I'm doing a thing. Writing 101. I found it on the blogger news at the bottom of my screen when I logged into my blog. It sends me a prompt every week for one month, and each day of the week has a new twist. Today's prompt, write non-stop for twenty minutes, and don't think about what you're going to write beforehand. So, if this sounds a bit rambly, now you know why. The prompt for today is to have the courage to publish the rambliness.
I guess what's been on my mind lately is a big thing. The big thing that involves me returning to America. Not in August like I originally planned to close my service, but a little earlier than that. Like, this Friday. Holy poop I'm going to be in America on Friday. It hasn't actually hit me yet. My head likes to delay emotions, so it'll probably hit me in the middle of JFK airport or something. I'll let you know how that goes.
Perhaps I should mention why I'm heading back to the States earlier than anticipated. Well, that's the tough part to explain, and I thought that I should create a well thought-out blog post to explain what's been going on with me for the past few months, and really my whole life, but I couldn't possibly write about anything else at the moment. My homecoming is just taking complete hold on my brain, so what better way to relinquish that grasp than to ramble about it? And to write rhetorical questions about it!
I've got a pre-existing condition. The doctors and I have not yet figured out how long specifically I've had this illness, but we can gather that it's been around since at least high school. This condition is rather stagnant for the vast majority of the time, meaning that for most of my life, no one would even be able to tell that there was anything wrong with me. There are little to no symptoms, and I can go about my daily life just like everybody else. I guess that's probably why it took until I was 24 years old to figure out that there was anything wrong in the first place.
It is only during situations that put stress on the body and mind that this particular illness decides to rear its ugly head. There are numerous stressors that could bring this about, so it seems impossible to figure out when exactly the symptoms will begin. Because this illness is a pre-existing condition, that means that it is in my DNA. It's a chemical imbalance in my body. My neurotransmitters are malfunctioning. They're not producing enough seratonin, endorphins, and dopamine. Symptoms include insomnia, loss of appetite or over-eating, irritability, weight loss or weight gain, loss of energy, feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, worthlessness, diarrhea, anxiety, fatigue, difficulty concentrating, and thoughts of suicide. You might recognize what my illness is now. I have depression. I wanted to describe all that I've researched about the disease before I named it, because depression has such a stigma on it. Many people just think that you're extra sad, or depressed. Feeling depressed is much different than the mental illness that is depression. It's so much more complicated.
The good news is that it's very treatable! Because my body is not producing enough 'happy' chemicals on its own, I can take antidepressants, which basically tell my neurotransmitters to get their sh#* together and start making more happy chemicals. On top of that, a popular form of therapy is cognitive behavioral therapy, which deals with your thought processes. People with depression sometimes think about things a lot differently than people without depression, and some of these thought processes are not good, or just wrong. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy works to challenge these thought processes, kind of like the scientific method. We have hypotheses, but the therapists challenge these hypotheses, and ask us to do experimentation. We actually think about why we think the things that we think. It's all very complicated, as I said before, and there's still so much I don't know, and have yet to learn. I'm actually a little bit excited to learn about psychology, and of course very excited to get better.
My twenty minutes is up, so I'll leave you with this. Thank you for reading my rambles. I tried to explain everything as much as possible. I don't want your pity, but I do want your hope, because hope is something people with depression don't get enough of, so hope that I can get better. Peace Corps has been taking incredible care of me so far, and I really appreciate all of the opportunities that I have had in the past year and a half in Cambodia. I look to the future with hope, and to the past with fondness.
Sunsets on Tropical Islands
Sunsets on Tropical Islands
Monday, April 6, 2015
Wednesday, March 25, 2015
In which I spend time away from the noise
Say you're trying to start a diet. You
look on the internet, and you find a promising article that tells you
to only eat these certain foods at this time of day, etc. You follow
what the article says, and the next day, you look for some more ideas
on the internet. You find another reputable article that completely
contradicts the first article, telling you that only eating the foods
that the first article told you to eat will not work, and that you
have to eat these foods instead. So you do that, a little
more warily, for a day. The next day, you wake up, check the
internet, and lo and behold, you find yet another trustworthy-looking
article that is saying you should listen to neither of the first two
articles, and eat what you would normally eat, but exercise more, and
then you will definitely be happy.
Frustrating?
