A Letter from Karen Unland, Co-Founder of Taproot Publishing Inc. on Following Your Passion
- Mar 5
- 7 min read
Dear New Grad,
After graduation, you stop following a set path and start creating your own. And I can say with 99.9% certainty that if you tell anyone you’re feeling lost, you’d at least hear one of the two pieces of advice: “Follow your passion”, and the complete opposite, “Don’t follow your passion. Follow what you’re good at, and do what you’re passionate about on the side.”
No matter what, advice can feel like polar opposites, and sometimes, it just makes things more confusing. But what if there’s another version? One that’s a little easier to live with.
Karen Unland, co-founder and COO of Taproot Edmonton, shared her experience with following her passion, journalism, and how that passion changed shape over the course of her career.
Journalism isn’t a career path you hear about as often anymore, and it makes you wonder: Is this what it looks like when someone truly follows their passion?
“When did you become interested in journalism?” I asked. “Is this something you always wanted to do?”
“Yeah, 10 is when I said ‘OK. I’m going to be a journalist’,” she said. “This was the 1980s… I’m very old,” she laughed. “My first lead story was about Pierre Trudeau winning the 1980 federal election, and then I had a review of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. I only did one edition, but my teacher was such a great encourager… She made copies of my (foolscap) newspaper for the whole class. That was one of the things that made me think, ‘That’s what I want to do.’”
“1980… would you advise people to pursue journalism now?” I ask.
“I would not advise people to go into journalism for money now. There's lots of other good reasons to do it, but security and all that is not among them,” she responded.
But Karen’s journalism career wasn’t short of success. Karen spent 14 years as a reporter and editor at the Edmonton Journal before leaving the newsroom in 2011 to start a consulting business of her own and teach journalism.
“I guess, in a sense, you followed your passion. What is your opinion on the advice ‘Follow your passion?’” I asked.
“I come from a few different points of view on this. I'm a person who followed my passion, and I'm so glad I did, because I've had such a great adventure of a life so far. … I'm not the kind of person who can have a day job that just pays the bills …so I don't know that I had a choice and to be a ‘follow my passion’ person. It's cost me lots of money and tears and all kinds of things, but that's how I am…”
“It sounds like your passion for journalism didn’t fade even after you quit, though,” I said. “It sounds like you changed. Your goals, and what you wanted just… shifted.”
“It’s interesting you say that,” she replied. “When I left the (Edmonton) Journal, and I had that moment of ‘What am I if I'm not a journalist?’ I did get to a point where I didn't feel like I was doing journalism, so I stopped calling myself that, and I figured out other things, like consultant or educator or whatever. And then eventually, an entrepreneur…that became my identity.”
“Did you quit due to financial reasons?” I asked only because she had mentioned that money and stability would not be one of the reasons why people should pursue journalism.
She laughed. “Yeah, no, the money wasn't part of that decision. I still don't make as much money as I did in 2011 when I left, so that was not a good financial decision either… I just felt like, okay, I have done everything that I can do here, and I can see that the industry is going to continue to decline... And I just thought, ‘I need to do something different.’ I don't know what that ‘something different’ is, but… I felt like I have things that I have to do for my job, and then things that I think I should be doing for my job, and those are two different things.”
That part really stuck with me. When your identity becomes intertwined with your work, leaving can feel like a breakup and an identity crisis all at once. And just like breakups, there are times when you know things just aren't working anymore… and unfortunately, exits are rarely clean.
“I always take flying leaps… I have not really had an exit strategy,” Karen said. “I just left because I didn't think that I could figure out the future and try to do the present at the same time. So I gotta get rid of whatever I'm doing in the present and think of the next thing… It's really dumb to do that, especially in my position. I am the breadwinner in my family. I’ve made a lot of bad decisions in that way, but it doesn't matter. I'm happy. Everybody's still alive.”
At the time of the interview, I didn’t get the chance to tell her that she was so brave for that, which I deeply regret not saying, but it’s true. We do have to take risks, and it’s so refreshing to hear that Karen chose to chase her new identity as an entrepreneur despite the uncertainties. And I just hope that someday, I have enough courage to take risks when I hear my inner voice screaming to take the flying leap.
