Uncertainty in my Last Year of Childhood
Finding Balance, a Kayaking Trip and Butterfly Glop 🦋✨
I celebrated my 17th birthday on an island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. (On Île Nue de Mingan in the Mingan Archipelago to be specific!) In total we kayaked 121km from island-to-island over our 10 day adventure. The day before we saw Minke whales and porpoises swam under our kayaks! It was truly magical!!
That night I ate chocolate-covered almonds around the fire and wrote this in my notebook to summarize the evening: I collected water for the dishes, and scrubbed away as the sun and the moon switched places and the moon stood guard over our hemisphere of the Earth. We huddled like penguins around the fire, craning our necks to admire the almost full moon and blanket of stars that littered the charcoal black night sky.
(I think it’s my favorite thing I’ve written all year! I want to spend more time translating my thoughts into words that make people feel things. I’m working on fining my writing niche and voice.)
A few weeks later when we were back in civilization I made sweet potato pizza (hands down, the best pizza ever. Period.), my sister made a delicious chocolate peanut butter cake and we had a little party!
Kayaking: Feeling at Home
This trip was everything I wished for and more. Big waves, adventure, laughter, gorgeous sunsets. Fulfillment. I felt so fulfilled.
It’s ironic that I feel more at home in nature than I do when I’m at home. And this taught me a lesson that will be very valuable as I physically move out from home: home isn’t a place. The two ingredients I need for a meaningful home are people I love and a strong sense of worth.
The first is self explanatory ~ I thrive from being with people that reciprocate my intense excitement and energy. I don’t find this at school. Which is why I love the community at TKS.
The second needs a little more explanation ~ when in nature for an extended period of time (days), everything else just vanishes from your mind. Suddenly you feel so present and grounded. In the busyness of day-to-day life I often lose this presence and become anxious about the future or consumed in the past. Stress, anxiety, comparison, these vanished from my brain the moment my paddle touched the ocean.
I felt completely content, blissful, about who I am. The pressure to be more was nonexistent.
(Some pictures!!):
Coming back to civilization and adjusting to “real life” has brought up so many intense emotions.
This overwhelming sense of anxiety about the future and doubt in my capabilities.
A deep feeling of loneliness in the path I want to take, contrast to the deep feeling of belonging I felt during the kayaking trip.
I’ve really been struggling with how to handle these feelings. So let me share something I’ve been pondering recently:
Butterfly Glop 🦋
When a caterpillar crawls into its chrysalis, what actually happens is they become liquid glop, and THEN become a butterfly.
I think that this is the coolest thing to know, because when we’re going through change, we might be reduced to our lowest, glop state before we become the next thing.
And when I’m going through hard things, my first instinct is to go back to what I was before and stay a caterpillar forever. But becoming glop is vital to becoming something new.
I’m currently in this transition / glop phase. I’m one year away from adulthood, so close to graduating 14 years of mandatory government education but not quite there yet. Both blessed to have so much choice and opportunity, but bogged down from the overwhelming anxiety that comes with all this choice.
Everyone around me wants to be a nurse, doctor or lawyer, optimizing for the highest grades to get into the best university ~ and when people ask me what I want to do, I don’t know how to articulate my ambitions. I’m optimizing for understanding technologies, sciences and skills like root cause analysis; ‘tools’ in my ‘toolbox’ of problem solving skills.
Right now I want to deeply understand smallholder farmer poverty with all the complexities. (I wrote a 40 minute article compiling my research from the past few months).
So I’m in this in-between phase that has left me feeling a lot like glop. Not sure what the future holds. Both terrifying and exhilarating. I want to view it as more exhilarating because I am so privileged to have all this opportunity and choice.
Six thinking hats: Ingredients to Create a Fulfilling Existence
Overwhelmed by choices, I neglected some of the things most important to me. I’ve been losing touch of the parts of myself that are most important to me.
I feel like I’m squishing every aspect of who I am into an 150 essay word limit; but there are extra words that don’t fit.
So - I made a list of six things, the six thinking hats framework of my life, so I never overlook any values I hold.
So here’s to rediscovering those lost and overflowing words that make me feel belonging, fulfillment and happiness. 🥂
Space For Daily Creativity
I get so much joy from creative endeavors. Trying interesting recipes, turning adventures into philosophical articles, making a lampshade out of beads, bringing an idea to life in a video. Whenever I’m ‘too busy’ to do something creative, I am usually budgeting my time poorly. It is important to me to stretch my brain in new creative ways; an outlet that I don’t have when I’m ‘too busy’.
P.S. my most recent creative project is my new website: rachellee.net
P.S.S. I am brewing up a new creative endeavor that I am very excited about! Hint it involves a 📷!
P.S.S.S. If you’re looking for a new recipe, this sweet potato gnocchi with garlic sage butter sauce was sooo good!
Intentional Mornings
I want to engineer intentional mornings. Mornings that have a strong purpose and make me feel great. Normal mornings are just mindlessly going through the motions, but I’ve found that this sets the tone for me mindlessly rushing through the day.
I want my mornings to be a reflection of the day I will have and the person I am.