It took me two years of living away
from society to realize just how much of an influence these inconsistencies had on my lifestyle. Why is there such a myriad of
contradictory information out there? It is certainly good that new
research is still being done in so many topics, but how are we
supposed to live our lives with the experts always changing their
minds? Here are some real examples:
- Several years ago, the FDA released a warning that artificial sweeteners might be a cause of certain types of cancer, due to some studies done on laboratory animals. Many years later, after significantly more research was done, the National Cancer Institute said that “There is no clear evidence that the artificial sweeteners available commercially in the United States are associated with cancer risk in humans.” [3]
- This past December, the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee held a meeting to discuss changes to the Dietary Guidelines, and due to numerous studies, are now saying that “Cholesterol is not a nutrient of concern for overconsumption.” [4] Despite the fact that the government has been telling us for more than 40 years that cholesterol intake should be 300mg a day or less, they are just now deciding that eating a lot of cholesterol might not actually be as bad for you as they thought.
- The University of Rochester medical center states in an article that “Muscles that are warmed up before being put under a sudden stress are more likely to be able to handle the stress. Mild warm-up exercises before vigorous exertion is always recommended.” [5] And, of course there is the contrary article from the New York Times that argues that “pre-exercise stretching is generally unnecessary and likely counterproductive.” [6]
It's enough to drive you crazy. One
would think that all of this competition and fact-checking would be
good, because it keeps everybody in line, but what it really does is
discourages readers from trying at all. All of this contrariness,
what it really does is to create a lot of noise. It creates a whole
world full of noise, and it is our job to filter through the noise,
but are we qualified? How can we possibly tell which side of the
story is the right one? These are rather daunting questions.
Being a virtual hermit for two years
has let me escape from a lot of the noise. Life, in some aspects,
suddenly became a lot easier. I had time alone with my thoughts,
time to sit down and just think. What I learned was the value of
establishing good habits.
About a year ago, I decided to start
practicing my French again. I was referred to a website called
Duolingo, which is a free language learning website that is actually
based off of video games. It makes education fun. The beauty of
Duolingo is the streak counter. It counts everyday that you study,
even if you only complete one lesson. If you miss a day, your
counter starts back at zero. I had a pretty impressive streak of 50
days going at one point, but alas, I missed that one day. It was
rather devastating, losing that hefty streak, and emotionally
tolling. To my surprise, it took quite a bit more effort to restart
the streak than it had in previous days where I just had to continue
on a streak that had already been running. To that end, this
realization was just enough motivation for me to start with another
streak, knowing that it would soon get much easier. My realization
was further demonstrated by this video:
that talks about breaking bad habits
and replacing them with good habits, and can be found on a YouTube
channel called 'How to Adult'.
It was not until after all of this that
I realized how powerful establishing habits can be. What happens, as
a result of all the noise, is that we try something new, say a new
diet, but are then overwhelmed by the inconsistencies, not knowing which
path to follow. This often leads to despair, and eventually failure.
The alternative to not trying at all, is of course doing nothing.
That's not a very good alternative. Therefore, it occurred to me
recently that this streak method could be translated onto other
skills or habits. That is when I decided to make this:
My Good Habits Calendar, on which I
will keep track of what habits I do by writing them down each day
that I do them. Not only will this help establish these good habits,
but it will also help my goldfish brain to not forget to keep the
streak going, so I can maintain an even more impressive streak next
time, and not have to go through with the monumental effort that is
starting a streak all over again. As with my French streak, the
wonderful thing about habits is that once you've gotten over the
initial hump, it is rather smooth sailing from there. Basically,
it's like training a dog, except you're the dog and the
trainer.
It is my hope that once I establish
some good habits, such as exercise, regular studying, and eating
well, that it will create a solid basis from which I can try to
experiment on my own. By building myself a solid base to work from,
I can then, through trial and error, filter through the noise, figure
out which side of the arguments work for me, and which don't, while
still having that groundwork and not feeling overwhelmed or
discouraged. The key point is that no matter how loud the noise
gets, as long as I have good habits established, I will at least be
doing a little bit of something everyday, which is a whole lot better
than nothing.
Wednesday, March 18, 2015
In which I flop and blog about my day
Today was an eventful day at my school.
