The Winding Road: What Six Journeys Taught Us About Finding Your Way

Six guests. Two truths.  There is no single right path. And you cannot do this alone.  In this special compilation episode of Path Found, I weave together conversations with David Camarena, Coach Christian, Michael Harley, Taylor Rabe, John Sayers, and Sierra Emrick — six people who took wildly different roads and arrived somewhere they never expected.  What they all share: the plan fell apart. The detour turned out to be the training. And someone showed up at exactly the right moment.  

If you've ever felt behind, uncertain, or worried that you've made the wrong choice, this episode is for you. Because the people who seem like they have it all figured out often spent years feeling completely lost.

And sometimes the detours become the destination.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:00

I ended up going home. I then lived at home for a year and just kind of reset at that point. 19 years old, moved back in with my parents. You know, at that point, feeling like a pretty big failure, feeling like all of my buddies at this point are entering their third year of undergrad work at, you know, pristine colleges. I'm coming off of a community college. I got good grades, but I was still getting into trouble and I was still making bad decisions.

SPEAKER_03 0:21

I was lost to say the least. I was extremely lost and I just really needed to hit reset. I had to hit rock bottom. And that's just my personality is like I don't accept when I'm failing. So I had to fail in order to see like I'm really messed up right now and lost, and I do need help.

SPEAKER_00 0:41

I was pretty lost. I didn't really know what I was supposed to be doing. I just spent four years of my life trying to pursue and follow this dream and this passion. And it ended up being something that just really was bad for my mental health.

SPEAKER_02 0:53

Those are three different people, three different stories, three very different circumstances. But the same feeling, that sinking sense that you've somehow gotten it wrong, fallen behind, missed the moment. I've heard some version of that feeling in nearly every conversation I've had on this podcast. And here's what I've also heard: what came next? Hi everyone, and welcome to Pathfound, the podcast about the real, messy, unexpected journeys that lead us to the work we love. I'm Monica Argandonia, and every week I talk with someone whose story proves there's no single right way to build a meaningful life. Hi everyone, and welcome to a special episode of Pathfound, the podcast about the real, messy, unexpected journeys that lead us to the work we love. I'm Monica Argandonia. And over the past several months, I've had the privilege of sitting with six extraordinary people and listening to them tell the truth about their lives. Not the polished resume version, the real version. The part where the plan fell apart, the part where they had no idea what came next, the part where someone showed up and said the right thing at the right moment. Today I want to weave those stories together because what I found is that across all of them, across very different backgrounds, industries, and life circumstances, the same truths keep surfacing. Two in particular. The first, there is no single right path. There never was. And trying to find one can actually be the thing that gets in your way. The second, you cannot do this alone. And the sooner you stop trying to, the sooner things start to shift. Those are the threads I want to follow today. Let's start at the beginning. Or rather, at the moment the plan stopped working. Most of the people I've talked to on the show had a plan. It looked reasonable, it made sense on paper, and then life happened. Sierra Emmerich grew up on California's central coast, fell in love with the ocean, and set her sights on marine biology. She worked on an abalone farm, landed a conservation internship in Sri Lanka, and then COVID hit and pulled her home before she was ready.

SPEAKER_01 2:49

It felt like failure to a certain degree. Like I had all these crazy expectations of what would happen after I graduated and just that I would land the dream job that I always, you know, wanted, that I worked so hard for that I got straight A's for. Then you graduate and you just enter into this abyss.

SPEAKER_02 3:08

Taylor Raby grew up in small town Ohio dreaming of working with wildlife, but the people around her laughed at the idea. So she declared nursing as her major. And two years in, she knew it was wrong. But the alternatives weren't obvious either.

SPEAKER_00 3:22

I had always dreamed of studying and working with wildlife. However, anytime I mentioned that to anyone in my immediate family or friends or whatever, they just kind of laughed at me and told me that that really wasn't an option in making a living. So I really kind of forced myself into thinking that I wanted to be a nurse. And so going into college, that's what I declared my major as nursing. People laughed at that too because I really didn't love people. So it just didn't seem super fitting for me to go into nursing school. I did nursing for about two years. Uh, and then I just realized that I was absolutely miserable. Uh it was not something that I was passionate about, and I really was just doing it to kind of fulfill this dream of being able to buy my own house one day or to make a living that I could support myself and my family. And so I did decide to switch over about my sophomore year of college, and I went into the zoology route. Basically, the only two options given to me were veterinarian or zookeeper. And so that's the route that zoology would take you, pre-vet or into the zookeeping world. And I knew I didn't want to be a vet.

