The resignation letter sat in my drafts folder for three weeks before I hit send. Three weeks of staring at those two paragraphs that would officially end my relationship with spreadsheets, quarterly projections, and the peculiar anxiety that comes from watching conversion rates like a hawk.
Today marks exactly one month since I walked out of that glass-walled office in Vologda for the last time, carrying a cardboard box that somehow managed to contain a year of my professional life. The spider plant didn’t make it through the transition, but the leather notebook from London survived. Funny how the things that seemed least important turn out to matter most.
Everyone keeps asking the same question: how do you leave a stable marketing position for… what exactly? The honest answer is messier than most people want to hear. You don’t leave security for uncertainty because you have a master plan. You leave because staying feels like wearing a perfectly tailored coat that belongs to someone else.
The data was compelling, as data tends to be. Solid salary, clear career trajectory, respectable LinkedIn profile. But somewhere between analyzing consumer behavior patterns and optimizing email campaigns, I realized I’d become perfect at reading other people’s stories while completely neglecting my own.
Each morning now, instead of opening analytics dashboards, I open a blank page. The cursor blinks like a heartbeat — expectant, patient, mildly accusatory. Some days I write about the woman at the coffee shop who orders the same complicated drink while scrolling through job listings. Other days I sketch the hands of my nail clients, trying to capture the stories their manicures tell about their lives.
Nobody warns you that creative freedom comes with its own brand of terror. When your day isn’t structured by meetings and deadlines, you discover exactly how many ways there are to avoid creating. I’ve deep-cleaned my flat twice, reorganized my nail polish collection by undertone temperature, and learned more about succulent care than any reasonable person should know.
But between these elaborate procrastination rituals, something interesting happens. Stories start emerging — not the polished case studies I used to write for campaigns, but raw, unedited observations about the gap between who people are and who they present themselves to be.
I’ve filled almost sixty pages now. Nothing revolutionary, mostly fragments. A paragraph about the influencer whose hands shake slightly when she’s not holding her phone. A scene about a businessman who requests the same neutral shade because it reminds him of his mother’s old china. Character sketches of people who trust me with their secrets while I paint their nails.
The hardest part isn’t learning to write fiction — it’s unlearning the habit of measuring everything against predetermined metrics. In marketing, success has measurable parameters: click-through rates, engagement percentages, conversion statistics. Stories don’t work that way. They exist in spaces between data points, in the pause before someone answers a question, in the color someone chooses when they think nobody’s watching.
My MSc trained me to identify target demographics and optimize for desired outcomes. But the people in my notebook refuse to fit into neat consumer segments. They’re messy, contradictory, human in ways that market research can’t capture.
Every morning feels like a small act of rebellion against my former life. Instead of checking email immediately, I make coffee and sit with the notebook. Sometimes words come easily, flowing like well-mixed polish across clean nails. Other days I stare at blank pages until my eyes hurt, wondering if I’ve made an expensive mistake.
But here’s what I’m learning: the fear of creating something imperfect is just another form of market optimization thinking. The stories don’t need to be immediately brilliant or commercially viable. They just need to be honest.
The woman whose Hermès bag couldn’t hide her exhaustion? She’s becoming a character. The marketing executive who’d rather paint watercolors? She’s teaching me something about the cost of playing safe.
I’m still figuring out what comes next. The savings account has an expiration date, and eventually reality will require more than notebook entries and nail appointments. But for now, I’m allowing myself this: the luxury of creating something that doesn’t need to justify its existence through metrics.
Each blank page feels both terrifying and exhilarating — like standing at the edge of something you can’t measure but might, if you’re brave enough, be worth the jump.
Posted from my kitchen table, where stories grow slowly and without permission
— Writer Julia Zolotova
