Somebody Somewhere

Note: this was originally published in Weighted Tangents, my Substack newsletter, which you can subscribe to here.

Having spent the last year gorging myself on “middle-aged white woman trying to find herself—but make it quirky” television I regret to inform you that I, too, am a middle-aged white woman trying to find herself. This realization has been a shock to me because—ignoring the knot in my neck and the weird pain in my ankle every time I go down stairs and the fact that a glass of wine will knock me out for a week—I still feel like I’m in my early 30s.

I’ve invested the last 18 months in exploring the uncertainty around what my career was, or should be, only to realize that the question I really wanted answers to was: what is my vocation?

Gilbert defines hobbies, jobs, careers, and vocation as:

—A hobby: something that you do purely for pleasure; the stakes are zero, and it’s not something you monetize.

—A job: you have to have a job! It doesn’t have to be awesome, it doesn’t have to fulfill you, it doesn’t have to be joyful, it just has to pay.

—A career: a job that you are passionate about and that you love. You’re willing to make sacrifices and work extra hours because you believe in the mission of your career. You should love your career or not have one.

—A vocation: a calling, the voice of the universe in your ear saying “I want you to do this thing.” The highest possible pursuit you can do. Nobody can give it to you, and nobody can take it away from you.

Almost a decade ago I broke into the data science scene and started building my career with two big goals in mind: work at RStudio and work at Kaggle. These goals seemed lofty and aspirational enough that I figured they would keep me busy for at least 15 years.

I accomplished both before I was 40.

Besides the hollow feeling of “what next?” that I felt lurking over my shoulder, I was deeply unhappy in the career path I had built for myself. At my lowest point, depressed and miserable, I started to thrash. It felt like everything I knew to be true about myself was a lie, and I no longer trusted my decision-making capabilities. If I didn’t belong at RStudio, if I didn’t really belong in data science spaces, where did I belong?

And so I started trying on careers. Maybe I was a game developer. Or maybe I was a future CMO. Maybe I was a machine learning engineer or a C# developer. Maybe I was an artist or a graphic designer or an animator. Maybe I was a filmmaker. Maybe I was a writer. Maybe I was anything I wanted to be, and if that was the case how could I avoid getting buried alive under the unbearable heaviness of unlimited choices?

I’d seen Gilbert’s video numerous times, but the message I needed to hear hadn’t quite sunk in until I stopped focusing on defining a career, and instead focused on understanding my vocation—the thing that I’m called to do in the world, regardless of whether or not anybody cares. When I thought deeply about what my vocation was, it was clear: I’m a teacher, an educator.

There are very few things that make me feel fully alive in this world, where when I’m doing them every atom in my body is vibrating with life and acting in concert with one another. Teaching is that thing for me. Teaching is my identity.

All of these other things—animation, motion design, drawing and painting, writing, creating podcasts and youtube videos, lectures, live-streaming—these are all tools available to me as an educator, but they don’t define me.

Does it matter what I teach? I don’t know. Over my career I’ve loved teaching wilderness survival, video games, biology, chemistry, anatomy and physiology, molecular biology, data science, R programming, and machine learning. What I ultimately love is the interplay of learning something to a deep, systemic level and then sharing what I’ve learned with the world, whether it’s sports or science or programming.

And if I listen closely to what I’ve been drawn to over and over in the past year or so, it’s the history of the world during the Viking Age (793—1066). I’m taking classes focused on that time period, attending conferences, spending hours immersed in books, articles, and websites, and I’ve been using this newsletter to talk about my favorite pieces of medieval historical fiction, things like Vikings, Vikings: Valhalla, The Last Kingdom, and The Secret of Kells.

And now it’s time to share my plans.

Two weeks ago I said that I was entering my “relentlessly focused era.” Here’s what that means: my goal is to build out educational content—historical fiction backed by the facts as we best know them—and use this newsletter to learn out loud and share my learning experience with you.

Right now my biggest focus is pulling together the research and general story structure for a genre fiction writing workshop I’m taking this summer. I’ve started by researching the history of Æthelflæd, Queen of Mercia, and cannot wait to share more with you next week.

Until then!

xo