I have been reflecting upon my life recently, almost like I am experiencing a quarter-life crisis, which in a way I am. I haven't been exactly spending my adult years productively and I feel like something has to change.
A while ago in the pre-pandemic times of 2019, I came across a documentary called Fools and Dreamers. It is about a botanist named Hugh Wilson restoring a plot of land on Banks Peninsula from near to nothing.
This documentary was pivotal in changing my outlook on life at the time, it made me look towards botany and ecology as a career path. However, the pandemic the year after made me go into a deep depression that has affected me for years. I lost many of my interests including botany and ecology.
I instead pivoted towards game design and art, which was one of my first career paths I wanted to go down when I was a child. This ended up putting me into Yoobee, an art college. I stayed for about a year until I dropped out from learning that the industry I was working towards was exploitive.
So I spent 3 years trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. I have always struggled with existentialism so this length of time was especially interesting as I tried to find meaning while my mental health was still in the dumpsters.
Last year, I discovered tramping as a hobby. That first trip was incredibly hard for me because I was both unfit and recovering from the flu. However that trip changed me, it brought me closer with nature and allowed me to rediscover my interest for the environment. This rediscovery took many months to properly understand but I did come to the conclusion that this is what I want to investigate and look into career paths for.
I recently came across that Fools and Dreamers documentary and realised what I ultimately want to do with my life is contribute to ecological restoration.
All I really want to do is create my own nature reserve, and be paid enough to dedicate my life to restore a bare plot of land to the vegetation it once had. Therefore I am going to go to university and study Ecology, and potentially look at doing a masters in Ecological Restoration.
I felt compelled to share this to tell any reader that it is never too late to decide what you want too, and you should absolutely revisit older ideas and give them a proper look. When I go to study next year, I will be 23, and when I come out of it I will be 26-7. Life is long and you have a lot of time to decide what you want to do.
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