Leap Day

picture from blog.spiritualify.com

It’s appropriate that on this Leap day, I acknowledge that I am starting a new journey. One that has taken me time, but also one that will bend and warp time in its own way.

Time is a tricky thing. It ebbs and flows and isn’t exactly the linear experience that it seems to be. Today is the leap day, of a leap year. This extra day is about catching up on our calendar to astronomical and seasonal events happening in time and space. How amazing is it that the device that we use to keep time, our calendar, has to be adjusted to what is actually happening in time?

I started this blog 5 years ago when I decided to take my first step into a career in technology.

Since that time, I have realized many of the goals that I set for myself. I worked as a software engineer, I have started (and continue) to work at tech startups that inspire me and that draw from the deepest parts of my imagination. I have even become a founder, more than once.

This was a life that I used to imagine when I was sitting in my work cubicle wondering how the lucky ones got to live a life of such privilege that they could pick the way that they worked.

All that change has been for the good, for the most part. Of course, there have been many bumps and bruises for me along the way. What I have learned is that it is most important, not that I have the right job skills, or even that I am working at the right place. What matters the most is that I know what I want, who I am, and why I am doing it.

I know for sure that this has been my biggest struggle. In all honestly, it has taken me these 5 years to know exactly what it is that I want out of all the work that I have been putting into changing my career. What that is for me isn’t too far off from what I thought I wanted when I started.

That is to have a career in data science and biology, all supported by practicing anthropology.

I wanted this before, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to say it aloud so I used to say things like be a computer genius and then become a medical genius. I wanted to be able to find a path for all that I had learned about the most amazing animal that the earth has ever produced, and my love for science and technology in a way that could help people. I just didn’t have the words for it.

Now I do because I have allowed myself time.

Time that has been warped by the space of pursing the things that most excited me. Now my time is more precious than ever because I have a small child in my life that needs me. I never truly understood the clarity that comes with being a mother until I actually became one.

It is clear that what I do really matters because it is time that I am away from my child. It is clear what it is that I really want because it has to excite me enough to want to spend that time away.

So this year is a chance for me to slow down, to speed up, and to change up the way that I pursue my dreams. I have learned so much from these past 5 years where my growth surpassed what I first envisioned for myself. But what I want for myself now is more intimate, in some ways grander, and in many ways the manifestation of things that have always been for me.

I plan to document my journey and continue to invent myself while traveling and warping time and space. This turns my blog into a leap-year baby of sorts. I’m excited to see where I am 4 years from now when we enjoy another extra day in our year to catch up our time to space-time.