So you shared your face with us, but what makes you YOU?

[Kcl]

I had a triple major in undergrad (chemistry, ecology &evolution, and English literature). I discovered my passion for reptiles in a field course. I love field work and truly hope to get back to it. For now work in export compliance for a very large paint company, which at least relies heavily on my chemistry background, and I've made myself opportunities there to make major changes and innovations. I am working on returning to academics and even got into a Ph.d. program last year, but the project wasn't funded and with how little this administration is and will be funding my research interests of the effects of climate change and pollution on amphibians and reptiles, I had to change my trajectory a bit. I'm now waiting to hear back from a master's program I can attend part time while still working full time. I still read herpetology papers on a regular basis. I've volunteered in wildlife rehab for years, have written air quality permits, and have been on one of bp's drilling sites on a man-made island in the Arctic Ocean.

I've lost most of my friends in the area to either them moving away or to my worst, most recent, years long bout of major depression. I'm down to my boyfriend and one, currently very close, friend who I had the luck to reconnect with afterwards. I've struggled to figure out how to make new ones and also struggle to speak to strangers except in a professional capacity. I'm hindered by a severe lack of self confidence. I'm going on year two of therapy and medication and the difference is enormous.

I take on too many things frequently and work myself sick trying to get them all done. I start a lot of projects I abandon halfway. I paint sometimes and have gotten decent, I rowed for several years and just stopped a few months ago, I've written plenty of half completed stories and novels and some completed short stories and poems, I have a pile of half completed sewing projects from attempting to learn that, but I did manage to make a somewhat fancy hooded robe for my boyfriends Halloween costume. Being overly critical of my own work leads to some of the project abandonments, being over ambitious and somewhat distractable is a decent amount of the rest. I almost never finish playing video games through. I do finish reading plenty of books.