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It’s no secret that the last three years have been the most transformative of my life. Ever since I can remember, and my mom claims since I was five, I’ve known that I wanted to dedicate my life to the biological and earth sciences, to fight to preserve our natural world.
For a longer time, I thought that I could only achieve this dream through an academic career, so I went on to get a bachelor’s, master’s, and PhD that aligned with my life purpose. Then, I started working for universities as an academic. I was doing science, which I loved. So everything was good, right?
But it wasn’t.
First of all, after my children were born, the academic lifestyle didn’t fit what my family needed. But there was something else: I didn’t feel like I was contributing to creating a better world by teaching and publishing in peer-reviewed journals.
Hence, I started a long and not always-easy journey outside of academia, a world that I had always called home, and into the unknown. What was I going to do?
Some of my peers recommended that I switch to data analysis. They paid well, and I was good at statistics and coding, so why not?
While it sounded appealing, there was a big problem: it didn’t align with my life purpose. Was there something else I could do?
I jumped heads first into the nonprofit sector and then into the public sector, working on environmental assessments. Later on, I started my own science communication side business. Once I took some time to look back, I realized that I’d never felt so fulfilled. It was as if I was finally doing something to help the world, and it felt amazing.
It was during this time of soul-searching that I discovered the book “Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and happy life,” by Hector Garcia and Francesc Miralles. All of a sudden, everything made sense… |