SPEAKER_02 4:29

John Sayers graduated from UC Santa Cruz with a degree in environmental studies, landed a job with the city planning department, and spent six months developing 10-year plans that sat on a shelf. He lasted six months.

SPEAKER_05 4:41

Being 21, 22, and being told you're gonna work on this plan and we'll get to it someday. I was just so eager to do something, just anything. And it was frustrating to come up with these plans that just went and sat on a desk, sat on a shelf. And so I just kind of threw up my hands and like, I'm done with this. I don't know what I want to do, but I want to do something.

SPEAKER_02 5:01

And David Kamarena, therapist, musician, future YouTube creator, spent nearly a decade climbing to the top of the mental health field only to find it wasn't what he'd imagined.

SPEAKER_06 5:12

When I got to the top of mental health, I realized I hated everything about it. And I realized I didn't want to be a mental health guy, corporate in a suit chasing mental health dollars. It just felt wrong and it went against my moral ethics of why I got into psychology, which is to help people.

SPEAKER_02 5:29

What I notice in all of these moments is that the thing we call failure, the plan not working, the job not fitting, the dream not landing is almost always the beginning of something, not the end. But you can't see that when you're in it. All you can see is the gap between where you thought you'd be and where you actually are. My cousin Michael, Army Ranger, Iraq veteran, now co-founder of a nonprofit supporting people with developmental disabilities, put it in a way that stayed with me.

SPEAKER_04 5:57

In life, you're either swimming, treading water, or drowning at any day, any moment, any situation. So you need to look at your life and you need to determine what am I doing right now?

SPEAKER_02 6:07

That's not a comfortable question, but it's an honest one. And I think it's where every real path forward begins. Not with a plan, but with honesty about where you actually are. Here's something I've noticed about every guest I've had on this show. When they look back, the detours don't look like detours anymore. They look like training. John, after leaving city planning, spent years in Oregon snowboarding, fighting wildfires, growing native plants, running a nursery, watching it fail, and eventually becoming a snowy plover monitor for California State Parks. Most people would call that a winding mess. John calls it the foundation.

SPEAKER_05 6:42

Do I regret any of the life choices I made to get here? No, because I gained a ton of experience and they resulted in me getting this job. And I think a big part of how I got the job was the connections I'd made through the nursery world and through the planning department and my friends at Caltrans, Fish and Wildlife, the National Estuary Program.

SPEAKER_02 7:00

Taylor's path from unethical Texas Zoo to juvenile corrections officer to Yellowstone seems like it makes no sense until you realize the corrections work deepened her commitment to underrepresented communities. Moving to Montana put her in the right room at the right moment. And her social ease is exactly what made a wolf biologist notice her at a birthday party.

SPEAKER_00 7:21

I just kind of literally threw myself to the wolves and moved out west. I quit my job as a juvenile corrections officer and I picked everything up, my two dogs, and I drove across the country to Montana. And when I was moving here, I had nothing lined up. I had a potential interview with Yellowstone Forever to work as one of their naturalists or seasonal guides. But I fully expected to be working at Subway in town until I could kind of get myself up and ready to, I guess, face the real world. And I'm very social and charismatic, and I could talk to just about anyone. And so to be a naturalist, you have to have the ability to do that.

SPEAKER_02 7:59

Coach Christian, Navy veteran, federal probation officer, bartender, then a long and painful reset before landing at a fitness resort as a swim coach and aquatics director, made the same observation.

SPEAKER_03 8:11

All the big jobs I did throughout my life, if you look at them surface level, completely unrelated to what I'm currently doing. However, the bartending job I had for opening me up and becoming somewhat social and the military experience for making me super organized and structured and always on a routine and regimen. Even the sociology degree helped me understand people and how to make different groups of people work well together. All of the different things they all fed in one way or another.

