How I Lost WordPress, Found Myself, and Came Back Stronger.

There’s a moment every developer remembers.

For me, it was watching a blank browser window respond to my code for the first time. No templates. No magic buttons. Just logic, effort, and a screen that suddenly made sense.

That feeling hooked me early.

Where It All Started

Back when I was studying at the J.P. Dawar Institute of Information Science and Technology, web development wasn’t just another subject. It became something I obsessed over. I broke things constantly. Syntax errors felt personal. Fixing them felt like winning a small war.

Somewhere in that phase, I stumbled into WordPress. At first, it looked simple. Then I looked closer. Hooks, filters, themes, plugins, performance problems. It wasn’t simple at all. It was powerful.

That curiosity eventually landed me at rtCamp.

If you’ve worked with WordPress seriously, you know the reputation. For me, it was a bootcamp disguised as a job. I moved fast from basics to deep internals. Custom themes. Plugin architecture. Performance at scale. Real-world problems with real consequences.

I was building things that mattered, and I loved it.

The Itch to Build Something of My Own

But there’s a phase many engineers hit.
The “what if I build something myself?” phase.

While I enjoyed software, I had this strange urge to create something physical. Something I could touch. Something that existed outside a browser.

So I did what, in hindsight, sounds a little crazy.

I stepped away from my keyboard and started a printing business.

I invested heavily. Two industrial-grade machines. Banners, wallpapers, stickers. The plan was to merge my design sense with real-world branding. Digital skills, physical output.

The first year was intense. Suddenly, bugs weren’t in code. They were in supply chains. Cash flow. Machine breakdowns. Client deadlines.

Some days felt great. Other days, I barely slept, wondering if I’d made a colossal mistake.

But I kept going.

When Everything Stopped

Then COVID happened.

If you run a physical business, you already know how this part goes.

No events. No foot traffic. No branding orders. The machines that once ran all day sat silent. The workshop felt empty in a way that was hard to explain.

Expenses didn’t stop. Orders did.

Watching something you built slowly grind to a halt, through no fault of your own, messes with you. I had to scale back hard. Cut losses. Accept that this chapter wasn’t going to end the way I imagined.

I stood at a crossroads with limited capital and fewer options.

The Quiet Realization

Lockdown does something interesting. It forces silence.

One day, I looked at the idle machines. Then I looked at my laptop.

The world outside was paused, but the internet wasn’t. Products were launching. Sites were scaling. Problems still need solving.

And that’s when it hit me.

I never stopped being a developer. I just walked away from the keyboard for a while.

WordPress wasn’t just a skill I had. It was home.

Coming Back to Code

I made a decision. I appointed a manager to handle the reduced printing operations and turned my focus back to development.

Restarting wasn’t easy. Tech moves fast. Standards change. Best practices evolve.

So I went back to learning properly. I joined rtCamp’s WordPress learning program to rebuild my foundation and catch up with modern practices.

Something surprising happened.

It didn’t feel like starting over.
It felt like picking up where I left off.

The joy came back quickly. Solving problems. Writing clean code. Thinking in systems again. That familiar satisfaction of making things work the right way.

Why the Detour Mattered

Looking back, the printing business wasn’t a failure.

It was a lesson.

Running a business taught me things no tutorial ever could. Risk. Ownership. Deadlines that hurt. Decisions that affect real people.

Today, when I build a plugin or architect a system, I think like a business owner, not just a developer. I understand why performance matters. Why stability matters. Why “just ship it” is sometimes the wrong call.

I’ve been on the other side of the screen.

Chapter Two

Today, I’m back where I belong, building with WordPress and writing better code, making more thoughtful decisions.

I’m deeply grateful to rtCamp for giving me the space and structure to rediscover my craft when I needed it most.

This isn’t a story about quitting and coming back.

It’s about learning who you are when things fall apart, and choosing to build again anyway.

Here’s to second chances, hard lessons, and a future written in code.