Don't Stop Digging

It's been just under a month since my last post. Considering the content of said post, it may have been prudent of me to post a follow-up for anyone concerned. While this past month has definitely had its few ups and mostly downs, I just want to assure everyone that I am happy, healthy, and doing well.

Though an entire month has passed, there are only a couple things I want to write about: (1) The election from the perspective of an American abroad and (2) the literal month's-worth of coursework I only yesterday finished slogging through.

Diving right in: I'm not a very political person but this election had such a sweeping effect on me that excluding a discussion of it would misrepresent my month and be an injustice to the current state of the United States of America. When I say "sweeping effect" I mean that this election pulled my feet out from under me, battered me over the head with a spiked club, and then swept what was left of me into the corner with the shattered beer bottles and annihilated hopes for the future.

At 11pm GMT on the night of 8 November, I blithely gathered at the Edinburgh Uni student union with friends for a couple drinks and to watch the CNN live stream for a couple hours until Hilary won Florida and North Carolina, after which I'd comfortably go to bed and feel refreshed for lecture at 10am and at least four more years of social, economic, and scientific progress. A couple drinks turned into, "What the f*** is happening?! I need another drink." A couple hours of waiting for results from FL and NC turned into staring, gaping at "too close to call" for four hours until, finally, around 4am, Trump was declared the winner in both FL and NC. By that time the pub we were in was no longer serving alcohol. So I went home to huddle under the covers of my bed and watch the CNN live stream until I could no longer keep my eyes open. I'm not sure what time I fell asleep but at 6:30am I woke up into a nightmare; Trump had just clinched Pennsylvania and a Trump Presidency seemed assured.

I skipped lecture that morning to sleep until 11. But even after a decent amount of sleep I felt drained--physically and emotionally. It literally felt as if someone close to me had just died. And I remember thinking: My country just had. I was told, "I'm so sorry" by more than one of my European colleagues here. All I wanted to do was hide in my room, feeling ashamed to be an American. I was--and still am--scared for the future. But we keep moving forward.

However much the rhetoric and fear-mongering Trump spewed during his campaign has incited the wave of racism, bigotry, and prejudice crashing across the country, I think that, now faced with actually being President, Trump truly wants to do a good job. Yes, I may disagree with the direction Trump seems to be taking the country, judging from many of the people he has appointed to his transition team; but I think he does have America's best interest at heart. The problem is, the America Trump inhabits and the America the rest of us inhabit seem to be two completely different things. Which means that we have to do everything we can to oppose the things that go against the rights, happiness, and safety of EVERY American and push back to preserve the progress that has been made in, to name a few, human rights and sustainable energy. I don't have the answers. But things we all can do are contact local and state representatives, VOTE in upcoming elections (if you're over 18), and--if you are able and willing--donate to organizations that will work to protect the rights of marginalised groups, health of this planet, and futures of our children. Above all, we can LOVE one another and have HOPE for a better tomorrow!

As an American abroad, I'm doing everything I can to spread love, understanding, and friendship in an attempt to represent the country I call home; the country I know deep down is full of kind, caring, and compassionate people. On my quest to paint a better image of Americans than what you might see on the news, I've met so many diverse and wonderful people! Three such people are a couple and their friend, all from Glasgow, who I met during my first week in Edinburgh, waaayyy back in September. I was meeting another friend for drinks and pub quiz and these three were sitting at the table next to us. Their humour was a bit raunchy, the (lesbian) couple was tattooed and pierced to the gills, they smoked about a pack of cigarettes in the three hours we talked to them, and they were about the nicest people you could meet. After a pub quiz question regarding a bit of Edinburgh history, they told us a story from a time when what's now the nice part of Edinburgh was a disease- and thief-ridden slum, poorly maintained and walled off from the rest of the city. This part of town was so poorly maintained buildings would frequently collapse. One such collapse trapped a young boy inside for over two days. The workers were just about to give up any hope of finding survivors when they heard the young boy call out, "Don't stop digging, lads! I'm not dead yet."

I don't know how much or even if any of it is true, but that story has stuck with me. I've had the title for this post in my drafts since that night. I just didn't have any good content to put under it. Until now. The story of that young boy has helped me get through this past month. It gave me hope even when things seemed at their worst. It gives me hope that, no matter how much damage a Trump administration does, no matter how much it seems like the world is collapsing around us, there is hope. You just have to keep digging for the love and kindness that I know is in each and every one of us. It might take a pick axe to shatter ignorance, which could just bring more rubble crashing down around us. But, ultimately, love and hope will triumph in the end. It's that love and hope that has kept me going.

