The 6th anniversary of this blog came and went on the 18th of February, but I was a bit busy, so this post is a bit late.:) It is a well-weathered joke that adulthood is all about being too busy and too tired to do everything you want to do, but in truth it is a matter of prioritization and balance. Even though I’ve had a lot of energy lately, I was actively choosing to invest every bit of my writing inspiration into finishing my PhD thesis over the past couple of months so that I can finally graduate, which means that I was also actively avoiding my blog. I rather missed it and all of you who are still here reading after all these years.

So first, as always, a huge THANK YOU for spending your precious time and energy here in my little corner of the Internet.

When I started this blog I was a student living abroad and there was no big 5 year plan – I didn’t even think about whether it would still be here in a few years or not, so I am fairly proud that I’ve stuck with it for so long. Back in those days Instagram travel influencers were still a big thing and once my blog and Instagram started gaining traction I tried to treat it as a side business for a while, but I just couldn’t get truly invested enough to make a big profit, because being a successful influencer requires publicly sharing a much larger portion of your authentic self than I’d ever been comfortable with – which brings us to the topic of today’s anniversary introspection, which quite conveniently coincides with the 8th of March International Women’s Day for 2025 as well.

Although I haven’t defended my PhD yet, my time as a researcher at the University has come to an end and I switched from science to industry last year. So far, I have zero regrets and I am quite enjoying my current job – the team is great, the technology our company is developing has the potential to significantly change the world and the automotive industry, my work is dynamic and I am learning a lot of new things fully outside of my comfort zone (the growth curve has been rather rapid), I even get to lead a team… The job quite clearly ticks all the satisfaction boxes, but my field of work is no longer mechanical engineering, it’s business development.

‘What seems to be the problem?’, you might ask, or perhaps you’d say ‘it’s just a job’, but you see, that’s precisely the crux of the matter. Our jobs are where we spend 1/3 of our day and if you don’t count sleeping as living that ratio goes up to 1/2 of our waking moments. It is a true privilege to be able to choose and work on something you are passionate about and I firmly believe that passion is what it takes to be successful.

If you are passionate about something, you cannot just turn it off and it becomes a part of your identity

I could never assimilate being a travel influencer as a significant part of my identity, so I never became really good at it. I’d say I am a decent writer and perhaps even alright as a blogger, although my blogging schedule is irregular and this blog is currently not amongst my top 5 priorities in life. I am a passionate traveler, reader, life-long learner, amateur cook, volunteer and so on, and I am definitely passionate about engineering, science and technology and now apparently also about business strategy topics. Then I am (or was at some point) also a partner, daughter, granddaughter, sibling, friend, colleague, student, mentor, teacher and whatever else occasion may have called for, as well as Slovenian and a city person. For example, I am a good organizer and I can get projects done well, but I am not a good community builder or a people person that would be able to leverage large groups. I am most definitely not a musician or a singer – the list goes on.

That is a lot of identities for one person, whether chosen or inherent. Most of them are so obvious we take them for granted, some of them read like an overinflated list of personal strengths and weaknesses for a job interview and some of them become so fundamental that they catch us off-guard when something changes, for example when someone close to us dies, if we become parents, get seriously ill, move abroad, change partners or switch careers.

Throughout our lives we weave a complex tapestry of all our identities, as we carefully nurture some to create long, strong threads and actively try to cut others short

As a woman in mechanical engineering, I’ve had to metaphorically fight for my professional identity as an engineer for the past 10 years, first as a student, then as a researcher and briefly as an R&D engineer before I switched to my current job. I’ve had a roller-coaster relationship with what being a woman in a male dominated STEM field really means and how much I owe to my fellow women as an active ambassador in the field, as that obligation is always silently present. My work was always scrutinized as a part of the bigger whole of “women in engineering”, a phenomenon which has to continuously justify its existence. Feminism is sadly far from redundant and sometimes the life we choose to lead is unwillingly an activist act, no matter how much we might resent that because we didn’t choose it to make a statement.