She immersed herself in different experiences and eventually found a new calling as the co-founder and COO of Taproot Edmonton. Instead of being the creative mind behind every article, she wanted to build something that allowed journalists to do honest, meaningful work. For Karen, her new mission is making a difference through Taproot Edmonton.
“Taproot Edmonton’s mission is to inform and connect and inspire people who live here. And we've deliberately created this source of true information about Edmonton that is incentivized in such a way that we just want people to understand stuff better. We don't want to make them angry. We don't want to persuade them to do one thing or a different thing. We just want people to understand the place where they live,” Karen explains.
And what a rare type of journalism that is to find these days, especially in this political climate. Sometimes, maybe it’s not that you’re unable to comprehend the news, but it’s how the news is being delivered to you. To know that a company like Taproot exists is such a peace of mind. Education can be intimidating, but companies like Taproot make it feel more inviting.
Perhaps there's a nuanced difference between following your passion and following yourself. Passions change, but you are the one who shapes them. Your values, your beliefs, your goals. Following your passion without questioning it can become stagnant. And like Karen, you may one day realize you no longer agree with the way your passion is being expressed, which is exactly why she created something of her own.
There isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer, and maybe that’s why advice feels conflicting. We’re all different people (duh). But what I found most interesting in this conversation is that if your identity is so deeply tied to your passion that you ask, “Who am I if not this?”, then maybe it is worth following your passion. Just accept that it might change. Whether that change comes from you or the world.
Maybe we all have to get a little lost to learn what we don’t want before we understand what we do.
There’s no rush to figure everything out after graduation… or life in general. Even after choosing a path, there are always more paths to take. Some might even lead you to places where you didn’t even think would exist.
We can’t predict our lives. But maybe that uncertainty is what makes our lives interesting.
I hope this reminds you that things don’t always go to plan, and that our journey doesn't always need one. If you’re feeling lost, maybe the first thing worth finding isn’t the perfect path, but yourself.
WORDS FOR THE JOURNEY FROM KAREN UNLAND
Did you ever predict that you’d be where you are now when you first graduated? If not, then what could you have never imagined?
For me, I graduated from UofA ‘94 and from Carleton with a master’s in journalism in ‘96. It was sometime between 1994 and ‘96 before I got an email. Now I work in it in a digital journalism startup that delivers its work by email. I couldn't have imagined that because there was no such thing as email when I graduated from the U of A… Or at least I didn't have it. The internet was just starting and we were trying to figure things out. So I feel like I was fully an adult before the internet became widespread and ubiquitous, affecting every single element of everything. I remember very well what it's like to have a non-internet life, and I also am fully immersed in the internet now in the work that I do. I think people your age are in a similar position because you grew to be an adult pre-AI.
What was your go-to question when the interviewer asked, “Do you have any questions for us?”
What I want people to ask me… is something that genuinely reflects their curiosity. That (shows) they have done enough preparation for this interview that they're actually curious about something… You need to be focused on what problem that this employer has that you can solve. I think a lot of people go into job-hunting thinking, "The problem I need to solve is I need a job.”... That's not the employer's problem. The employer is going to solve that problem if you can solve the problem for them. And so the question that you should ask…is something that helps you understand more what their problem is that you can solve.
What advice would you give your younger self?
School does not matter as much as you think it does. I was thinking about how utterly invested I was in trying to get the highest mark, do all of what was asked of me in school. And it's not that you shouldn't do those (things), you should try hard. I did a good job, but… I put too much emphasis on things that don't matter, like getting an A instead of a B or whatever
These things were important in that I got scholarships, I got opportunities. I got awards. It's all good.. but, it doesn't matter… I can't remember the last time it mattered what my report card was. It may never have for all of whatever I did, except to get into the next level of school. And I just think of how many tears and how much anguish that I expended on something that didn't matter.
What mattered was learning. What mattered was making mistakes. And what mattered was the people that I met while I was doing all of these things… and I wish I could tell my young self, “It's fine.”
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