Hi there,
this is my 13th newsletter, I just checked: I sent out the very first newsletter in April 2018. It was quite fitting since this is my birthday month too.
A year ago, I talked about the name of my business and a little bit about my background (about which you can read on my about me page here https://urbanyarning.com/about) so I thought I’d tell you the story about how I decided to start tech editing.
After finishing the project I did while working at university, I had another job at a funding agency.
I needed to finish writing my doctoral thesis beside working that full time job which was boring quite soon after I started.
I had doubts about what I wanted to do and thought about it a lot. I found an online course about doing what you love and worked through it.
One exercise was a new kind of cv including everything you did in your life (not just to earn money but your hobbies too) and look for the common elements.
I found none, it was like a lot of threads running parallel but not crossing, not even touching each other. This was very frustrating.
The course recommended an online marketing course (opening once a year) if you wanted to start your own business and go deeper with everything we learned. But it is expensive and I was sure I didn’t want to start a new business.
I was on the lookout for a new job, if possible in a city I knew people in. And then my uncle died very suddenly. He was a farmer and had retired only 5 years earlier. He started to enjoy his life, travelling, making even more music and planning to learn to play the guitar just then because he didn’t have the time for it before he retired.
I’m very glad he could do the things he loved for a few years but I didn’t want to start living only after retirement. And then my favourite colleague wanted to talk to me. She started by saying: “You need to find a new job now. I’m pregnant.” - She knew it would be unbearable for me at work without her.
So I left my job without a plan except moving here. I thought about opening a yarn shop and took a class for women wanting to start a business. In that class I learned that a shop wasn’t likely to work in my current situation and so I needed a new idea because I had fallen in love with the idea of working for myself.
At that time I saw an advertisement for an online class on becoming a tech editor. Again and again I had thought about becoming an editor because I have a talent there. When I learned that there was a technical editor for knitting patterns I was curious and tried to find out how to become one. And then there was this class.
I took the class, liked the work and became a tech editor. And you know what? When I wrote my about me page I noticed that now all the things I did in my life fit together: The threads have become a fabric (knitted, obviously :-)).
What let you to designing? I’d love to hear your stories!
Talk soon,
Frauke
P.S.: And I’ll explain the subject line of this newsletter another time, promised :-)