The 20th century rewarded you for keeping it quiet. The next one won't.

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When kids are asked “What do you want to be when you grow up?”, the response would be one of the following 3.

“I want to be a Doctor”, “I want to be an Astronaut”, or “I want to be an Engineer”.

A few outliers would exist in the form of kids wanting to become Teachers or pro-athletes, but that’s about it.

I used to think this was a problem with kids. I now think it is a problem with the system that raises them.

There is no entrance exam for being a writer. No campus placement for someone who notices things.

So the kids who could draw became engineers who occasionally sketch on weekends. The ones who wrote became consultants who are good at slide decks. The ones who built things became managers of people who build things.

Your professional course was not a mistake. Your first job was not a mistake. They were the rational outputs of a system designed for a different century.

For most of the 20th century, that was fine. The same credential that got you in could be defended for a career. The institutions you belonged to held their shape. Knowledge accumulated slowly enough that what you learned at 22 was still useful at 52.

But that world is fast coming to an end.

The pace at which AI is absorbing professional categories is hard to keep up with even for the people building it. Knowledge is no longer the moat it once was.

What this means for someone in their late thirties is uncomfortable.

The strange inversion is that the things that used to feel indulgent are now the more defensible bets. A point of view. A body of writing. A craft that carries your name on it. Work that cannot be fully separated from the person who made it.

The identity which always made the inner child happy but thought it wouldn’t earn enough to support your current lifestyle.

I write this as someone who hid one for thirty three years.

I am dyslexic. Through school, writing was the thing I avoided. Every red mark on a spelling test taught me that words were not mine to play with. I built a career that needed almost no writing - engineer, analyst, consultant - where the deliverables were mainly models and decks.

Then autocorrect removed the barrier. I started writing to think, then writing because I noticed I was thinking more clearly when I did.

For the past two years, I have written at least 200 words a day consistently, outside of my day job. Newsletter, YouTube scripts, journal, anything. I never once called myself a writer.

Because writer was not what I was paid for. Writer was not what the family knew me as.

What I missed for most of those years was this: every meaningful piece of work I have done in the last three years either came through writing or used it. The hidden identity was already doing the heavy lifting. I just refused to name it.

The thing you do when the work day ends. The thing your friends ask you about because you know more than you should. The thing you have been doing for years without noticing it was a thing.

That is usually the identity that has been waiting.

Bringing it forward does not mean leaving your job. It means letting it occupy more space than it currently does.

Writing under your own name. Building something small in public. Letting the person you are at home start showing up at work too.

It will feel indulgent for a while. The 20th century training runs deep.

But the strategies that used to feel safe - more credentials, deeper specialisation, quieter execution - are now the slower exits. And the things that used to look risky - a voice, a craft, a body of work that is recognisably yours - are now the things that travel with you when the role doesn't.

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I hope you enjoyed this week's version. See you next week.

Best wishes,

Nimalan.