SPEAKER_02 8:44

And Sierra, who came home from Sri Lanka feeling lost, went on to work on a regenerative farm, harvest seaweed, lifeguard, run a junior guard program, and eventually, three months into a job at a small nonprofit, was offered the executive director role. They chose her precisely because of everything she'd been through.

SPEAKER_01 9:02

I think it's all the crazy stuff I had done before and the fact that I was still standing. Right. They said this girl's resilient and she's got experience working in a million different fields. And I also had that, I think, just maybe emotional maturity because I've, you know, I've been through some heavy stuff. I've seen some heavy stuff. I personally have like gone through some heavy stuff, and there was like this level of stability deep down that I think they saw and gave them confidence that I could withstand another rough patch, which when you any executive director will tell you when you first start, it's really hard. So they trusted me because of that background that you know felt like this crazy whirlwind of a career path. But I think it eventually paid off and allowed me to have the credentials to get this job.

SPEAKER_02 9:54

David spent nearly a decade playing in a punk band on weekends while treating mental health clients by day. He never stopped making music. He never stopped creating content for years without any income from it. And that patience, that parallel pursuit is exactly what made the pivot possible when the moment came.

SPEAKER_06 10:11

I was planning those seats since my early 20s, and it took almost 10 years, but I realized, hey, I can make money with content. And that's when my whole worldview changed.

SPEAKER_02 10:19

Michael's framing of this is one I keep returning to. He described career navigation the way you describe a venting machine. Start by eliminating what you definitely don't want.

SPEAKER_04 10:29

I didn't want to be some businessman that's just selling things or like I knew it came back to my childhood where I knew I wanted to help people. I always knew that I wanted to do something to help people. I just didn't know what, and I knew what I didn't want to do. I think sometimes you have to look at it through the knot of, oh my gosh, there's so many decisions and I can't decide. It's like a vending machine. And like when you go to a vending machine, there's something you for sure know you don't want. So maybe focus initially, I think, on the things you don't want to do, and that will kind of start to shave some of that stuff away.

SPEAKER_02 10:56

I love that. Not because it's a perfect system, but because it's honest. Most of us at 22 or 30 or 45 don't have a clear vision. We have a direction, and sometimes the most useful thing is to rule out things until something starts to clarify. But the point isn't to have it figured out. The point is to keep moving and to pay attention to what you're learning along the way. I want to shift now to the second theme, the one that honestly surprised me the most when I started noticing it across these conversations. Almost every person I've talked to on the show had a moment, sometimes many moments, where someone showed up for them. Not with a grand plan or perfectly timed intervention, but with something smaller, a connection, a word, a door held open just long enough. And almost as consistently, the people I've talked to also spent a significant stretch of time trying to figure it out completely alone and struggling because of it. Coach Christian said it most directly.

SPEAKER_03 11:51

I think if I were to put it all into a couple words, it would be seek help because I had to learn from my own failures because I never sought help. I also didn't know how, but it's okay to be vulnerable and ask for help, even if you don't think you need it. There's a lot of people out there that want to help you and they might just not know that you need help. So you just saying something is enough for many adults to just do a little extra for you.

SPEAKER_02 12:17

Taylor's entire trajectory changed because of two people. Nathan Varley, the guide company owner who overheard her at a birthday party and offered her a job on the spot. And Rick McIntyre, a wolf researcher and author who later funded her first year with the Wolf project out of his own book sales.

SPEAKER_00 12:34

I still owe everything that has happened to me career-wise, how I've grown, everything I owe to both Nathan and his wife Linda of Wolf Tracker, because they out on they literally out on a whim just hired me. They had no idea what I could do. They didn't know me, uh and they really took a chance on me and they changed my life.

SPEAKER_02 12:53

John built a network the old-fashioned way by showing up curious and asking questions everywhere he went.

SPEAKER_05 13:00

Through being interested in things, I would call up nurseries and say, hey, I'm really interested in growing native plants. Is there any way I could come by and talk to whoever it is on your staff that's in charge of the propagation program? One of the answers to a question in the interview, I told them was, I may not always know the answer, but I know a lot of people in the area, and so I think I can find the answer.

