The postdoc was the time when I started exploring other careers, although academia was still on the table as an option. Many changes took place in my life during this time, which definitely matured me in so many ways. But I still carried with me the confidence I had gained in graduate school, which had now materialized into wanting to be noticed in addition to the fact that I liked helping people (the latter of which had always been there throughout my life). 
While I was at Emory, I distinctly remember a talk given by Dr. Sandra Schmid, who was and still is one of my scientific and personal role models. During this talk she said that “leadership will get you noticed,” which is very true but I hadn't considered becoming a leader in anything before, perhaps because I didn't have something I really cared about. 
So, during the postdoc, I explored a lot of things. I thought about different careers, attended my first meeting that was unrelated to my research, and established a career seminar series at the university to give postdocs access to professionals who had pursued different careers.
All of this was so much fun! For the first time in my life, I realized that I was meant to do something to help people which had to have a grander purpose. And I didn’t realize it at the time, but this was also changing the local culture in a sense. I had trainees come up to me and thank me for creating this resource, which made me feel good in so many ways. At some point I noticed that some regularly attended this series, asked more questions and even interacted with certain speakers following their talk.
But turning this fun thing into a job is not the most trivial thing, especially as the academic system doesn’t train the trainees for anything other than producing more academics - this may be changing now but much more needs to be done until someone can smoothly transition into some other career besides academia.
During this time, I began to network with individuals who were experts in training graduate students and postdocs, and to speak up about certain issues that I was seeing in academia - this, as you can tell, is now becoming a theme.  And as I participated in more of these activities on the side of my postdoc, I eventually realized that academia wasn’t for me. When you realize that the activities you are doing outside of your job make you so much happier than your actual job, it’s time to make a change.
So, I quit my postdoc and continued to explore what it was that I was really interested in. It was a risky move, but it seemed impossible to continue doing something that I didn’t see fitting into my life goal anymore. At the same time, I was also figuring out what that goal was exactly. 
As luck would have it, I obtained a travel award to attend a science advocacy meeting in Boston (organized by Future of Research and other groups) which took place during my last month as a postdoc. That meeting pretty much got me hooked on studying academia and advocating for scientists. This topic seemed to fit me like a glove (more on this later). I knew that I had to get more involved with the group.
The rest is history. I was lucky enough to be involved early on with a project related to tracking postdoc salaries nationally, which is not something I ever thought I would study but had a blast doing it. This experience opened me up to the idea of trying new things and going with the flow to see where they may lead - which is tough for me since I have pretty much always been a planner. 
Overtime, this project materialized into more things than I could have ever imagined, but more importantly it gave me a sense of purpose and direction while I was figuring out my path outside of academia. And no matter what else I did during this time, I always came back to how much passion I had for this area of essentially trying to create change in academia using data and advocating for transparency around this topic. This isn’t something that I even knew you could study - so it was surprising how much I loved doing it and how naturally it came to me. 
Retrospectively, I later realized that this blended multiple elements that were fundamental parts of my personality: 1) an interest in doing research; 2) the feeling that I was making a difference and 3) the last part, which I didn’t really mention until now, but I was always a bit of “a rebel in the skin of an introvert” so to speak - this appealed extremely well to my sense of wanting to change science and challenge the status quo. 
But perhaps the main difference with this experience was that I finally felt that my life had a purpose which I was happy with. Without going into too many details into my contributions (you can find out more on my website), I will say that volunteering for a cause you believe in (and knowing what that cause is), and taking ownership of projects and leading them within this context is very fulfilling. I am now on the Future of Research Board of Directors, and that means so much to me. I feel that this is the leadership position I had been preparing to have all this time, I just didn't know it - and obviously I also couldn’t have predicted it.
And every minute of this self-exploration has been worth it for me to discover essentially where my life needs to go professionally. I’m very grateful to this group of people for making my opinion feel valued and my voice count during a time when I wasn’t quite sure what I was doing. Some of the lessons I’ve learned are: 1) Don’t let anyone tell you how to live your life; 2) Volunteering can pay off if you are truly invested in it; 3) Gratitude is a good way to live your life in general.
Now I am at a point where I know what direction I want my life to take and the kind of situation that can make it happen. I also know that just having a job isn’t sufficient for me without being able to contribute to a grander vision - which tells you that I don't care much about money. I am much more motivated by a mission, which I hadn’t realized if it wasn’t for Future of Research. 
I know that I need to be doing something that can make the world a better place, and be in a place where this contribution is valued and part of something greater than myself. Perhaps the biggest lesson is that figuring myself out has made all the difference, and I believe this will be a worthwhile long-term investment in my future.