On top of election fallout, I've had a month of coursework to keep me good and stressed. I took it a day at a time. And in moments when it felt overwhelming, I took a breath, looked up from my studies to appreciate where I am--FREAKING AMAZING EDINBURGH! And at times when I felt like I was drowning, I remembered a young boy shouting out for help and told myself to just keep digging. I'm not dead yet. And it'll all be worth it in the end.

Well, this post has gone on long enough. And even though it's no longer Thanksgiving here, it still is where many of you will be reading this. So Happy Thanksgiving! Take today and every day to be thankful for the opportunities and people in your life. Be merry! Be safe! LOVE! And don't stop digging.

Stay informed. -NLD

On Meeting Charlie McDonnell and How Anxiety Ruined it for Me

It happened. The twitchy eyelid came back with a vengeance. All thanks to back-to-back nights of staying up late working on Machine Learning Practical coursework. But you'll notice this blog post isn't titled "Revenge of the Twitchy Eyelid" because there's something much more important to write about.

I. Met. Charlie. McDonnell! (AKA charlieissocoollike, YouTube personality and superstar! At least that's how my inner 12-year-old self viewed and still views him.)

"You've just had the almost imponderable joy of [meeting]
charlieissocoollike, which makes you, like, cool!"

He was in Edinburgh doing a book-signing for his new book, Fun Science. I only just found out it was happening--and, to be honest, that he'd even written a book--on Monday. But as soon as I saw the event on Facebook, I purchased my ticket. I spent the rest of the week reacquainting myself with all of Charlie's old videos and enjoying many of the new ones he's posted since--gosh--probably my senior year in high school. Here's one of my favourites:

Rewatching his videos confirmed in my mind that Charlie McDonnell is one of the coolest, funniest, and wisest young-people-around-my-age. So, after meeting Charlie, getting a signed copy of his book, and taking a picture with him... why do I feel like shit?

Sure, the whole process of meeting Charlie was very rushed. But that's the sort of thing one should expect when attending a book signing. So from where does my disappointment stem? Certainly not having to deal with the rest of his fans; they were all courteous, patient, and, overall, lovely people. And one of them was my friend who I hadn't seen since My First Week in Edinburgh, Part II. And though I struggled to come up with something to say as Charlie wrote in the front cover of my book, he absorbed my stuttered remarks with grace and charm.

This all seems great! Why am I being such a downer?

As I stated in Living in a Fantasy World, this blog isn't meant to be just the exciting, wonderful experiences that go along with traveling or living in an amazing city like Edinburgh (though I do hope I've managed to fit some of that in here, too); it's also my journal, with which I can delve into the less glamorous aspects of living abroad to show you that it's not all beautiful sunrises and taking pictures with celebrities. Living and studying abroad is also working yourself to the point of exhaustion and an incessantly twitching eyelid, or confronting parts of yourself that you'd rather not see or thought you'd left behind with your high school years. Therein may lie a cause of my current mood.

Like I said, before this week I don't think I'd watched a charlieissocoollike video since high school. Seeing and meeting Charlie today transported me (mostly unconsciously) back to those relatively unstable years of my life. The instability and dark times I experienced then are partially what drew me to charlieissocoollike. Charlie cheered me up. And, though he lived 4,000 miles away and only spoke to me through YouTube, Charlie felt like a real and genuine person--a true friend. And as far as I can tell, he's based his entire online presence on being genuine and true.

And that struck a chord with me. I saw/see myself in Charlie--the shy but enthusiastic, more than slightly awkward kid making random videos for YouTube, wanting people to like him and feeling good when it seems they do but at the same time feeling sad that he only ever did it so people would like him (which, really, is probably a big part of why anyone does anything) but still we blame ourselves for having this so very human quality and drown in anxious thoughts of what people think of me and why I'm not being the best me I can be. But, of course, we all know that the best thing we can do in this world is make other people happy by doing what makes us happy. So why am I not happy to have met this person I feel such a connection to?

The comparison of myself to Charlie went much too far when I got angry at myself for not wearing my glasses, or my pair of brownish-yellow trousers, or my dark long-sleeve shirt to the book-signing because of course that's what Charlie would wear and I should have known so we could be #twinning.

But I am not Charlie McDonnell. As much as I secretly hope to one day be a published author and have my own book-signings to attend, I am not Charlie McDonnell. Nor do I want to be. I am me. The trouble, though, is figuring out who me is and what me wants. You'd think somebody almost a full semester into their Master's in Informatics would have their life pretty well sorted, what with the variety of sorting algorithms at our disposal. But there is no sorting algorithm for life. So I'm here to say that I have no clue what I want to do with my life and that I think hardly anyone ever does.

Don't get me wrong, I do very much enjoy my coursework and most certainly wouldn't have made it this far in Computer Science/Informatics if didn't. But I can't help but wonder if maybe there's something I would enjoy doing more (like writing!) or if I enjoy my studies for the wrong reasons. I enjoy being busy because being busy leaves little time to be anxious or worry about what people think of me. And as a Master's student at the University of Edinburgh, I am very VERY busy.

