I have an ongoing joke with some of my friends that I'm currently running version 4.0 of myself. What the previous versions are isn't well defined, but in my lifetime, I've undergone the following dramatic transitions:

• For a long time, I wanted to be a mermaid. I've always loved the ocean, and I'm constantly singing (albeit badly a lot of the time). One of my favorite books when I was younger was Mermaid Tales from Around the World (which I now realize totally missed what could have been a puntastic title). Eventually, I realized this wasn't possible.

• Then my goal was to read the most books out of anyone ever. This was my late elementary school, middle school, early high school phase of existence. I devoured books like they were food (which I also liked to devour and still do). I don't think I really had defined objectives beyond the fact that I loved to read (mostly fantasy books but some other genres thrown in there for good measure) and was good at math and science. I HATED history and only got by in most of my high school classes because I made sure I was in the second period. The teachers never changed the essay prompts, so I traded helping people in other classes for the essay prompts on tests. Yes, this is technically cheating, but I considered it strategic studying.

• My sophomore biology class changed everything. I'd never been so enthused about a subject probably ever. I'd loved science since my 6th grade teacher Mr. Burrell (who also started the middle school's half marathon club and was just one of those teachers that everyone loved, even people that hated school). In particular, I loved genetics and its applications for cancer research. When I was looking for where to go to school, I knew that I ultimately wanted to get my PhD in Genetics or Cancer Research, so I ended up at Rose-Hulman because they were a math/science/engineering school closeish to home where I just clicked with the school when I visited. For four years, I did research for the Genetics professor , ultimately completing an undergraduate thesis on Nonsense Suppression in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Unfortunately, I realized during that time that I absolutely hated doing research, so I turned down the offer to my top PhD program (the Van Andel Institute Graduate School) and accepted a job at a local startup, DeveloperTown.

• I wanted to be an entrepreneur and make the next Facebook. Actually, not Facebook because I've never been a huge fan of social media, but something similar. Some of my favorite projects that I worked on were Recoverator (a registration tracking tool for filing insurance reports), FarmersMarket.com (which at the time was a system for creating Farmers Market hubs that connect directly to local farmers), and a tool for basically creating a prioritized list based on 1v1 comparisons*. I loved my time at DeveloperTown. For a while, I was basically the only non-designer, non-developer, so I got to track KPIs for projects, do resourcing, help manage the sales pipeline, manage projects, help create backlogs, do a lot of the company culture events, and help represent DeveloperTown at local startup events. I even helped dust off the company blog, something that was surprisingly rewarding (#foreshadowing?). But when we grew bigger and everyone had to find a more defined role within the company, there just wasn't a place for me anymore that I wanted.

• I realized that my favorite things at DT were the KPI and budget tracking that I was doing, so I started looking for roles as an analyst. For the next four years, I was a budget/marketing/sales/data analyst with a little bit of other things thrown in. It was good experience. I learned how to work on teams where I was the least important person. I bought work dresses and black pants and learned that tie dye is never appropriate, even when it's Colts Day and your tie dye is Colts tie dye. I learned that you need to take your computer home even if you're not allowed to work from home because of perceptions. I learned that as a young, assertive female, I needed to get my boss to present many of my ideas for me because otherwise they wouldn't gain traction. In other words, I learned how corporate America works. And I realized that it wasn't a good fit for me.

• Now I live in DC and am doing freelancing on several projects while exploring everything the town has to offer. I'm looking for a full time position, but I'm waiting for the right thing instead of taking the first job that comes along (or the second or the fifth). I want to make a difference in my next role, whether it be by being a contributor to large team or one of only a few employees at a small company. I want to be able to use my skills for more than just sitting behind a desk and occasionally having to subtly introduce my ideas at a weekly meeting. I want to care about my job and the work I'm doing, ideally for a company that's making a difference somehow. I know that's vague, but that's where I'm at right now. I know more about what I don't want to do than what I want to do, so I'm figuring it out by ear. And as a part of that, I decided to put together this blog of cool things I'm doing, projects I decide to tackle, and new experiences. I don't know if anyone is going to read it, but I'm going to keep writing (hopefully), and maybe it'll at least help me collect my thoughts and figure out what I want to do with my life.

• I used an online tool version of this called Pub Meeple to make my board game Top 100 this year.