Episode 1: Pilot

Welcome to the first ever episode of the Live Rough Draft podcast. I am so excited. I'm finally doing this and I'm so happy that you're here and that you're listening. So thank you for being here.

I started this podcast because ever since I graduated college, I've been asking myself the question, how do I create a life that feels fulfilling to me in my twenties? I think this decade can be very overwhelming for a lot of us because we are trying to figure out who we are and create the person that we want to be. And that can look very different for a lot of us.

I mean, there's just so many options. We can go back to school. We can get a corporate job and make lots of money. We can travel the world. We can fall in love and start a family. We can move somewhere and start all over again. And I think sometimes we can get scared that we might be choosing the wrong option. Or that perhaps the options that we're choosing are not going to build the right foundation for what we want the rest of our lives to look like. And sometimes we don't even know what the rest of our lives will look like, right? And so it can be really scary. And I think that also, that building a life that feels fulfilling is just so much more than our career, what we do on our day to day, right? It's the people that we surround ourselves with, where we live, the state of our mental health, the type of opportunities that come into our life, and so much more. So yeah, it can get pretty overwhelming.

So my purpose with this podcast is to be very personal and raw and vulnerable as I try to explore what a fulfilling life looks like to me. I'll be sharing my raw experiences as I attempt to answer this question. And in sharing my experiences, I hope to build a community where we can all figure out what finding a fulfilling life means to us.

After all, we're all out here winging it, so we might as well do it together.

So having said all of this, let's start off by giving you a little bit of background about myself.

I was born and raised in Costa Rica, the eldest daughter of two high -achieving industrial engineers. I was always an artsy kid, off painting something or reading or writing. And being creative is something people knew me for.

And so when the time came in high school to choose what I wanted to do with my life, I decided that I was going to be an artist or a writer. Of course, my parents' answer to that was no.

As true Latinos, my parents told me that not only would they not support a career in the arts or literature, but that I would surely find an untimely end starved out in the street if I were to pursue any of these jobs.

And so having heard all of that and equipped with the knowledge that I was good at math and science and that I was smart, I decided to do the one thing that I thought would make my parents and me happy, which was - surprise - engineering.

After this idea took hold, I thought I had it all figured out. I would work hard to get into a good university in the United States where I would study biomedical engineering. And then I would go get my PhD in something - I didn't know what at the time - but that's what I would do. And after getting my PhD, I would help out lots of people with my research.

It seemed like a simple linear path to follow.

And so while my peers in high school or in college were struggling to figure out what they wanted to do with their lives and their careers, I felt pretty smug because I thought I had it all figured out.

And follow this path is exactly what I did. I worked really hard in high school to get into a good university. I ended up attending college at UNC Chapel Hill in North Carolina. And although I absolutely hated it at first with a passion, I surely and slowly grew to love it.

I met lots of wonderful people, some of which are still my friends today, who I talk to regularly, although we might live in different continents, countries, or states. During college, I became a research assistant and I did some amazing research.

And throughout all this time, this path that I was on kind of became my new identity. I was an engineer, I was smart, I was really good at all of this technical stuff and I was going to help people. That became who I was. All that creative and artsy part of me that I had growing up kind of fell away until all the new people that got to know me in college didn't even know that being creative was something that was part of who I was.

At the end of my senior year, I also got into a relationship with someone I thought I would marry. And this relationship would last about two and a half years. At the time, everything seemed to be going according to plan.

But when the time came to graduate college in the midst of the pandemic, I was honestly so burnt out that I could not imagine myself going to school for a PhD or even a master's. The thought of it just gave me so much physical pain.

And so I decided that instead of going to grad school, I would go to work. While I was on the student visa, that visa did allow me three years of work authorization post -graduation. And so I told myself that I would go work for a couple of years, make some money and get some experiences, and then I would go get my PhD.

It was a small deviation from my original plan, but that was okay. And so I have started applying to jobs and after graduation, I started working at this company called Humacyte. There we make blood vessels made from stem cells at a commercial level, which are universally implantable in the body. And yes, this is really cool.

It was honestly such an amazing opportunity and I was really, really excited. Nobody else from my biomedical engineering class was doing something like this. I started off as a manufacturing associate and soon after became a manufacturing science and technology or MSAT engineer.

