Emma (Carving My Own Path: Intersecting Passion and Practicality)

Written by Emma Stevens

I’m sitting in the basement of my family home as I type out this entry, practising the best coping methods of resilience that I have in my emotional toolbox after (yet) another failure to secure an established, straightforward career path for myself. I’m still debating whether I should post this online or not. I’m not comfortable being in the spotlight on my best days, but I feel especially vulnerable if I’m posting anything personal online or in public spaces. Even more so for topics as complex and emotionally fraught as conservation. However, I was inspired to submit this to the ‘Lonely Conservationists’ community because, along with my daily internal work on becoming braver in my day-to-day life, I wanted to contribute my story to the increasingly common struggles of frustration, isolation, and imposter syndrome.

In hindsight, it is no wonder that conservation would eventually become completely embedded in my life. Nature has calmed and fascinated me since I was little, and I quickly got around to loving other life forms on this planet through the books, movies, TV shows, and even the pet dogs I was exposed to in my family growing up. As I furthered my education, there was no doubt from anyone around me that I was going to be involved in biology or ecology at some point in my career eventually. When you win the biology award for your high school, with a personalized award handed to you from your ecology teacher, that looks like a no-brainer right? 

“So why have I not progressed and succeeded like I should have by now?” This has been the undercurrent of my negative intrusive thoughts, nagging me with feelings of guilt and frustration whenever I would hit roadblocks of highly competitive positions that I did not get an interview for, the Catch-22 of needing the experience to get “entry-level” (re. underpaid) contracts, and organizations not having the budget or interest to implement the sustainability practices that I want to be more commonplace. It is the same frustration that makes me feel embarrassed to have a checkered job history as a 27-year-old when I do not lack the determination to find and work at a “good job”. It is the same guilt I have felt for feeling like I have squandered the breadth of opportunities that my parents were able to grant me and my younger brother to pursue our passions without having to worry about constraints as much as everyone else.

But, to maintain my psyche, I remind myself that I graduated from my undergraduate studies right around the beginning of the pandemic. Not only that, but when everyone else in my cohort was focused and concerned about completing their Honours project, I had to commit what extra time and resources I had to improve my well-being when I hit a scary rough patch in my physical and mental health… to the point of forcing myself to see a psychologist despite the shame screaming at me in my mind every day. To me, it has felt like a cruel joke: we are at a turning point for restoring our world away from destruction, yet younger people often do not have the clear-cut, impactful opportunities that they need to get out of the classic struggle of low wages and benefits to navigate costs of living (when they’re dealing with the psychological toll of confronting and fighting biodiversity and climate issues already).

I’m coming to understand that not everything you care about must be or should be monetized to be your profession in this world, especially if the industry surrounding certain practices does not suit your temperament or your life circumstances. It is people like Jessie Panazzolo herself that allow me to rethink my stance on what it means to be and practice as a “conservationist” while bringing in other important components like hobbies, finances, health, and relationships to fill my life. As a privileged able-bodied white woman living in the “Global North”, I focus on what I can so the less fortunate do not have to shoulder as much of the burdens of facing the worst impacts on the front lines. Sustainability should not be gate-kept, especially when people cannot always make the most eco-friendly or “greenest” decisions to make their lives as straightforward as possible to survive.

If anyone has read this far, firstly, thank you for taking the time to view my writing. Despite my enjoyment of articulating and formulating my thoughts and feelings, writing was an activity that I had to put to the side outside of personal journalling once I graduated. Secondly, you can involve yourself in a range of causes you care about without forcing yourself to make it your living. For instance, I can stick to community gardening and ecological restoration as a volunteer or side gig while meeting my personal and financial needs elsewhere. Thirdly, causes like conservation need everyone involved for permanent, long-term change. If anything, we need more groups of “ordinary” people with creative, business, and technological skills to aid the scientific and scholarly experts in deconstructing the unhealthy paradigms and avenues of our collective societies that led to inequities and ecosystem destruction in the first place. 

We likely did not create the problems we face now, but we always have the responsibility to confront them for the sake of our happiness and well-being. All in all, I refuse to believe that it is too late to tackle this time of the “polycrisis” to make our societies better and our planet Earth healthier! I can continue to dream and innovate with others a future where economies and environments can reach closer to harmony if we confront interdisciplinary problems like inequality, financial strife, political polarization, and lonely displacement.