First, a big bus of foreigners arrived at school this morning, and started setting up a tent and lots of seats. They weren't just one nationality, you could see faces from all over the world. They taught the students and teachers first about basic health and sanitation. Then, they divided up the teachers and the students. The teachers were taught about more in depth health and sanitation, including hygiene, urinary tract infections, kidney diseases, and sex-ed. The purpose of this was for the teachers to be able to turn around and teach the students about all of this. They went over a lot of important details, on how to avoid these illnesses, and how to diagnose and treat them as well. The teachers seemed very receptive to the information, if not a little shy about the sensitive topics. They even brought two thousand condoms to give out to the whole community, which they ended up giving most to the health center next door. All of the teachers were now really shy, and reluctant to take any, especially the girls. When my co-teacher, Voleak, told me that only boys need them, I explained to her why it was important for girls and boys to have them. She giggled at me and blushed, but nevertheless she took one. After the education part, the volunteers set up a sort of clinic inside the classrooms. Anybody who thought they wanted to be checked up would write their symptoms down, and wait in line. There were rooms for blood tests, gynecology, and regular check-ups. Most people left with two or three bags of pills, some of which were vitamins. It was really interesting for me to see another organization like that in action.
After all that, my program manager from Peace Corps came to visit my site for a few minutes, because he is looking to put another education volunteer here after I leave. (Yay!!) I requested to have another volunteer placed here, because I believe that there is a lot more to be done in my village and my school, and although the English level in my co-teachers and students has improved quite a bit over the past year and a half, there is still much to be improved. My manager, Sangkhim, asked me if I would suggest having the volunteer stay at my house, to which I said yes, and what kind of personality did I think would be good for the dynamics of my host family. I noticed that Peace Corps seems to put a lot of weight on volunteers' personality when deciding site placement. It seems to be common, when volunteers are site mates, to put extroverts together with introverts. Can you guess which one I am, and which one Meghan is? (Sarcasm can be difficult to portray in text.) It was difficult for me to answer this question, because while I have gotten along fine with my host family, Meghan got along just as well. I think either would work, and both would be beneficial to the community in its own way.
After all of that, I flopped on my bed with my adorable kitty, and turned on the fan, because according to my thermometer, it is 103 degrees in my room right now. It only gets hotter from here.
First, a big bus of foreigners arrived at school this morning, and started setting up a tent and lots of seats. They weren't just one nationality, you could see faces from all over the world. They taught the students and teachers first about basic health and sanitation. Then, they divided up the teachers and the students. The teachers were taught about more in depth health and sanitation, including hygiene, urinary tract infections, kidney diseases, and sex-ed. The purpose of this was for the teachers to be able to turn around and teach the students about all of this. They went over a lot of important details, on how to avoid these illnesses, and how to diagnose and treat them as well. The teachers seemed very receptive to the information, if not a little shy about the sensitive topics. They even brought two thousand condoms to give out to the whole community, which they ended up giving most to the health center next door. All of the teachers were now really shy, and reluctant to take any, especially the girls. When my co-teacher, Voleak, told me that only boys need them, I explained to her why it was important for girls and boys to have them. She giggled at me and blushed, but nevertheless she took one. After the education part, the volunteers set up a sort of clinic inside the classrooms. Anybody who thought they wanted to be checked up would write their symptoms down, and wait in line. There were rooms for blood tests, gynecology, and regular check-ups. Most people left with two or three bags of pills, some of which were vitamins. It was really interesting for me to see another organization like that in action.
After all that, my program manager from Peace Corps came to visit my site for a few minutes, because he is looking to put another education volunteer here after I leave. (Yay!!) I requested to have another volunteer placed here, because I believe that there is a lot more to be done in my village and my school, and although the English level in my co-teachers and students has improved quite a bit over the past year and a half, there is still much to be improved. My manager, Sangkhim, asked me if I would suggest having the volunteer stay at my house, to which I said yes, and what kind of personality did I think would be good for the dynamics of my host family. I noticed that Peace Corps seems to put a lot of weight on volunteers' personality when deciding site placement. It seems to be common, when volunteers are site mates, to put extroverts together with introverts. Can you guess which one I am, and which one Meghan is? (Sarcasm can be difficult to portray in text.) It was difficult for me to answer this question, because while I have gotten along fine with my host family, Meghan got along just as well. I think either would work, and both would be beneficial to the community in its own way.
After all of that, I flopped on my bed with my adorable kitty, and turned on the fan, because according to my thermometer, it is 103 degrees in my room right now. It only gets hotter from here.
Sunday, January 25, 2015
In which I make my first video!
Hellooooooo
Four month hiatus, ending now!
It's nearly six months until my service ends, holy poop! (But who's counting?) The amount of time I have left, from now until August (Peace Corps hasn't told me what day yet, but we know August), is like a candy cane. Every time I look at the calendar, it's like I'm sucking off a little bit of sugary, blueberry (I dislike peppermint) goodness, causing the cane to get just a bit shorter. I recently taught many of my students about similes in English. Theirs were much better than that candy cane simile. One of my favorites was "This exam is as difficult as having a baby!"
