About being lost...

I never knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. As a kid, my “dream job” changed weekly. I wanted to be a doctor, an artist, a lawyer, an architect, a writer, an engineer (like my dad!), a singer, a pharmacist (like my mom!), a zookeeper, a train conductor, a pro-gamer, an elf from Middle Earth… The list goes on. I could never decide on what I wanted to be.

Two degrees and a technical diploma later… I still don't know. But you know what? I’ve made my peace and I have accepted that maybe I’ll never decide on just one thing. Maybe that decision will always be lost to me.

It’s funny because I get lost all the time (both literally and figuratively. Thank you, Google Maps). But, I am thankful that my knack for getting lost has pushed me to explore. I thought I was going to pursue medicine but I got lost when I failed (yes, an actual F) a class in my undergrad. I thought I would be a pharmacist, but I got lost when I realized that I hated all my pharmacology classes (except toxicology haha!). I thought I would do industrial design but I got lost when my art portfolio was rejected and deemed “not meritorious enough.” I got lost when I found myself in a totally unrelated program to the biological sciences path I thought I belonged on, at an institution my University peers sneered at and deemed “inadequate.” I most definitely got kicked off-course when I was laid off from my engineering job at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The path to our destination is not always a straight one. We go down the wrong road, we get lost, we turn back. Maybe it doesn’t matter which road we embark on. Maybe what matters is that we embark.

I hate that the word ‘lost’ has such a negative connotation. When you’re lost, you can find things you’ve never thought to look for before. I imagine my life journey like walking through a thick, dense forest. On this journey, while ‘lost,’ I found a love for science. I grabbed the tiny acorn off the forest path and stashed it in my pack, carrying it with me wherever I wandered off to next. "Happy little accidents" as Bob Ross would say. I took a few wrong turns but I found other interesting trinkets: a love for discovering how things work, a love for sharing knowledge, a love for computers… I even found a love for baking cakes. While lost, I’ve had to learn so many different skills to get me out of a bind - sometimes I even had to learn how to run before I knew how to walk. There were times I felt lonely, but I’ve met some amazing hikers on the road too. I can’t imagine travelling without some of them now. On my journey, I’ve been happy, sad, angry and mad; I’ve seen plenty of horrible things but also experienced incredible wonders while I’ve been ‘lost.’ The paths I’ve travelled were (and are) divergent and you know... I’m beginning to think that maybe there are no paths at all. Maybe we all make our own.

I said earlier that I don’t think I’ll ever decide on what to be. Well, it’s because I want to be and have the potential to be many things. I don’t want to stay in one place or be categorized into a single box. I want to keep exploring and travelling through the forest - there's so much more to see! I am passionate about learning so I’ve decided to make it my mission to keep getting lost. I take pride in being called a “Jill-of-all-Trades” and I love that I have so many weird and conflicting interests. I like that I am a biologist but also a mechanical engineer. My collection of these acorns or maybe puzzle pieces (?) keeps growing and I couldn't be more pleased. They are fragments of the forever evolving enigma that I call myself. Honestly, the best part of getting lost is finding myself.

And so I'm proud to say, I am Joy and I'm lost!

Some beautiful paths can’t be discovered without getting lost.

Last Updated: May, 2021