On Forging A New Path
By: Renee Chen
Tags: Life Lessons, Careers, Self Improvement, Life, Growth

In 2019, I devoted much of my time to writing and becoming a writer. I gave myself the year to see whether writing might be my ikigai, a Japanese concept meaning “a reason for being,” in which you find yourself at the intersection of doing what you love, what you’re good at, what the world needs and what you can get paid for.

During the first few months, I gained some momentum writing on Medium, having had a few pieces featured and making my first $1,000 from writing (ever). People reached out and responded to my writing, so I felt inspired to keep going. As I entered the latter half of 2019, the momentum I’d had in the earlier months began to wane and I struggled to maintain a consistent publishing rhythm. As much as I still loved and wanted to write, it gradually became clear to me that I wouldn’t be able to sustain the steady income stream I had hoped for by doing the kind of writing I enjoyed most.

Writing has always been a creative, expressive outlet for me. I considered going back to school to become a journalist, or a copywriter, as potential ways to generate a steady(ish) income. However, I dislike deadlines, structure and word counts — they put boundaries on my creative expression — so pursuing either of those paths would likely ruin writing for me forever. (In college, I spent a couple of semesters writing for various campus newspapers and magazines; it felt like such a burden I didn’t write for several years after that.) I considered getting a master’s degree in creative writing, but that seemed a high risk path as well. In being wholly honest with myself, I wasn’t sure I loved writing enough to withstand hundreds of rejection letters, to do little else in my life but write, write and then write some more, or to surrender to the lifestyle of a starving artist.

It was and is too important to me to be financially independent, and to be a financial contributor in my partnership and future family. Once I realized that to be true, I knew writing would not get me there.

So what would? I didn’t know. All I knew was I didn’t want to give up writing completely, but that it would have to be something I do on the side, a passion project of sorts. Around July, I started scanning job boards and job listings for companies in San Francisco as well as those hiring remotely, just to see what was out there. As I clicked into one job description after another, in roles for sales, marketing, or people ops (all roles I had some experience in), and imagined myself in that position, at that company, something inside me withered. I felt drained reading these job descriptions rather than excited, or hopeful. A deep, rooted voice, (intuition perhaps?) rose from the pit of my stomach and sent a visceral reaction throughout my body that said, This isn’t it, this is not your path.

Some part of me knew I would feel unfulfilled going back down a path I’d already explored. It was time for something new, but what? I had hoped writing would be it, spending almost a year doing just that, and then, it turns out, it wasn’t. I thought about how my lack of commitment to a single profession throughout the years had me flip-flopping back and forth with little to show for it. It was time to commit to something — I wanted to and felt ready to — but what?

Towards the end of summer, I eased up on my desperate need for an answer and committed instead to embracing the search. I thought, Maybe I’ll never find my ikigai, the way some people just know at 7 years old that they would be a doctor, and that’s okay, because I’m never going to stop searching for it. Besides, how is this any different than love? I don’t believe that there’s only one “perfect” person out there for me, so why should I believe there’s only one “perfect” career, or profession, or ikigai for that matter?

Around this time, one of my friends, in her fourth year of studies to become a clinical psychologist suggested, for the second time, that I look into becoming a licensed MFT (marriage & family therapist). Her school offers a Master’s program that would put me on the licensure track. The first time she had suggested it, almost two years prior, I paid it no attention as it was a total departure from the path I’d already paved, a huge time-and-money commitment, plus the road to licensure was long, and the idea of kicking off a new career in my mid-30s seemed not only daunting, but a little humiliating. This time, however, her suggestion stuck. It wouldn’t hurt to at least look into this a little more, get a better understanding of what this entails, what the programs look like, etc., would it?

I was hooked the moment I started deep diving into the various licenses and paths to becoming a psychotherapist. The pieces started falling into place, one by one, and that deep, rooted voice woke once again, but this time, it filled my body with clarity and excitement. I felt strangely alive. It told me to keep going, to keep exploring and moving forward, but my mind raced ahead to find reasons for why I shouldn’t — “It’s too expensive,” “The program’s too long, “You’re too old.” I ignored it and kept reading anyway, kept researching. The more I learned, the louder my intuition grew and the quieter my mind became. That’s when I knew this was something I had to take seriously.

A month or so in, after homing in on a handful of schools that offered the licensure path I was most interested in, my intuition began to quiet and my mind began to speak up, except this time, it didn’t offer doubt. This time, it provided an abundance of explanations to support my intuition, to make sense of how and why I had chosen to explore and embark on this new path. The evidence it had accumulated to support my case were so compelling I couldn’t believe I’d ever doubted the path in the first place.

Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher, said:

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”

I remembered how English and Psychology were my two favorite subjects in school. How friends come to me when they reach an impasse in their relationships or in life. I noticed how many of the books, podcasts, conversations I gravitate towards revolved around people, relationships, the human potential, psychological theories and philosophy. I recalled how I dragged my partner and best friend to Esther Perel’s book signing on my 31st birthday. How in previous jobs, I’d excelled at and most enjoyed leading and managing people, the one-on-ones, supporting and watching them grow and succeed. How I seek out growth, learning and ways to better understand myself through a myriad of methods — via a 10-day silent meditation, a 200-hour yoga teacher’s training or various psychedelics. I saw how my core life values — freedom, growth, connection, creativity and wellness, which have remained the same for five plus years — are fully embodied and expressed in this new path.

And then the cherry on top: I foresaw how this path would work in parallel to my love for writing. In fact, it would not only complement, but supplement my writing, by providing inspiration, insights and depth to my future-fictional-friends, and by offering a smorgasbord of theories to explore in my non-fiction writing.

This was it. This was my thing. It might not be my one thing. But it is to be my one thing right now, and I knew I had to pursue it.

Months later, I applied to a school not too far from where I live in San Francisco, whose program strongly resonated with me and my beliefs. A week later, I was accepted. Two months later (or four days ago), I found myself sitting in my first T-group at a retreat center an hour north of the city, surrounded by rolling green hills and deer, with a group of 20+ strangers that I will come to know and (mostly) love over the next 2.5–3 years.

In that moment and in all of the little moments that have followed, I have felt a strong and enduring sense of fulfillment, of a kind of intelligence and knowing that goes beyond cognition. This feeling is new to me. When I think about how lucky I am to have found this path, how honored and privileged I am to have found this calling, my heart swells and fills with gratitude and pride, tears fill my eyes. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt so abundant and alive.

That said, I will continue to write and Idle State shall continue to exist, though it may take on a different shape and form, maybe even name. My intention is to cultivate a collection of essays and reflections to parallel my learning journey of becoming a licensed therapist. I’d like to invite you on this journey with me, if these topics are of interest to you. As I learn about the various concepts and theories that have buttressed counseling psychology into a burgeoning field, I will share my reflections, life stories and sentiments — the good, the bad, the ugly — so we might learn something of each other, of what it means to be human, and how to reach our highest potential, together.