The story, so far

Hi, I'm Boyko, and this is the first blog post on my website. Allow me to be a little more real and personal.

My journey started at the University of Sofia in Bulgaria, where I studied Public Relations. It wasn't my first choice. Journalism was, but I didn't get in, so PR became the fallback.

It didn't take long to realize that public relations wasn't for me. I spent most of my university years trying to graduate rather than build a career in the field. An internship at a PR agency only confirmed I was on the wrong path.

In my third year, I landed another internship, this time at Top Gear Bulgaria, a magazine media company. There, I wrote articles, and for the first time in a while, I genuinely enjoyed what I was doing. Writing had always been something I liked and something I was pretty good at. The internship didn't turn into a full-time position, so I figured I'd just finish my degree and move on.

Funny enough, I never seriously considered digital marketing back then. I didn't know much about it. Maybe that was my fault. Maybe it was the university's inability to show us more than a couple of career paths. Maybe it was both.

After graduating with my bachelor's degree in Public Relations, I found myself in a very different position from many of my classmates. I didn't have a job waiting for me, and I had no desire to pursue a career in PR.

So I asked myself a simple question: What do I actually enjoy doing?

The answer was writing.

I started freelancing for an international online media company called Bright Side, writing articles on everything from entertainment and current events to health topics (always backed by reliable sources, of course). It was enjoyable, flexible, and honestly a pretty great job. The only downside was that it didn't pay well.

So I started looking elsewhere.

And this is where my career went... spectacularly off track.

I joined a BPO company as an agent. It wasn't exactly customer support, but it was close enough. My job was transcribing English audio recordings.

I know. Riveting stuff.

For a while, I balanced both jobs. I'd finish my 9-to-5, go home, and spend the evening writing articles. Unsurprisingly, that wasn't sustainable. Eventually, I made the executive decision to say goodbye to the last remaining ounce of creativity in my work life and quit the writing job to focus on my "main" career.

To be fair, I worked hard. Within six months, I was promoted to Team Leader. It was challenging, and it taught me a lot about leadership, responsibility, and the workplace in general.

The problem was... There wasn't much actual work.

Sure, I had teams to manage and KPIs to monitor, but most of my responsibilities could be wrapped up within a couple of days. After that, there was very little left to do. I wasn't learning anything new, I wasn't developing skills that would help me long term, and I wasn't growing professionally.. I'll spare you the finer details.

Eventually, I realized I wasn't happy there. The project itself wasn't doing particularly well either, and in the end, I left the company. Technically, I was let go by mutual agreement. I received a generous severance package and decided to take it.

Suddenly, I was unemployed, with enough savings not to worry about work for a few months.

So naturally, did I immediately start learning new skills, take courses, or apply for jobs?

No. I relaxed. I was lazy. I enjoyed life for a while.

Sometimes I wonder whether that was the right decision. Looking back, those few months probably made me feel a couple of years younger. But, unsurprisingly, money isn't infinite.

Eventually, it was time to find another job.

I started applying and, if I'm being honest, I was cutting it pretty close financially. I was becoming increasingly desperate to find something. Anything.

That's how I ended up where I am today: a Workforce Management Specialist, working in Capacity Planning and Forecasting.

Yeah... I bet you didn't expect that. Neither did I.

Almost everything about the role was new to me, and I'm still going through internal training. I don't think there are many jobs I'd personally find more boring than this one. No offense to anyone who enjoys it, it just isn't for me.

Ironically, though, starting this job gave me something incredibly valuable.

Perspective.

It finally pushed me to stop wasting years doing work I didn't enjoy simply because it paid the bills. Work doesn't have to feel monotonous. It doesn't have to be something you endure until Friday. That realization made me finally admit it was time to pursue the career I'd quietly wanted for years but kept talking myself out of:

That's when I finally admitted to myself that it was time to pursue the career I'd quietly wanted for years but kept talking myself out of: digital marketing.

Why I never took the digital marketing route

It never felt like a realistic path from where I was standing. I had plenty of reasons (or, more accurately, excuses). My favorite one was: "I don't have any marketing experience. Nobody's going to hire me."

Then I'd think maybe I should start with an internship. Immediately followed by: "No... I'm too old for that."(I'm 30, by the way.)

Those two thoughts kept me stuck for years.

So I stayed where I was. My Team Leader role felt stable, until it wasn't. Starting over seemed expensive, especially at this stage of my life.

Ironically, I felt exactly the same way before starting my current job. And then I did it anyway.

What changed, and why now?

I had a shift in mindset. Or, if we're being dramatic, a grand realization.

"I can't keep spending my life working jobs I don't enjoy and don't see a future in."

That thought lit a fire under me unlike anything I'd felt before. I don't want to wake up years from now wondering what would've happened if I'd simply started. Maybe all those excuses over the years were really just me waiting for the fear to disappear.

Turns out, it doesn't. You just start anyway.

I'm doing this while working full-time, which means some weeks progress will be slower than I'd like. But slower, started beats fast, and hypothetical. I'd rather be a few months into an honest, visible learning process than another year into thinking about starting one.

What I'm doing to achieve my goals

So, what's the plan?

Right now, I'm working through Google's Foundations of Digital Marketing & E-commerce certification. Alongside that, I'm committing to writing consistently, not just about my journey, but also about what I'm learning, what's working, and what isn't. This website is my way of documenting that process.

It won't just be a personal blog. I want it to become a place where I share useful things I learn from courses, books, videos, and hands-on experience. I'll also use it to practice SEO by applying what I'm learning to my own content instead of just reading about it. Eventually, I'd like this website to become both a learning playground and a portfolio.

I'll also be documenting projects I work on, including Mossway, an app a friend and I are building that turns self-improvement into an old-school RPG. Daily habits become "Side Quests," which is actually where the inspiration for this blog came from.

We genuinely believe in the app, and I believe the marketing skills I developed along the way can help us get it in front of the right people.

Ultimately, I want to build a portfolio and a skill set strong enough to help me land my first role in digital marketing.

I don't have a fixed timeline. I don't know exactly when I'll be ready. But I do know that I'm motivated, excited, and finally moving in a direction that feels right.

The end goal? One day, I'll have my own digital marketing agency. And it'll live on this very website.

Why "Side Quest"?

Because that's exactly what this is. Right now, this journey exists alongside my full-time job, not instead of it. But anyone who's played RPGs knows that side quests are often where the best stories happen. I'm hoping this side quest eventually becomes the main quest. Either way, it starts here.

If you're also trying to learn something new while balancing a full-time job, I hope you'll find something useful in following along.

Thanks for reading. I hope you'll follow along. See you in the next one.