I’m experimenting with what my ‘ideal’ morning is. I’ve found that:
I feel better when I wake up early, even though I want to stay in bed when my alarm goes off.
I feel better when I do yoga, meditation or weights as soon as I get up, even though I want to sit at my computer.
I feel better when I don’t open my laptop or phone in the morning, even though I want to check my email.
I’m catering my mornings to how I feel, not what I want; instead of letting my wants control how I feel.
Long Rabbit Holes
There is so much knowledge out there!! When I’m ‘too busy’ I lose the joy in learning new things because I am so focused on getting everything checked off my to-do list. This is a poor delegation of my time. It is so fulfilling to spend 20 minutes learning about an interesting niche. Every day I want to learn something new. Just gain knowledge and facts because I find it interesting; so contrary to the grade based memorizing and regurgitating ‘learning’ that school teaches.
Today’s rabbit hole: Fanzor, a newly discovered eukaryotic CRISPR system I learned about from editing the most recent episode of the TKS Making It Real Podcast with Michael and Izzy.
New Adventures
I get so much joy from new, exciting experiences: adventures! Whether that be a conference in Switzerland, kayaking island-to-island in the Atlantic Ocean or running a marathon in another city with my best friend. Once I graduate grade 12, I’m going to take a year off (we’ll start with one 😏) to dedicate a year to exploration and adventures! Living in different countries, interning at startups I look up to, meeting friends from around the world I’ve only seen through a screen, and of course, adventures I’ve wanted to do for years, like hiking 850km/500miles across Spain.
Exciting projects
Reading papers and talking with scientists how I choose to spend my Friday nights (and weekends, and weekdays for that matter). But as I got busy with deadlines, I started to push my favorite projects to the side.
But the truth is that I value the skills and connections I’m making through the projects I work on over getting x scholarship or university. I would rather spend my time understanding the link between poverty, infrastructure and culture than spending hours perfecting an essay.
Reserving my F*** Bucks
This is probably my favorite TED Talk ever. The concept of reserving your f***s, or what you choose to spend your valuable energy on, is a concept I think about often. I want to be the kind of person that only says yes to opportunities and people if I really want it. I value my time, and am tired of constantly getting home from school, feeling drained of energy from the wasted time and useless assignments that have robbed me of my energy. It’s a balance between responsibility (getting the stuff done I don’t want to but have to) and using the rest of my energy only on the things I truly want, that I still need to strike.
Miscellaneous
In a society that values the big, shiny achievements, I felt like this newsletter would be incomplete without also a dedication to the miscellaneous odds and ends that have brought me so much joy these past few months.
Hiking!!! It is something I could do all day!! Since September, every weekend our family has gone on an all-day 20+km hike (sometimes we go on two! One Saturday, one Sunday). I am so grateful for my parents and sisters - no one can make me laugh as much as my sisters, and no one supports me as much as my parents. ❤️
I love learning about non-mainstream science. Science just excites me, it’s so cool! (Hence my anaerobic digestion obsession). I wrote an article on algae biomanufacturing for Thought For Food, and really loved learning about this underrated photosynthetic organism.
Bonus, some science content I’ve enjoyed consuming: Neri Oxman: Biology, Art, and Science of Design & Engineering with Nature, Prediction of Protein-Protein Interactions Using AlphaFold2, Food Processing Operations in the Development of Sustainable Food Systems
+ Shout out to TKS for updating all Explore Modules (think exciting rabbit holes of papers, articles, videos, interviews, on every science, tech and now philosophy, mindsets and global issues!), I have been enjoying diving into new modules every day at lunch:)
Uncertainty in my last year of childhood
This is my last year of childhood. In less than a year I will be an adult! Wow!
The number itself is insignificant; but the change that will ensue because of the number is quite noteworthy.
I am hyper aware that this is my last year living at home with my family. My last time experiencing our big Thanksgiving potluck, my last time carving 18 pumpkins for Halloween, my last time packing hot chocolate and picnics for long fall hikes. There is sadness that comes with knowing this is my last year living at home. Next year I will be on my own, with adult problems to worry about. Budgeting! Bills!
But this isn’t the last. It’s the last in this stage of life. But the beginning of the next.
If you’ve made it this far in my philosophical rambling, I feel so grateful that you are here on my journey!
Thanks for reading! ❤️ Rachel
Personal website, LinkedIn, Medium, Instagram, YouTube
And for all of you still here…some pictures and stories!
*And if you like these photos and little anecdotal stories, I’m working on a compilation of stories into an article from our adventures!
Butterfly glop has always been one of my favourite metaphors.. it's so much more grounded and realistic than the usual "butterfly emerges from a cocoon" imagery. I often wonder why these unrealistic ideologies circulate.. doesn't set us up for success.
Could it be capitalism and neoliberalism, the forces of a society trying to create a population of unintelligent, mindless consumers, with no ability to critically reflect??? Topic for another day.
Anyhow. You, clearly, have not fallen into that trap for which I applaud you. Don't give in. Keep questioning and pushing the envelope. Never settle.
Happy belated birthday! Always a ray of sunshine to read these newsletters