To say that I've been writing ever since I can remember may be an understatement. Because although I learned how to speak first, my love for telling stories -- and occasionally illustrating them -- came soon after. From the age of four, I seemed to have a knack for letting my imagination run wild, and I made it a point to write down everything I could, wherever I could and in the only way I knew how. I can't necessarily say that my grammar and punctuation skills were up to par then, but I tried. I really did. And I kept trying ever since. By the time I got to college and began taking a journalism-based editing course in pursuit of a communication degree, something else clicked: English was not my first language, and yet it and its proper use seemed to come naturally to me. I was no longer bored in class and more than willing to pay attention. The words of my professor -- a newspaper buff who got offended by mistakes and the misuse of the AP style guide -- became personally relevant and unlike anything else I've studied in school so far; even though I might not have realized it then, that editing course forever changed the way I thought about and practiced the written word.

As most careers ago, mine didn't start out the way I assumed it would. Creating compelling content for an advertising agency sounded brilliant on paper, but the path of a copywriter wasn't one I was prepared to take. Instead, I found myself walking down a road more traveled and, in my mind's eye, a bit more hospitable. Before long, I became an event professional for a series of well-known hotel brands, learning and growing in new and exciting ways, and I haven't really looked back since. During those years, communication became even more important to me. In an industry that prided itself mostly on customer service, I wanted to leave a different mark. So I tried to search for ways in which I could speak up and make others take notice of what I had to say. Tools, resources, emails, presentations and standard operating procedures -- known to most hoteliers as SOPs -- had to look great and sound even greater. And it was up to me to help them reach their full potential. So I wrote and proofread anything and everything I could even as the words of that professor I mentioned rang in my ears. In retrospect, my efforts may have seemed self-indulgent, but they hadn't gone unnoticed. Minor initiatives eventually turned into meaningful projects and collaborations; I found myself writing articles and biographies for a compelling menu magazine, spearheading an engaging and well-received monthly bulletin, enticing worldwide travelers with original travel blogs and rolling out various announcements and collateral.

One step in the right direction was all it took for me to take my talents to the next level. I could now combine my newfound appreciation of hospitality with my forever fondness for writing. Shortly after joining the local chapter of an international meeting planners' association, I signed up to serve as a content writer and editor of a member newsletter committee. Once again, I found myself in a place where I could take something and reinvent it, make it my own and release it into the world. The newsletter was a hit, bringing about the recognition I had sought for so long and the realization that the alternate career path I had taken all those years ago had been the right one all along. Even now, after many years of learning, growing and hoping to end up where I felt I was always meant to be, I am finally walking in the footsteps of a professional marketer at a global hotel brand, seeing the two paths of communications and hospitality I've been traveling for so long merge in ways I could have never dreamed about or imagined.

In the modern day and age, it seems like everything can easily be solved by technology. But if you ask anyone who can easily spot a misplaced apostrophe, an incorrectly capitalized word or a run-on sentence, he or she will tell you that writing may very well have become a lost art. Yes, the need for spell checks is greater than ever, but so is the search for writers and editors who care -- and dare --- to stick to what they know. Just like many of you, I know what I love, and even though none of us can anticipate where life takes us next, I am also willing to take the first of many steps to new  beginnings.

-Diana Balakirov