Hey! My name is Zulie. I'm a product storyteller at Medium (see my official Medium account for official Medium news), but in my free time I still like to write on my "just for fun" profile here.

What's my villain origin story? I started writing fiction at age 8 and pursued my passion to become a novelist until age 9, whereupon I learned it was actually very hard to become a successful novelist.

I never fully gave up on writing, but I did go in different directions (biology, tech support, account management) since alas, I needed money to live and provide for my cats.

I started writing on Medium in 2018. In late 2019, I moved back home with my parents to pursue a dream job. When the pandemic hit in 2020, I was in a surprisingly good and lucky position: no rent and plenty of savings (thanks Mom and Dad!), a reliable stable of freelance writing clients who'd found me on Medium (here's my tutorial on how I did that), a growing YouTube channel and newsletter, and of course, this Medium blog. I was in the best possible position to take a risk, so I did: I went fully freelance/entrepreneurial.

I loved this life and it worked well for me. I was financially comfortable and creatively stimulated. But over time, I found I was getting bored. I worked from home, and I was lonely. And also, while I loved the writing aspects of my job, I hated the content creation grind of needing to post every day or week to stay relevant. I found I was getting really burned out and tired of it all, so I decided to "quit" by getting a full time job again.

Starting in January 2024, I had a brief stint as a content creator for a small telecomms company, but when I saw an opportunity, I took a chance and I pitched Medium on hiring me as a product storyteller. The rest is, well, not history because it's in the future, but here we are!