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A friend and I recently decided on our ‘words’ for 2020. Hers was bravery — as she was holding back on certain projects for fear of failure, and mine was stability — as the last decade of my life was marked by constant upheaval and change, and I need a different focus now. Admittedly, I was never quite into the whole let’s-reflect-and-be-hopeful-for-the-new-year thing that most people love to do at this time of the year, but my feelings on this seem to be evolving.
So in this last post of 2019, I’m following the herd and taking stock of my technical writing journey that began this year.
A brand new docs world
Yes, 2019 was the year I took my first steps into technical writing. I discovered an affiliation for technical writing while in university last year, and after graduating earlier this year, I decided to pursue this path (instead of Translation as was the original goal). I’ve learned to speak funny like, ‘I’m trying to sync my fork with the upstream repo!’ or ‘I just pushed an amend on that last commit!’ and this gibberish actually makes sense now.
It’s been rewarding thus far and has given me the chance to be creative and work independently — two things that I look for in work. You guys, this is huge for me! It’s kinda been a third career change, but to be honest a career wasn’t really a priority for me until now — hey, we’re all on our own journeys.
Google’s Season of Docs
Getting accepted into SoD was definitely a confidence-booster as a new entrant to this field. It felt good being part of the program in its inaugural year as well. I got to know and work with my mentors from Oppia (the organization I worked for), get exposed to open source and GitHub, create documentation from scratch, submit pull requests and master the friggin’ command line! 1 I had such a positive experience that my mentors and I mutually agreed to extend our relationship, and I am going to continue to write and make videos for Oppia. It was so gratifying to learn heaps of new skills that I felt compelled to start up this blog and document what I was learning (open source it, if you will!).
First technical writing job
I got my first tech writing day job with a software company that provided a different experience to SoD. The constant iteration has been the biggest challenge here as well as pinning down someone long enough to get an explanation of a product feature. The positives are that I get to continue to make video tutorials in addition to writing, and I will also get to flex my translation muscles at some point as the guides need to be written in French as well.
Looking ahead
2019 laid the groundwork for stepping into this field which neatly ties in to my stability focus for 2020, as I will continue building up tech writing experience in my jobs and absorbing skills when I can. And, it’s not quite technical writing-related, but I really want to create a video with animated motion graphics. I dabbled around with Adobe After Effects and created a short Christmas video for my company which got me interested in the myriad of features on there! It’s pretty overwhelming and intimidating to first get into it, but I’m hoping the YouTube tutorials out there will guide me along.
During a recent work meeting — on a slide introducing new employees — I saw my name with ‘Technical Writer’ written below it. There was something about seeing it typed up there that made me have this omg-I’m-actually-a-technical-writer moment. It’s been a long journey getting here!
I wish you a year filled with whatever it is you need most in your life right now.
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