But the worry still creeps into my life. As an example, a few weeks ago on a Friday, I didn't have much of a lunch between lectures. So by 6pm I was pretty hungry. I checked my phone for restaurants I hadn't been to before and picked out a fairly trendy, well-reviewed Indian restaurant. I left my flat, walked to this restaurant, and as I stood outside looking at the menu on the door, I was overcome by an irrational, mind-crushing anxiety.  My thought process went something like this: "It's so busy. I would be that person eating alone. Oh, god I have no friends. Neal, you're being silly. Just go in and ask what the wait time is. And you've eaten alone at plenty of restaurants before now. But I wouldn't want to take a table just to myself when they're so busy. Maybe I'll just go try somewhere else." And so I did--go try somewhere else--three times, before I finally gave up. After walking around for nearly half an hour, I ended up going back to my flat, without having eaten anything, to work on coursework until 10pm, at which point I was REALLY hungry. Eventually I worked up the courage to run round the corner for a chicken shawarma wrap. So that's me.

For this next bit I'll rely on another Charlie video:

Like Charlie, I suffer from anxiety and at times in my life have suffered from depression. I haven't been officially diagnosed but it's been a part of my life for almost as long as I can remember. And I cope with it by keeping myself so busy I forget it's there, which itself probably isn't a very healthy coping mechanism but it works for me. And on the occasion my anxiety does rear its ugly head, I find writing to be therapeutic. Hence, this blog post.

So, back to why I am not happy to have met Charlie: I am happy to have met Charlie! Ecstatic, even! It was a very great pleasure and an amazing opportunity I do not take for granted. But when I met Charlie in real life--in the screwed-up, paradoxical way that only anxiety can manage--the realness of the connection I felt with Charlie when I watched his videos was ruined. However much of his authentic self he puts in his videos, they are still just videos presented to me via YouTube. And when that medium barrier was broken yesterday, it broke something inside me too. When I stood next to Charlie as we had our picture taken, I glanced away from camera to look at the queue of people still waiting for the same opportunity. In that moment, I think my idea that I could be or was actually friends with this famous YouTuber became a disillusioned one.

But this isn't Charlie's or YouTube's fault; it's anxiety's. Anxiety is the reason I've had to write a 1,797-word blog post (much of it written at 3am) just to regain some sense of normality and allow myself to process the fact that I met one of my childhood idols yesterday. And in doing so, I've realized that the Charlie I met yesterday is still the same Charlie in his charlieissocoollike videos. It's just that, because his YouTube self is the first version of him I felt a connection to, meeting Charlie in-person felt more distant. And because I've been conditioned to treat meeting a celebrity as the pinnacle of showing your fan-dom, the distance I felt yesterday shattered the relationship I thought I had with YouTube Charlie. But, of course, two minutes of awkwardly standing there while someone signs a piece of paper and takes a picture with you is not a true representation of that person. So instead I just think of how helpful Charlie's videos were during my formative years in high school and how I will always appreciate that and everything Charlie does for science education, entertainment, and just being an exemplary human being.

So in true charlieissocoollike-style, here's my attempt at a concluding nugget of wisdom and positive note to end on: Don't compare yourself to other people, but especially celebrities; you are flawed and perfect enough just the way you are. And don't worry if you don't have life completely figured out just yet. That's something that just takes time, trying different things, and several mistakes. But eventually, I think, everyone is able to find what is most fulfilling for them, what makes them the best version of them, and what makes people happy (themselves included!). Things like anxiety and depression can get in the way of that so it's important to state those things for what they are--an illness that can be treated. And if you suffer from anxiety and/or depression, you are not alone and I hope this blog post is helpful to you.

Whether you know me personally or not and whether my anxiety is new, old, or even relevant information to you, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for reading this and hope that you have a wonderful day!

Stay informed. -NLD

A Twitchy Eyelid

Sorry it's been a while since my last post, but up until about a week ago my life could be summarised by this post's title. Too many long hours spent reading in the library and/or staring at a computer screen, the stress of coursework ramping up, and lack of sleep due to a mild cold--it all added up and manifested itself as a twitch in my left eyelid every minute or so for over two weeks. It's gone now *knock on wood*.

Even though my last post was over a month ago, there really isn't much  for me to talk about. But I'll give you the highlights: Just a few days after my last post, all those weeks ago, I went to the Edinburgh Zoo. It's a fantastic zoo! I got to meet the highest ranking penguin in the Norwegian military, and came face-to-face with a Sumatran tiger.

