[Dumblydorr]

Try whatever it is you want as a side gig first. I've known a lot of humanities focused individuals from school, and by and large, they struggle mightily to find work and jobs to fill the hours. Many get part time side gig like work and live a meager existence. Others give up and look for something lucrative. And if you're passionate about those subjects as a mere hobby, side gigging will teach you whether you can actually make a career from it, before you leave tech.

A word of warning, the nice jobs in your target fields are very very hard to get, you'll probably struggle to compete if you're not focused on writing and humanities since school. You may shoot your resume into fifty black holes before anyone gives you the time of day, probably because every opening gets hundreds of resumes for something like Literature Critic or Staff Writer.

In the end, that's all prudence allowing you to keep your lucrative tech job while experimenting. But if you really can't stomach tech, maybe you should try a hybrid idea. Get into tech journalism or writing about tech first, and then use that stepping stone to write about whatever else later on.

Good luck!!

[wpietri]

I second this. The fields the OP mentions in particular are all quite hard to making a living at right now. Journalism is especially brutal these days due to the decline of newspapers. Keeping the (lucrative!) tech job while building up skills, connections, and a track record is an excellent way to do it. Tech is also the kind of field where you can do part-time consulting and still make enough to get by, which can really help with a transition into the new career.

As for people who have done it, an example that comes to mind is Daniel Suarez, an IT consultant turned novelist: https://daniel-suarez.com/

I'd also recommend digging around for John Scalzi's recommendations. He's a former finance journalist turned novelist, so he has a lot of good advice about the practical and financial side of becoming a full-time writer. For example:

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2008/02/11/unasked-for-advice-to...