember one night, I was totally engrossed, deep into some forum about e-commerce marketing, and I looked up at the clock. It was pushing 2 AM. My usual self would be long asleep, dreading the alarm. But I wasn’t tired. I felt energized, my brain buzzing with ideas. That’s when it hit me: this wasn’t just a favor for my brother anymore. This was something I was genuinely enjoying, something that was challenging me in a way my regular job just wasn’t. I was learning, I was creating, and I was seeing direct results from my efforts. It felt like I was actually building something, rather than just maintaining it.
Realizing the Shift
That year, 2015, became this accidental turning point. It wasn’t about quitting my old job or anything dramatic like that immediately. It was more fundamental. It was about realizing that I had skills, an ability to learn and adapt, that I hadn’t been utilizing. All those little tasks, those late nights wrestling with image sizes and keywords, they weren’t just chores. They were me, chipping away at that locked potential. Each problem I solved, each new thing I understood, it was like a little click, unlocking another piece of what I could actually do.
By the end of that year, I hadn’t just helped my brother’s store grow a bit; I had fundamentally changed my own perspective on work and my capabilities. I started approaching my main job differently too, looking for problems I could solve with my newfound tinkering mindset. I wasn’t just waiting for instructions; I was looking for opportunities to apply what I was learning. It didn’t make me rich overnight, didn’t land me a fancy new title, but it planted a seed. It showed me that if I just kept poking, kept trying, kept learning, there was a whole lot more I could achieve than I ever gave myself credit for. That feeling of being stuck? It just started to fade away, replaced by a quiet confidence that I could figure things out, whatever came next.
