Career transition

[simplygaurang]

Hi,

My name is Gaurang. I have been working as a software engineer in Tokyo after graduation since last 7 years.

I have reached a point where I no longer feel enthusiastic to continue working in IT and doing a regular 9-5 job.

I have tried to figure out what instead I would like to do as my career by taking career compatibility tests, doing dialogues about my career path but have not found a clear answer yet.

I have been feeling so unfulfilled in past couple of years that I do not want to spend rest of my life working like this. So I am quitting my job this month end.

I feel scared and hopeful at the same time. I do not know whether this decision will turn out right or not but from now on I do not want to work for someone else as I find it is very limiting for me.
I want to start working on my own. But right now I have no idea what I can offer and have no experience in running business (pretty good state for adventure).

As you can see the hurdle to overcome for me is defining a clear and specific direction.
I believe I need to ask different questions to myself than what I am asking. That is the reason I am posting this in forum to get new ideas/questions.

If anyone has been in a situation similar to me I would be really thankful if they can give me some guidance how did they figure things out in this situation.

Everyone else who have pointers/resources for me to move ahead I would be thankful to them if they can point me to them.

Once I figure out the way from this situation I would post my experience/solutions so that it could be useful to anyone in a similar situation.

Thanks all.

Gaurang.

[Lupe]

Do what Steve did. Blog.

[sbdiane]

Hi Guarang,
I was in a similar situation. I quit and then went for a very long walk. I hoped that an answer would come to me on my walk. Unfortunately, the only answer I've had so far has been to keep walking.

I have attempted to freelance my skills, but they are too specialized from working at big companies to be of any value to people. I'm going to take some classes to expand my skills and hopefully get another boring 9-5 job in IT, but at least maybe doing something a little different next time around.