I first got into engineering because I was genuinely interested and I didn’t set out to prove anything. As soon as I encountered skepticism and opposition, I was of course very determined to prove that I could do it too, which soon became an ego thing with ambition for external recognition, but it was always rooted in internal drive. I believe respect is earned, not given or forced (see my previous post about the 8th of March), but I’ve also come to believe that resentment over something you cannot control and did not choose is futile and that resistance only breeds cynicism and stress. I was never shy about discussing my opinions or lived experience, so I just started to actively express them more often in situations where I feel they might have a benefit. I also started to facilitate such debates about women in STEM instead of avoiding or dismissing the topic. If we don’t talk about them, problems don’t get solved, and I now firmly believe that awareness is half the solution.

Much like how I ended up moving back home after living abroad against all of my youthful expectations, I also somehow ended up switching from engineering to business – it may or may not be a permanent switch, because life always has a way of surprising us while we make other plans, but it seems fun so far. I am extremely glad to say that the switch didn’t happen because I gave up under the constant pressure of being the odd one out and that I wasn’t forced out or passed by because of gender-based work-life balance issues. The opportunity was simply too good to pass up and it more or less appeared randomly. Nonetheless, it represents a major change in an identity that I’ve spent a third of my life building against all odds, which feels strange.

I will obviously always be an engineer(ess) by education and mindset, as I think that is not really a choice for those of us with a technical mind, but it is astonishing how much impact a simple change in answering the trivial question of ‘What do you do?’ has had on my life in the past 6 months. Answering ‘I work in business development’ upon meeting someone new doesn’t trigger the customary line of questioning of ‘How come?’ and ‘Why?’ and ‘What is it like?’ that saying ‘I am a mechanical engineer/researcher’ did. Business development is apparently one of those less exciting fields like law, administration, humanities, teaching etc. where people expect to find women and it doesn’t necessitate a special comment, although the issue of women in business and leadership is a whole other rabbit hole we will not be climbing down today. This is just a silly example, but it illustrates how I have suddenly put down a social burden that I didn’t fully realize I was carrying or how heavy it truly was. Once again it took seeing things from the outside in to truly appreciate the leftover scope of equality issue of women in STEM fields even though I have a lived experience of it and often help to highlight it through experience of others (see my insights from last year’s panel discussion event on the topic).

Interestingly enough, once fellow tech people find out that I have an engineering background, they tend to be pleasantly surprised to learn that I can meet them on their playing field, which is the opposite reaction from the one I used to get when I was actively taking up space in their playground where I was not expected. The ego part of me now wants to immediately establish my engineering qualification, so that they won’t dismiss or underestimate me, while the practical part of me sees it as a strategic asset best revealed when it is most useful. The practical part usually wins out, because the ego is also satisfied with its petty revenge when they realize they cannot so easily dismiss me… In this respect, we are all very much alike no matter our gender – life is a constant battle with our ego and those who claim differently are simply lying to themselves.

It is truly humbling to consider how much weight one single identity thread carries within our personal tapestry

At least this one was and is my choice. The ones that aren’t, are infinitely heavier, such as sex, race, nationality, sexual orientation, age, physical and mental (dis)ability etc. If we as a society are unable to accept personal preferences when it comes to work, how will we ever accept our inherent differences and fix systemic discrimination? While this may be a disheartening thought, it brings me to the same conclusion as always: to strive to lead by example, whether that means being a competent woman in STEM or elsewhere, or just a kind fellow human being, willing to look beyond generational prejudice to break the cycles one small act at a time. That seems like a personal identity goal that we should all aspire to, no matter how imperfectly, and it is a thread worth weaving strongly into our life tapestries.

As evident in this post, I’ve always liked the mythological explanation of life where the three Fates are spinning yarn or weaving threads into our tapestries to determine our fate. Although that implies a predetermined fate and I know a lot of you find comfort in knowing that there is some sort of a divine order and plan from one religion or another, I also know that all religions recognize a degree of free will and agency. If we cannot escape our fate, we can at least try to alter it in small ways – I will continue to erratically weave my identity as a blogger and add new threads as they appear, while you are all very welcome to continue weaving your threads as my readers. For me those threads shine very brightly and they are greatly appreciated. 🙂

‘My oath: to meet and hopefully surpass
all expectation, prove there’s more to Fate
than happenstance; and so, as law demands,
I hold a thread of life between my hands.’

Cheryl Corey – Three Sisters: Lachesis