From Rock Bottom to Self-Reliant: My 11 Years with WordPress.com

The Weight of Starting Out

Eleven years ago, when I was at one of the lowest stages of my life, I signed up for WordPress.com. It was a time when I was far away from home, in a completely new place with no real friends and virtually no support system. To make matters worse, I had just flunked my university exams. I had almost given up on everything. I began to deeply realize that life was not easily meant for people like me who didn’t come from big money. I had to fight to get every single thing that I liked; and even then, fighting didn’t always mean that I actually got it. But a boy had to try.

Studying in a good school alongside kids whose parents earned in lakhs, while my dad made just one annually (around $1,000), meant I didn’t have many of the exciting things or experiences they had. I could only imagine what it genuinely felt like to have those things. Sometimes, I was consumed by the worry that someone would discover my financial reality and ridicule me for it, but thankfully, that never happened. Maybe I was just exceptionally good at covering it up, or perhaps we were all simply too innocent to realize it back then.

Hitting Rock Bottom and Finding a Spark

Then came college, and things somehow continued to decline. I didn’t know it could get this bad, but it did, and it taught me tough lessons that I will never forget. Today, no person can break me with their words because that experience toughened my heart so completely. It was exactly at that breaking point that I was seriously thinking about dropping out of university altogether and starting a regular job that didn’t require any academic credentials.

That is exactly when I came across WordPress.com and started tinkering with their free plan. I immersed myself and learned a great deal about the basics of blogging, website management, the WordPress ecosystem, digital marketing, and so much more. Around that same time, my parents made the decision to switch me to a better university, which finally put me back on track to completing my undergraduate degree without any further issues. After coming from a university with rigid and illogical policies, this new one felt like an absolute godsend. It was a breeze to manage, and I ended up making some of the very best friends that I could ever ask for in life.

Building a Foundation for the Future

Once I was finally done with college, I landed my first job at a local conference management company, relying entirely on the skills I had taught myself by starting with WordPress.com. At that time, I never knew that one single platform could be the crutch I needed to help me walk again when I had fallen so far down. That random blog that I started on a whim ended up teaching me a wealth of invaluable lessons later on.

I don’t work on my blog as often these days, nor am I particularly proud of the early content that I shared back then. But it is undeniably the technical and marketing skills that I learned while doing all of this that helped me secure my first couple of jobs right out of college. More importantly, it gave me back the deep sense of confidence that I had completely lost.

Now, I am in a way better place in life – a place where I don’t need to think twice before I want to buy something I truly like. I am no longer a burden, nor does anything in my life feel like a burden to me anymore. And honestly, it is all thanks to that one small blog I created eleven years ago on WordPress.com!