So I had done everything I had set out to achieve according to my little plan. I had graduated from a great program in biomedical engineering. I had a kick -ass job that many people would kill for. I had a position I had worked really hard to get, and I loved everybody I worked with. And I was good at my job, and I was valued in my team. I was finally financially independent, living by myself in a foreign country. And I was in a relationship with someone I thought would be my future husband. And yet, I felt so unfulfilled.

So many questions and thoughts just started to go through my mind at the time. Why am I this unfulfilled? I mean, everything I thought I ever wanted was something wrong.

So many thoughts and questions started to go through my mind at the time. Why am I this unfulfilled? I mean, I had everything I thought I ever wanted. Was something wrong with my life? Or was something wrong with me? And how do I fix it? What do I even want? If it is not this, if this is not what it looks like, then what is it? And I couldn't find any of the answers. So I just kept living my life kind of in a trance. Of course, things only got worse.

In the span of two years, I felt deeply lonely. Not only because all of my close friends had moved away after graduation, but also because I felt deeply lonely in my relationship with my boyfriend. I started to struggle a lot with my mental health like I never had before. I started to watch my relationship with my boyfriend slowly crumble through my fingers. My puppy, who was and still is the love of my life, felt deathly sick and was on the verge of death. And that was honestly one of the lowest points of my life. And then, of course, I got deeply sick. And that changed everything for me.

After months of gradual decay, my relationship with my boyfriend came to an end in a very unexpected and painful way, and I suddenly found myself alone. He was the one person I thought I always could count on, and now I had to count on myself.

So 2023 was the year that I started to learn to really trust myself. It was like a wake up call. And I suddenly found myself starting to make many of the changes that were necessary in my life and to take the following questions seriously. How do I create a life that is fulfilling in my 20s?

I am 25 now and with half of my 20s under my belt and the other half to look forward to, I am finally giving myself permission to live authentically without caring what my family, my friends, or society in general might think of it.

Recently, my visa and my work authorization expired, meaning that not only did I have to say goodbye to the job I've held for the last three years, but that I also had to say goodbye to the place I've called home for the last seven years, which is most of my adult life. Now I'm back in Costa Rica and this transition has honestly been really difficult.

For the first time in my life, I do not have a plan for what's happening next, and it's terrifying. As you can probably tell already, I like having a plan, and I like being in control. So this is a completely new experience for me.

My whole life I've dreamed of traveling the world. I'm really privileged to say that I've already been able to travel a lot, but I've never ever traveled by myself. And so I've made the decision that to figure out what meaningful life looks like for me and to figure out what's the next chapter in my life, I'm going to take the next year to solo travel, see the world, volunteer, and kind of reflect on everything I've done so far to decide what my future is going to look like.

So I hope that you can join me as I spend time on the road, solo traveling, probably getting into a lot of trouble and definitely stepping out of my comfort zone. I hope to have a lot of good conversations with strangers to figure out what a meaningful life and a fulfilling life looks like for everybody. And I'm hoping to have fun and amazing adventures.

Although my aim is to answer a serious and complex question, I'll do my very best to not take life so seriously.

So even though, like I said, this transition has been really hard, I'm honestly excited because now I can really focus on building a life that feels fulfilling to me, doing things my way.

So if you're someone who is sort of in my shoes right now and doesn't really have a plan for what's next and doesn't even know what that looks like right now or maybe you're someone who had a plan and you've checked all your boxes and you found that you're completely unhappy and you want to pivot. Or maybe you have a plan, but you're just like absolutely terrified to start taking that next step. This podcast is for you. Because I've come to the realization that just like the rough draft of a book, life doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to get started somewhere.

So I do want to warn you that I am no expert in life and I do not try to be. And I do not have the secret recipe to creating a fulfilling life. I honestly have no clue what I'm doing, but that's the point of this, right? I'm just out here winging it and doing my best, just like you are, just like everybody is. But perhaps telling my raw and genuine story moves you to build a life that feels good, to take that first leap into something that is new and uncomfortable. well, at least it'll make you laugh. Only time will tell.

This was the first episode of The Life Rough Draft podcast. If you enjoyed it, please leave me a 5 -star review on iTunes, Spotify, or the platform of your choice. You can also hit subscribe and share with your friends. Join The Life Rough Draft community by following me on Instagram at Life Rough Draft and check out my website at www.theliferoughdraft.com.

All of this is linked in the show notes.

Wherever and whoever you are, thank you so much for listening. It truly means the world. I hope you have a wonderful day.