SPEAKER_02 13:20

Sierra had teachers, coaches, parents, and college professors who believed in her at every stage, and she's clear-eyed about how much that mattered.

SPEAKER_01 13:29

It's so critical to have people around you who believe in you, no matter what, because it's gonna be hard and you're gonna need people on your team who tell you you can do it because there's days when you you definitely don't feel like you can do it. There's, I don't remember the exact quote, but there's something along the lines of you're the summary of like the top three people you spend the most time with. And I'm very aware of that fact and try to spend the majority of my time around people I really love and I'm really inspired by.

SPEAKER_02 13:57

And Michael, despite being someone who, by his own admission, spent much of his early life as a lone wolf, ended up finding his path when he posted his resume online at midnight and got an email from a woman named Pat who saw his leadership experience and asked a question he'd never considered. Have you ever worked with people with disabilities?

SPEAKER_04 14:16

One of those people that interviewed me is my current business partner. I mean, I could have blown off that interview. I could have not gone out to Culver City. I could have just been like, eh, you know, whatever. But there was a fire that was burning within me to like do something, like whatever it is, just go, just go do something, you know? And so I knew that that that was like this internal clock that's always been inside of me of like, just go do something. Just figure it out. You'll figure it out along the way, but just go do something.

SPEAKER_02 14:37

I think about that a lot. The email sent at midnight, the job offered, a birthday party, the professor who told you that you were a good writer, the harbor patrol officer who said, My wife's nonprofit is hiring. Those aren't dramatic plot twists. They're small moments of connection that changed everything because someone was paying attention or someone finally spoke up. And here's the part that I keep coming back to. Most of these moments required something from the person receiving them. They had to say yes. They had to show up. They had to let someone in. That's the harder part, I think. Not finding the opportunity, but being willing to accept it. I started this podcast because I wanted to tell the truth about career paths, the real ones, not the highlight reels. I spent over 25 years in a classroom watching students feel immense pressure to have it together before they've had a chance to figure anything out. And what these six guests have shown me, what I hope you're hearing in their words, is that the people who seem like they have it together almost always went through a version of falling apart first. The path didn't become clear until they walked it, and they didn't walk it alone. David said something that I think is worth ending on.

SPEAKER_06 15:43

Life isn't a linear path. And I think a pop culture term that's popular right now is what's your side quest? You know, that's a saying that people say. And I always want to like let people know like it doesn't matter what you're doing in life, just make sure you love it and you have a passion for it and that you believe in it. Don't do things because people tell you you can't or can't do it even. You gotta rely on your own soul searching, dig deep within you yourself and figure out what is it that I'm good at, what is it that I love. Maybe it's something you're not good at, but you can get good at it, right? But if it's a passion driving you, I think passion fuels motivation, which fuels hard work, which fuels possibility if you, you know, believe in it. And so that'd be my advice is is believing yourself, work hard, dream big, never give up. Put your mind to it and you can accomplish anything and make impossible and impossible. And that's how our dreams can come true.

SPEAKER_02 16:30

And Sierra, young, still figuring it out, now running a nonprofit at 20-something, put it in her own quiet way.

SPEAKER_01 16:37

Give yourself grace when things don't go exactly your way, and don't be scared of pivoting and don't see it as a failure. If you keep your chin up and keep moving forward and believe in yourself and surround yourself with people who love you and want to support you, you're gonna end up in a good place. It's not gonna be the place you thought you'd be, but it's gonna be a good place and it's gonna be okay.

SPEAKER_02 16:58

I think that's right. It's gonna be okay. If you want to hear the full conversations with any of today's guests, all six episodes are available wherever you listen to podcasts. Links to all of them are on our website at keystoneetwork.org. And if today's episode resonated with you, please share it with someone who needs to hear it. Leave a review, follow us, and if you have a story of your own, a pivot, a detour, a moment where everything changed, I want to hear it. You can reach us through Instagram at PathTown Podcast or online at Keystoneetwork.org. Thank you so much for being here. The route may not be linear, but there's always a way forward. I'm Monica Argandonia, and I'll see you next time on Pathfound.