The future has, in increasing frequency, been unwittingly rolling around in my brain these past few months. As thinking about the future usually happens to feel, it is both exciting and nerve-wracking. Taking that next big step in my life will be a whole new, wonderful adventure that I can't wait to take. But, with six more months, I still need to focus on being a good volunteer, and learn to better avoid the temptation of dreams of the future. In order to balance the time in my head out, I made a video about the past. Hopefully the video of the past plus the anxieties of the future will equal me being in the present. That's totally how it works.
The video is called "This is How I", and it tells the story of our lives in Peace Corps Cambodia. It shows how we do our little daily routines, the contrasts and comparisons between how Americans do the same things. I also talk a bit about culture, what I've learned about culture from being thrown into a totally different culture, and the realization that I am like Jon Snow. (aka I know nothing. (Game of Thrones)). It was always important to me to be myself. I generally avoid conformity as it is, and I wanted my community to learn about American culture by showing them what Americans are like. But, after a year and a half, a lot of my American culture has blended along with some pinches of Cambodian culture, without me even realizing it. It's only when I look back at how much I've changed, that I do realize, and that causes me to think about which parts of which culture I like, and which parts I don't like. It's not cut and dry, of course, and these parts of me will continue to evolve over time. As I spend more of my time here, I will most likely pick up more Cambodian habits, but then when I return to America, how much of these habits will I lose all over again? How many will I keep? It's important for me to think about these questions, and to evaluate my values, because as I've learned here, not all of the values that I learned in America do I still consider to be good values. Sometimes I prefer the Cambodian values, sometimes I prefer American. Perhaps in the future I will have the opportunity to pick up even more values from different countries.
There I go thinking about the future again. I can't stop.
Schmanyway, here's the link to the video. It was made specifically for Meghan's birthday, which was on January 20th. Happy Birthday Meghan!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8ulRxrtPKQ&feature=youtu.be
Another link I'd like to share is an article, written by one of my favorite people, Hank Green. He recently had the awesome opportunity to interview President Obama, along with two other YouTubers, about the State of the Union address. It was very neat of Google to do this, because after the last election, which had too few voters from my generation show up at the polling stations, it's clear that people my age are losing interest in politics. Hank talks about why that is, and I didn't completely realize it myself, but what he says is true. A lot of the disinterest stems from distrust with the news. Big news stations like MSNBC and Fox News have a too obvious bias towards their favorite political parties, and when biases like that creep their way into the news, it causes the viewers from my generation to form a distrust towards all news stations. Where do we look for our news next? The internet. However, the internet is also not entirely reliable. This causes an overall distrust towards news on our part, and ultimately frustration, which causes disinterest.
"The median-aged CNN viewer is 60. For Fox News, it's 68." That's crazy. And then there's the fact that The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report get (got, for The Colbert Report) more young viewers than CNN, Fox, or MSNBC. Crazy.
I spent a lot more time summarizing that article than I had planned, but you should go over and read it anyway. It's much more well written than this is, and expands on a lot of other good points that I didn't cover. https://medium.com/@hankgreen/holy-shit-i-interviewed-the-president-fa3e8fb44d16
It's difficult for me to keep up with what's going on in America. I grab a newspaper whenever I'm in town, but those chances are few and far between. My only other source of news is this sloth-like internet, which as I already covered, I don't entirely trust all the time. But, there are few people that I trust, and Hank is one of them. This is because I have had the chance to watch his videos, and read his articles, and as he mentions in his article, he is honest, and thoughtful. He tries his best to be objective, and not to let his biases enter his videos, and I like that. I'm sick of the bias, and I'm sick of the constant political party struggle.
I apologize, as many of you didn't come here to read about politics, but it's important to me, and I like writing about and sharing things that are important to me. In other news, Shiri is coming to visit me in a little over a week, I'm incredibly excited, and I'll be sure to post a few pictures of our trip! In February, I'll be doing a Write On! competition with some of my students. It's a national competition, where the students have to write a creative story based on a prompt, and grammar and spelling don't count. I've been reviewing some of the basics on writing creatively in my private classes, and they are surprisingly enthusiastic about it. Especially the grammar and spelling not counting part. It's very cool to see the creative juices flowing in these kids.
To top it off, here's a picture of this one day Ninja decided to follow me to school, and refused to leave my side.
Four month hiatus, ending now!
