Books, Blogs, and Bicycles: My Adventures Around the World : September 7, 2016

This post could also be known as... “Let’s give this one more go!”

I visited home this past month, and multiple people seemed to think that I had removed them from my blog mailing list. If for nothing else, I’m writing for that. In reality, the reason I stopped writing was that I had gotten into a funk. Last year’s transition was really hard. In fact, it was one of the hardest things I have done in a long time. It felt like I was doing nothing and my life was completely aimless, but looking back, I was working 24/7 to adjust to everything around me.

The second half of last year's courses centered on projects, and I ended up working on a research project studying heart rate variability, or the variation in how much your heart rate is from one beat to another, and rumination, which is the act of getting stuck in an emotional or mental state, often a negative one. This was a particularly serendipitous topic since I was not doing so well in avoiding rumination myself! I was not succeeding socially, felt lonely, thought the program I had chosen was not a good fit academically, and was struggling with “the blues” overall. It was hard enough to find motivation to roll out of bed, much less reflect on my experiences.

My “anniversary” with this city passed by while I was in the US and I flew back to the Netherlands last Friday. The two months I spent away from Amsterdam gave me some perspective.

The days here can be very grey- literally. It can be cloudy for weeks on end with no hint of sunshine, and this is discouraging to say the least. Then again, other days, the sun shines bright, and fluffy white clouds whirl by the whole day. On those days, Amsterdam is unbelievable. Yesterday, I went on a run in the evening, about an hour before sunset. I looked up at the sky that I had thought was (again) a disappointing shade of grey, and I was surprised to see a hue of familiar blue behind the haze of clouds. The grey I was seeing was probably blue and white mixed together.

This speaks for how I would like to see the past year and this upcoming year. Sometimes, I can’t see the blue sky, even if I would like to- yet I have to have confidence that it’s up there behind the clouds. I need to make sure I look up every now and then so I can appreciate it when it’s around, but I also don’t need to dwell on the fact that I can’t see it at that moment. And ultimately, those grey clouds make the blue sky more valuable. Dutch people have a way of knowing that. If the weather clears up, the entire country seems to stop work and go to a park. And if there are no blue skies in sight, they still don’t hesitate to step outside (armed with rain gear or not!).

I will have off days, and blue weeks, and dreary months, but those bad times don’t mean that there are no better ones to come, and they make the nice periods all the sweeter when they arrive. I hope that I can get through the hard days when they arrive, appreciate the small victories even in those times, and cherish the good days with the enlightenment of past experience.

All of that being said, I can’t guarantee I will write regularly or write all the time, but I will certainly do my best and always tell you via email when there is something new to read about my days here, whether they are humdrum or not so much. No one gets removed from my mailing list unless they ask!

Finally, I have an update on the past months for you, with some photos. I will write more about the upcoming year in future entries, hopefully, but just so it does not feel like we did a massive jump in time, some high- and low- lights of the year (in this order):