About

I had the degrees, the ambition, and a plan. Then the constraints changed.

I’m Megan Campbell. I earned two mechanical engineering degrees expecting to build a demanding career and support myself.

My health changed the path I expected.

Now my health is more stable, and I have more capacity to pursue that goal.

The challenge is taking greater financial ownership of the life I love without sacrificing my health—or the relationships, experiences, and joy that make it worth living.

That is what Engineering My Best Life is about.

Designing a life I love — and figuring out how to afford it.

The Path I Didn’t Expect

My health became the problem I had to solve first.

I earned my B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from The Ohio State University and continued into graduate school there. My health deteriorated while I was working on my M.S., and by the time I finished in May 2014, the career path I expected was on hold.

Eventually, I was diagnosed with hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (hEDS), a heritable connective-tissue disorder that makes my joints unstable. So much of my medical history finally made sense.

For years after graduate school, managing my health took most of what I had. There were months when I could barely get off the couch.

Today, my health is more stable, but never completely predictable. I still have days with almost no energy, sometimes without warning. Staying stable takes consistent medical care, strength training, and recovery.

That stability opened my life back up, and I've chosen to live it: ordinary good days, time with family and friends, dinners out, football games, adventures, and travel. A trip can cost 3 to 10 days of recovery. When the experience is worth it, I go anyway.

My own health and the health of people I love have shown me how quickly abilities can change. So I make time for the people and experiences that matter most.

The point of getting my life back is to live it.

Tomorrow is never guaranteed—and neither are the physical abilities I have today.

The Foundation I’m Building From

I’m not starting from zero—and I’m not going to pretend that I am.

I’ve been very fortunate.

My family has helped support me financially, and I have also benefited from investments that grew over time.

I’ve earned income through part-time and independent work, but my earned income has not historically covered the full cost of my life.

I’m deeply grateful for that support and financial foundation.

Those resources are part of my long-term security and medical safety net.

I want to build from that foundation—not simply spend it down.

What I Want to Build

I’m not designing a life from scratch. I already have one I love.

I’m figuring out how that life has to change so my own income can pay for it, with my investments as a safety net instead of the thing that fills the gap. First I need the real number: what my life costs in a year. Then I can decide what’s worth keeping, what’s worth changing, and what kind of work can cover it.

I want challenging work that uses my engineering training and lets me keep growing, on a schedule my health can sustain. I want time with the people I love, and the freedom to travel while I have the capacity for it.

I want the present and the future to work.

Living is the point.

Why “Engineering My Best Life”?

Engineering is the method.

It describes how I naturally approach complicated problems:

Define the problem → Define success → Gather the data → Test + measure → Analyze → Decide + revise

Real life is messier than an engineering model. Priorities compete. Conditions change. And something that looks optimal on paper can be a terrible decision in practice.

The cheapest answer is not automatically the best answer.

The highest salary is not automatically the best career.

Data first. Optimization second.

The Engineering Report

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Follow the Work

I don’t know how this story ends.

I’m using real data to understand what the life I want requires, testing ways to fund it sustainably, improving the systems around it, and seeing what works.

The individual questions and decisions will change.

The larger question guiding all of it — THE ENGINEERING PROBLEM — is:

How do I finance a life I love without sacrificing my health to do it?