Tales from a Bruised Mind

When I was just a little kid, I loved writing about things, but I also loved mechanical things, especially cars. I decided at a very early stage of life that I wanted to combine the two together and write about cars for a living. I was so passionate and so full of excitement. I didn’t ever want my dreams to come crashing down.

And thankfully for me, they didn’t.

By 2015, I had done well enough at school to get into QUT’s journalism school. By 2018, I had successfully completed said journalism degree. By 2019, I had already interned for MOTOR and Wheels magazines. Before COVID hit Australia, I had worked as a cadet journalist for the insurance company, RACQ. And then when the world eventually came back to some form of normality, I moved to Sydney to fully invest in the dream and worked full time as a motoring writer and later YouTube presenter.

I had so many great experiences, learnt a lot and has the opportunity to drive so many awesome cars: so why did I give it up?

I ultimately had to be realistic about what dreams are in the real world

I had dreamed for a long time of my perfect job: driving, presenting and reviewing cars coming into the Australian market. I wanted to help Australians in making the right decision when it came to buying a new car. I wanted to make the automotive space a better one for all.

Motoring journalism is the niche of all niche jobs. Almost like a fantasy. It was so niche I was told time and time again that I’d never get there – to get to the stage of actually having full-time employment in motoring journalism.

To be honest, full-time work is hard enough to obtain in a typical job field, let alone the motoring journalism industry. There are probably 50 to 70 jobs in Australia for this type of work.

Motoring journalism in Australia boils down to a few key things:

• It’s a small, tight-knit community
• It’s often high pressure and high stress work
• It doesn’t pay overly well
• Everybody knows everybody, like a sort of club
• News travels fast

So while I had my dream job, as is always the case, it wasn’t perfect. Long hours and the highly competitive nature of the job made reality come crashing to my dream more often than not.

Like a lot of new jobs, at the beginning you look at things with excitement and with very rose tinted glasses. But eventually, you start to see things for what they are, and that can either be good, or not-so-good.

Transitioning to a new job

Despite what I have said above, my time in the motoring journalist space was insightful, fun and very rewarding. I loved being able to immerse myself in new cars and do things that many other journalists would never get to experience. 90 percent of the time, it was pretty damn ace!

But when I was approached for a new opportunity in public relations, it made me stop and think: is this dream all that it is made up to be? Is the stress really worth it? And, finally, is this the life I want to lead?

I never expected to get through all of the interview stage. And I never expected to actually be offered the job. I loved my journalism work, but I felt a new challenge was on the horizon. I was with my old job for three and a half years. I had learned so much, had written thousands of stories and probably hundreds of thousands of words.

So while I had the dream, I am very happy to still be working in the automotive space, supporting Geely as it launches in Australia.

It’s different, sure, but it’s still the dream. It’s just not all fast cars.

More to come,

Zak