nANIMOv

Sometimes in pool when there’s no obvious next move, your next move is just to set yourself up for the next next move. But I’m not the best at pool.

I’m feeling pretty energized by my work with Doctors Without Walls. Today at the clinic we had a couple new volunteers shadowing. I remember being in their shoes over a year ago. In my time with DWW I’ve learned so much and I enjoy being able to share some of that with the next generation of volunteers. That in addition to some pretty good success with a few clients, has me feeling good and I want to try to maintain that energy for the future and whatever comes next.

I’m going to dive a lil’ deeper into how I’m feeling right now.

I’ve never been a super anxious person. Not in school, not in social setting, etc. Sometimes I feel like that has had some negative consequences. I never felt like I the my world would end if things didn’t turn out a certain way, and maybe that makes me somewhat less motivated or I don’t want it badly enough. It’s not that I don’t care about the outcome, but rather that experience has taught me to be comfortable with not succeeding the first time, and I should prepare for that and to be able to move on. I try to expect any outcome, even though if I prefer a specific one, but just because I expect the non-best-case-scenarios doesn’t mean it hurts any less when they happen.

It sucks being in limbo, not knowing whether or not in a few months I’ll be embarking on the most significant academic endeavor of my life. It sucks knowing that so many of my peers have at least gotten in somewhere. It sucks thinking my chances at this point are slim. It sucks feeling like I should have done more or that I should have tried to be someone else than myself. It sucks feeling like I’m letting people down.

I can’t control what happens in the next few weeks, but I can control how I respond to it. And should the non-best-case-scenario occur, I’ll do my best to dust myself off, maybe wipe away a couple tears, and keep moving forward.

I like trying to get into new things. Sometimes I stick with them sometimes I don’t, but usually I’ll at least revisit. There was a period of about a month where I was meditating every morning. I would practice focusing and clearing my mind, and by the end it I just felt good. It gave me presence of mind and reduced my anxiety. With all the stuff that’s been occupying my mind recently I feel like it’s time to revisit that practice.

I’m currently making my way through The Gene by Siddhartha Mukherjee. Right now we’re just going through a lot of the history of modern genetics, stuff that I’ve learned in school before, but there something about seeing it in this context of being in one place and in chronological order that makes it really fun to read. Narrative is such a great way to tell stories and to make them memorable, and it’s kinda sad that it’s so taboo in education, especially in the sciences.

What does the snooze button really do? We set alarms earlier than we need to just so we can hit snooze 20 times before we wake up in a panic. All snooze does is help us desensitize ourselves to real urgency.

While I’ve pretty much eliminated snooze from my morning routine, I still use it in other parts of my life. I make reminders for myself for things I want to make a priority, but then I end up putting them off and tell myself I’ll get to it later. Next thing I know it’s been weeks from when I initially put it on my to-do list. Time to wake up.

Social media can be really great for some stuff… but can also be really terrible for a lot of stuff. I have an old high school acquaintance that puts up somewhat politically charged posts online. When I see something that I don’t agree with, I always wonder what makes them think the way they think. I sometimes want to say something or ask, but I feel like the comment section of an Instagram posts isn’t the best place for that type of discussion. It could be an ok place, but it’s not, the culture won’t allow it to be.

It also has me thinking how easy it can be to be misunderstood when you only have so many characters to explain yourself. That combined with how accessible and visible shorter posts are contribute to the toxic and inflammatory environment of social media. What’s the solution? I don’t know. How can we change the culture? A good place to start may be, though it might be a lot to ask, is trying to be a little nicer to each other.

We can’t make progress without making change.

Right now I’m working on being more concise. Not everything needs to be fully explained; sometimes it’s good to let the reader — .

For a long time I thought learning a new language at this point in my life was kind of futile. I was under the impression that if you don’t learn a language when you are a baby, it’s almost impossible to learn it. If you think about it though, that seems like it can’t be right. As adults we know basic sentence structure, parts of speech, grammar etc. and even if it’s not the same for all languages we know it does exist in some way for most all languages. That should make it easier, no?

What makes learning a language difficult as an adult is that it is so much easier to speak in our native language. Our minds are predisposed to our first language and so it’s hard to think in a new or different way. But ultimately learning a new language is like learning any other skill. It takes, patience, practice, and perseverance. All of that is hard when you already speak one language fluently because not being able to properly communicate is frustrating and so it is easy to fall back on the form of communication that we know.

Currently I’m learning Spanish and I’m starting Japanese, both of which I’ve been primarily been learning on my own using Duolingo. I have co-workers also trying to learn Spanish and we have “Spanish Club” after work every* week were we meet up for a drink or something and we try to speak only in Spanish.

For me learning new languages is about being able to connect with more people in my personal life and being able to accomodate more people in my professional life. And honestly, I’ve been having a lot of fun with it.

 

 

*we try to do it every week, but it does not always happen 😦

I was expecting to get some pretty important news today, but it never came. Trying not to read too much into what that might mean, but I can’t help but feel so anxious.

I feel like I’ve probably mentioned this quote before, but if so, it’s worth repeating. It’s from The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, “Everything will be alright in the end… and if it’s not alright, it’s not yet the end.”

Now, I’m not a big believer in destiny. I believe people carve their own paths and determine their own fate. For me though, this quote is not about trusting that a higher power has predetermined my good fortune, this quote is about mental orientation. If I believe that things will end well, then they will. What happens in my future may not be or look like I once imagined, but if I maintain my focus on the good, even in the midst of disappointment and sadness, every possible outcome can be in my favor.

Conan O’brien and Stephen Colbert talked a little bit about this on Conan’s podcast, and I think it’s something that seems to be common in many of the great success stories throughout history; that often times the greatest opportunities and experiences of our lives present themselves in ways we did not expect. I’m not trying to compare myself to any of those great successes. More than anything I am trying to convince myself that just because things may not have happened the way I expected them to, that doesn’t mean I can’t make the most of it.

Finally, a lot of this makes me think about all the things I have to be thankful for in my life, my family, my friends, my coworkers, my teachers, my mentors, I probably go on for a while. I am surrounded by people who love and support me, and who push me to be better every day. I would not be who I am or where I am without these amazing, beautiful people in my life.

Much love,

Niko