It's nearly six months until my service ends, holy poop! (But who's counting?) The amount of time I have left, from now until August (Peace Corps hasn't told me what day yet, but we know August), is like a candy cane. Every time I look at the calendar, it's like I'm sucking off a little bit of sugary, blueberry (I dislike peppermint) goodness, causing the cane to get just a bit shorter. I recently taught many of my students about similes in English. Theirs were much better than that candy cane simile. One of my favorites was "This exam is as difficult as having a baby!"
The future has, in increasing frequency, been unwittingly rolling around in my brain these past few months. As thinking about the future usually happens to feel, it is both exciting and nerve-wracking. Taking that next big step in my life will be a whole new, wonderful adventure that I can't wait to take. But, with six more months, I still need to focus on being a good volunteer, and learn to better avoid the temptation of dreams of the future. In order to balance the time in my head out, I made a video about the past. Hopefully the video of the past plus the anxieties of the future will equal me being in the present. That's totally how it works.
The video is called "This is How I", and it tells the story of our lives in Peace Corps Cambodia. It shows how we do our little daily routines, the contrasts and comparisons between how Americans do the same things. I also talk a bit about culture, what I've learned about culture from being thrown into a totally different culture, and the realization that I am like Jon Snow. (aka I know nothing. (Game of Thrones)). It was always important to me to be myself. I generally avoid conformity as it is, and I wanted my community to learn about American culture by showing them what Americans are like. But, after a year and a half, a lot of my American culture has blended along with some pinches of Cambodian culture, without me even realizing it. It's only when I look back at how much I've changed, that I do realize, and that causes me to think about which parts of which culture I like, and which parts I don't like. It's not cut and dry, of course, and these parts of me will continue to evolve over time. As I spend more of my time here, I will most likely pick up more Cambodian habits, but then when I return to America, how much of these habits will I lose all over again? How many will I keep? It's important for me to think about these questions, and to evaluate my values, because as I've learned here, not all of the values that I learned in America do I still consider to be good values. Sometimes I prefer the Cambodian values, sometimes I prefer American. Perhaps in the future I will have the opportunity to pick up even more values from different countries.
There I go thinking about the future again. I can't stop.
Schmanyway, here's the link to the video. It was made specifically for Meghan's birthday, which was on January 20th. Happy Birthday Meghan!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8ulRxrtPKQ&feature=youtu.be
Another link I'd like to share is an article, written by one of my favorite people, Hank Green. He recently had the awesome opportunity to interview President Obama, along with two other YouTubers, about the State of the Union address. It was very neat of Google to do this, because after the last election, which had too few voters from my generation show up at the polling stations, it's clear that people my age are losing interest in politics. Hank talks about why that is, and I didn't completely realize it myself, but what he says is true. A lot of the disinterest stems from distrust with the news. Big news stations like MSNBC and Fox News have a too obvious bias towards their favorite political parties, and when biases like that creep their way into the news, it causes the viewers from my generation to form a distrust towards all news stations. Where do we look for our news next? The internet. However, the internet is also not entirely reliable. This causes an overall distrust towards news on our part, and ultimately frustration, which causes disinterest.
"The median-aged CNN viewer is 60. For Fox News, it's 68." That's crazy. And then there's the fact that The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report get (got, for The Colbert Report) more young viewers than CNN, Fox, or MSNBC. Crazy.
I spent a lot more time summarizing that article than I had planned, but you should go over and read it anyway. It's much more well written than this is, and expands on a lot of other good points that I didn't cover. https://medium.com/@hankgreen/holy-shit-i-interviewed-the-president-fa3e8fb44d16
It's difficult for me to keep up with what's going on in America. I grab a newspaper whenever I'm in town, but those chances are few and far between. My only other source of news is this sloth-like internet, which as I already covered, I don't entirely trust all the time. But, there are few people that I trust, and Hank is one of them. This is because I have had the chance to watch his videos, and read his articles, and as he mentions in his article, he is honest, and thoughtful. He tries his best to be objective, and not to let his biases enter his videos, and I like that. I'm sick of the bias, and I'm sick of the constant political party struggle.
I apologize, as many of you didn't come here to read about politics, but it's important to me, and I like writing about and sharing things that are important to me. In other news, Shiri is coming to visit me in a little over a week, I'm incredibly excited, and I'll be sure to post a few pictures of our trip! In February, I'll be doing a Write On! competition with some of my students. It's a national competition, where the students have to write a creative story based on a prompt, and grammar and spelling don't count. I've been reviewing some of the basics on writing creatively in my private classes, and they are surprisingly enthusiastic about it. Especially the grammar and spelling not counting part. It's very cool to see the creative juices flowing in these kids.
To top it off, here's a picture of this one day Ninja decided to follow me to school, and refused to leave my side.
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