Light

10 Feb 2023

Today, I saw ahead. Just a little bit. I felt a path that I had not felt in a while, something that says “that way looks pretty good, let’s take that route”.

I recognized a truth about myself: I like data science, but I don’t love it. What I do really enjoy, and finding myself consistently defaulting to, is the visuals. Data visualization.

And today, I found others. I found others that are the same way. I read a blog post byNadieh Bremerdetailing her journey towards what she does now - and it is damn near identical.

1. She studied astronomy (I studied aerospace engineering)
2. Didn’t want to do the Ph.D, but did the master’s (same),
3. Went to consulting at Deloitte as a data scientist (I did consulting and data science at a boutique consulting firm)
4. Became disenchanted with data science

But then she said in her post:

And then I went to a presentation by Mike Freeman. On his title slide it said Data Visualization Specialist. And it was as if I’d been hit by lighting. that’s a thing on its own?! You can specialize in data visualization?!”.

And now I am having that same epiphany. I don’t know where it will lead, if I will end up doing it forever, but it is a path, a light, something to give me a good place to place my next step.