The Passerine Post

It is February 9th, 11:30 PM. Seattle has been warmer than it was last year – something that my electricity bill is thankful for. And with the encouragement of my wonderful fiance and lazy (but also wonderful) cat, I have finally created the blog I hope to use for developing my portfolio, setting the stage for a new career path for myself.

I am, of course, compelled to reflect on my mission with this blog, along with all of the decisions I’ve made leading up to it. I’m certain it’s normal to feel a level of self-doubt – and yet, here I am, feeling nearly certain that I’ve made a terrible mistake.

About three months ago, I wandered onto North Seattle College’s campus, reeling from having lost my job and spiraling into a depressive episode. What was I doing with my life? Where was this ship going, and how could I start the process of getting the wheel back into my own hands? It is a question everyone else my age is asking themselves, and it almost certainly isn’t the first time they’ve asked it. Where else to go, then, than the college campus half a mile away from my apartment?

I was lucky to immediately wander into NSCC’s Health Sciences and Student Resources buildings – an obvious place to start if you’re looking at the name of the building, which I wasn’t. And luckier still, a student spotted me looking like a lost dog and asked if I needed help. I said that I was thinking about becoming a student and didn’t know where to start. They responded by directing me to Katherine Yuko-Frye, one of the directors of the BE-STEM program.

Soft-spoken and kind, Katherine listened to me ramble about my disdain for my past two years of customer service work, how desperately I missed working in science and how I wished to regain my motivation to write. I told her that I figured I’d go back to school – but I was terrified about going into a field and discovering I hated that, too. She listened thoughtfully, and then when I finished, asked, “well, have you ever considered becoming a science writer?”

A science writer. It was such a simple title that I was surprised I hadn’t thought of it before. Why not just combine my two biggest passions into a single career? But of course, such a path raised more questions. I knew how to become a scientist, but I didn’t know anything about being a writer, at least not in a way that felt real. And what does a science writer even do? Is this a crazy decision to make in the midst of a growing AI bubble? It would be just a few weeks after enrolling in school that The Washington Post would lay off more than 300 reporters – why put myself in the middle of that?

“You’re doing that thing again,” my fiancé told me. “Where you find reasons not to do something you want to do.”

And, of course, they’re right. I am liable to explain myself out of something I’m excited for. That doesn’t mean that my questions are irrelevant – my partner was quick to note that such questions indicate that I’m being clever and reasonable – but it’s not like I’m a stranger to difficult work. Customer service has treated me (and everyone else in it) extremely poorly. The difference between this path and customer service, both undervalued and commodified, is stark: I actually like one of them.

There is an urge in me to gesture towards the grand things that I could do. Imagine me, writing headlines for a major paper on why this fall’s flu vaccine is revolutionary for the way it was developed; dropping exposés on academic fraud and getting falsified papers retracted; hell, maybe I’d one day earn a Pulitzer. Lofty goals, and ones that feed on my urge to succeed in a way that I’ve not felt since I left school.

But I know that it is far more likely my name will not really be remembered by my readers. I’ll write updates about start-ups for journals that will become defunct, and I’ll have my work scrapped by editors for not meeting standards. Such is the reality of a writing career. The important part is keeping in mind that these realities aren’t failures – and as long as I’m still doing something I enjoy, there is no ‘fail state’.

To quote the late Doctor Stephanie Chaseen on her blog ScienceGeekGirl: “I certainly haven’t gone from point A to point B. I don’t think there is a point B, point B keeps changing. I just kind of sniff around and go in the direction that feels good. That’s how I got here. Sometimes I worry that I should try to do things that “build a career.” But life’s too short to do things just because you have to. I’ve gotten along very well by doing things that I enjoy, and because I enjoy them, I end up being valuable.”