Brigadier Sir Nils Olav, mascot and
Colonel-in-Chief of the Norwegian King's Guard

Sumatran Tiger at the Edinburgh Zoo

Victorious! Taken from the top
of Arthur's Seat at 22:51

My only other adventure has been making butternut squash soup with a group of friends and going on a night-hike up Arthur's seat. The soup was delicious and warm and the hike was eerily beautiful and very cold.

The only other excitement in my life is going to pub quiz with friends and obsessing over one of our professors. Other than that, it's pretty much just been the daily grind of lectures, tutorials, coursework, eat, sleep, repeat. Overall my modules (classes) are going very well and I'd say they are a good mix of challenging, interesting, and useful. But there have been times, especially in the last couple weeks, when I feel as if I'm about to drown in the amount of work I have to do. But I just take one day at a time, work hard, and give myself plenty of breaks to enjoy this amazing city I'm in. I wouldn't want my next post to be titled "Revenge of the Twitchy Eyelid."

Sunrise from my window

That's all for now. I hope it won't be quite so long between this and my next post, but with what I'm calling "Hell Week" (three major projects due in three consecutive days) only a month away, it's very probable the next post won't happen until after that. So perhaps my usual sign-off is a bit silly, but I'm going to do it anyway...

Stay informed. -NLD

Wipe the Suds Away

I don't mean to burst my own bubble, really, but this first week of class has been more one of downs than ups. Part of that, I think, has just been getting back into the swing of rigorous coursework. But there's more to it. So here are the lowlight highlights:

Sunday was laundry day. Exciting. I know. But it was a little too exciting when the cap to my laundry detergent got cracked and a puddle of lavender scented soap seeped its way to existence in the bottom of my wardrobe. I caught it before it made too big of a mess but the clothes I had in my mesh hamper got soaked through with the sudsy substance. I rinsed them out as best I could, but I'm still not entire sure what to do with them. What I think happened with the cap is I'd had the bottle of detergent in the bottom of my hamper and when I set it down after getting back from putting my dirty laundry in the wash, I must have let the hamper fall a little too hard, so the cap cracked. On the bright side, my room smells a lovely scent of lavender now.

Monday was the first day of classes and it as well as it could have. I managed to find all of my classrooms, the professors were interesting to listen to, and I've found several friends in each of my classes. But the excitement of the first day was overshadowed by my uncertainty over which classes to enroll in. I was torn between taking a 20-credit class that I think would be pretty easy but is a prerequisite for a class I want to take next semester or taking two 10-credit classes that are likely to be very difficult but extremely interesting and very relevant to my specialism (Machine Learning). Plus, like I said in my last post, the registration system here works very differently from what I was used to back in the States. I "selected" my courses via an online course planning system but had no confirmation I was actually registered for the classes I wanted. Which is probably okay since I changed my mind so much anyway. Finally, yesterday (21/9), I got confirmation of my classes for the year. In the end I decided to make things hard for myself. I went with the two challenging 10-credit classes. Also, for the class I wanted to take next semester, I have been able to get the prerequisite waived since the 20-credit class is similar to one I took as an undergraduate. And just to make things even harder for myself, I'm still planning to attend the lectures for the 20-credit class and do the coursework for it where I'm able--time permitting--because I think the review will be good preparation for the more advanced class next semester. All that being said, I know that I will learn a lot and it will totally be worth it! ...As long as I don't fail anything.

With all the math intensive classes I'm taking this semester, I wanted to spend Tuesday and Wednesday reviewing the many topics and equations I've learned over the years but seem to have floated from my mind -- a bit like bubbles. I remembered a lot of the basic concepts, but the problem sets/exercises I forced myself to do were challenging, frustrating, and eventually resulted in me moving on to something else. I don't feel as comfortable with the math as I feel like I should feel, but I'm determined to press on and challenge myself, and I'm wondering if this might just be a case of impostor syndrome. I think I'll just have to have another go and take each problem a little slower in smaller chunks so I don't overwhelm myself. After all, I have until April/May to prepare for exams. Yep, that's right! My exams--even for Semester 1 classes--are all at the end of Semester 2. Welcome to the UK University system! So if you're planning to visit me between March and June... I'll be in the library.

That's about it for this week. Sorry I don't have any pictures. I didn't think you'd want to see an off-white, opaque puddle of laundry detergent. But now that I've wiped the suds away, I'm left with a very clean and very nice smelling wardrobe. In another sense, once I've wiped the suds of a lazy summer from my mind and can get back to a clean slate, ready to be scribbled all over, I'm ready to learn. And if the suds start creeping up out of the shower drain, I just have to remember where I am--I'm in freaking Edinburgh!!--and I'm left with a cleaner, shinier, more perfect picture of what I'm doing and why I'm doing it.

Stay informed. -NLD