Yes, I know, it’s been a while since I posted. There are reasons, most of them summarized in the sentiment that I didn’t have the time and energy to finish any of the draft posts that I started. I’m hoping to turn this around in the new year, but no promises. Truth be told, I still don’t have a complete set of thoughts. I’ve spent so long concentrating on writing for schoolwork that all I have left in me is half-formed introductions. And that simply won’t do. Nevertheless it behooves me to keep this place in order. Thus, this post.
In any case, I received a prompt from a friend to try and pick the best, or at least, my favorite, memories of the preceding decade. This is difficult, for a few reasons. I was a very different person in 2010, with a wildly different idea of who I would become. Frankly, if you told me where I would wind up, I would have been disappointed. And the real process of getting front here to here has accordingly been filled with similar disappointments and setbacks. I’ve overcome them, but by and large, these weren’t triumphant victories, so much as bittersweet milestones.
So I don’t really have a whole lot of moments that are resoundingly happy, and also of great and inimitable significance. My graduation from high school and getting into college, things one might expect to be crowning moments of glory, were more quiet moments of sober reflection. I took longer to graduate than I thought I ought have, and I didn’t get into the school I thought I deserved, and as a result I hated myself deeply during that period. Those moments were certainly necessary progress in my life, but I hated them. They were meaningful, but not happy; certainly not bests or favorites,
This isn’t to imply that my life was all dark clouds and sad-faces over the past decade. On the contrary, I had a lot of good experiences as well. A lot of these were vacations, typically big, expensive getaways. And though it may sound shallow, these did make me happy. But for the most part that happiness was bought. I don’t think that means it doesn’t count, but I’m going to make the arbitrary ruling that anything in the running for best or favorite should be meaningful as well as happy. This narrows down the field considerably.
New Years 2014/15 was a rare event where these two themes converged. I was on a cruise vacation, which turned out to be exactly what I needed at that time, to get away from the site of my troubles and see new places in the controlled environment of a cruise. On the cruise, I met a group of kids who likewise felt themselves misfits, who convinced me that I wasn’t too far gone to get along with “cool kids”, and also helped illustrate that it’s perfectly possible to be happy without being perfect. I remember distinctly the scene of staring out on the ocean at night, taking in the endless black horizon interrupted only by the occasional glimmer of light from a nearby ship. I remember thinking how people were like ships: isolated, yes, and frequently scared, but so long as there is the light of another in sight, we need not feel truly alone.
It then occurred to me that the other kids about whom I was being anxious at hanging out with, most certainly did not care about my grades. School was far away, for all of us. They only cared whether I was a light for them, and whether I was there in the same sea. This sounds obvious to state, but it was the beginning of a major breakthrough that allowed me to emerge from the consummate dumpster fire that was my high school experience. So I decided to be there, and to be a shining light rather than wallowing in the darkness. If I hadn’t come to that realization when I did, it probably would’ve been a far more boring New Year’s.
Another similar event was my trip to San Diego in August of 2016. After being asked to give some impromptu remarks regarding my perspective on using the Nightscout Project, I was asked to help represent the Nightscout Foundation at a prominent medical conference. I expected I would be completely out of my depth at this conference. After all, I was just some kid. I couldn’t even really call myself “some guy” with a straight face, because I was still stuck in high school. This was in sharp contrast to the people with whom I was expected to interact, to whom I was ostensibly there to provide information and teach. Some of these people were students, but most were professionals. Doctors, nurses, specialists, researchers; qualified, competent, people, who out of everyone in society are probably least likely to learn something from just some kid.
Well, I can’t say for sure if anyone learned anything from me, but lots of people wanted to talk to me, and seemed to listen to what I had to say. I was indeed out of my depth; I didn’t know the latest jargon, and I was out of the loop on what had been published in the journals, on account of academic journal pricing being highway robbery for the average kid.but on the topics I was familiar with, namely the practical effects of living with the technologies being discussed, and the patient perspective on the current standard of care, I knew my stuff, and I could show it. I was able to contribute, even if I wasn’t necessarily qualified to do so on paper.
As an aside, if you’re looking to help tear down the walls between the public and academia, and make good, peer reviewed science a larger part of the average citizen’s consideration, making access to academic literature free, or at minimum ensuring every public school, library, and civic center has open subscriptions for all of their patrons, is a good opener. Making the arcane art of translating academic literature standard curriculum, or at minimum funding media sources that do this effectively instead of turning marginal results into clickbait, would also be a good idea. But I digress.
I like to believe that my presence and actions at that conference helped to make a positive difference, demystifying new technologies to older practitioners, and bringing newly minted professionals into the fold of what it means to live with a condition, not just understand it from a textbook. I spoke with clinicians who had traveled from developing countries hoping to bring their clinics up to modern western standards, listing some ideas how they could adapt the technologies to fit their capabilities without having to pay someone to do build it for them. I discussed the hopes and fears of patients with regulators, whose decisions drive the reality we have to live with. I saw an old friend and industry contact, a former high government official, who said that it was obvious that I was going above and beyond to make a difference, and as long as I kept it up, I would have a bright future ahead of me, whatever I wound up doing.
In addition to being a generally life-affirming set of interactions, in a beautiful city amid perfect weather, this taught me two important lessons. First, it confirmed a growing suspicion that competence and qualification are not necessarily inextricable. The fact that I didn’t have a diploma to show for it didn’t mean I wasn’t clever, or that I had nothing to say to people who had degrees, and it wasn’t just me who recognized this. And second, I was able to help, because out of all of the equally or more qualified people in the world, I was the one who took action, and that made all the difference. There’s an old quote, attributed to Napoleon, that goes: Ten people who speak make more noise than ten thousand who are silent. This was my proof of that. I could speak. I could make the difference.
There are more good and important moments, but most of them are too specific. Little things that I can barely even describe, that nevertheless stuck with me. A scene, a smile and an embrace, or a turn of phrase that lodged itself in my brain. Or else, things that are personal and private. Lessons that only I needed to learn, or else are so important to me that I’m not comfortable sharing. What interests me is that virtually none of these issues happened when I was alone, and most of them took place with friends as well as family. Which actually surprised me, given that I fashion myself as an introvert who prefers the company of myself, or else a very short list of contacts.
I guess if I had to round out these nuggets with a third, that’s the theme I’d pick: though you certainly don’t have to live by or for others, neither is the quest for meaning and happiness necessarily a solitary endeavor. I don’t know what the next decade will bring, but I do take solace in the notion that I shan’t be alone for it.