Conversation On Mental Health and Overthinking

When I was really young, I told my great grandma that I never stopped thinking: my mind kept going and going. Afterwards, any time I mentioned my classes or brought school work to her house, Gran would parade about how smart I was-- but not without poking fun at my little kid musings. By then, though, I had assumed that constant thinking was a part of being human, and Baby Alex was just bragging about an overactive imagination. Internally, though, I had always wondered if my mind worked a little differently from everyone else.

Fast forward a few years, and I'm the dictionary definition of an over-thinker. My time is constantly spent in my head: worrying about things that haven't happened yet, reflecting on things that already have, and constantly, constantly worrying about what my next decision is going to be. If you've seen The Good Place, my friends call me Chidi, because every decision is a nightmare of pros and cons and opportunity costs.



Last semester, I began going to therapy to find ways to cope with my anxiety, particularly my social anxiety, which can vary from annoying to occasionally unbearable. It makes sense that an over-thinker might have social anxiety-- now instead of just dealing with my own variables, other people introduce thousands of variables which are neither predictable nor controllable, especially when it comes to their perception of me. For me, unfamiliar social situations are when the "classic" symptoms of anxiety come out: shaking, sweating, heart pounding, and coming up with worst case scenarios.

Because my actual anxiety attacks are so rare, I have a lot of trouble advocating for myself when I do get mental health help. I had tried going to my school's counseling center before and, by the time I was seen, I had rationalized a lot of my issues to the point where I couldn't convince myself that they were real. I thought I was just looking for a reason to be different, or get attention. This time was different, though-- I couldn't rationalize what was wrong with me, and why I was so exhausted and emotionally out of control.

Over the past few months, I've been working really hard with my therapist to deconstruct and improve my mental health. Since I often have very long stretches of time when my mental health is manageable, I've grappled with the insecurity that I'm not "anxious enough" to use my university's impacted individual counselling and sometimes have to reach to find obvious issues to maintain my validity. Even with these surface issues, therapy has been extremely helpful-- but they all felt like things I had already known. Only in my most recent session have I actually begun to get to the root of everything.

It turns out, not being able to shut my brain off wasn't completely normal (although it is becoming more normal in a world of distractions), and isn't healthy. It isn't just my mind wandering-- it's spiraling and nitpicking, and obsessing over my own thoughts. I described it to my partner as your mind racing when you're trying to fall asleep in the middle of the night, except all the time. It's at such a level of normalcy for me that I tie my identity to it-- my resume says "detail oriented" and "analytical." I joke that I'm always functioning on a background hum of anxiety. It makes me successful-- and constantly exhausted.

The problem comes when this overthinking begins to trap me in my own head: in my past, in my future, and in my routine. This can affect myself and others. I let my bedroom and my car become a disaster. I leave my weekends even more exhausted than when I started them. I'm unaware of my surroundings and become unusually clumsy, or get run over by a bike (true story). I'm unaware of my own emotions, negative or positive, because I compartmentalize them. I'm "dense" and have trouble knowing when my loved ones need me, and knowing what to do.

The funny thing is, looking back at my childhood, I can tell that I have always craved escaping my mind. When I was upset, my parents could take me outside to calm me down. I have always been attracted to performance arts, which forced me to be in the moment and mindful to my audience and my surroundings. I keep journals, which help me separate myself from my thoughts. This has helped me get better over time. The problem is, when life gets in the way, I get too busy to be mindful-- and then I never have the opportunity to check in with myself, and the vicious cycle continues.

Now my problem is that I know that I'm aware. I have to deliberately take myself out of my daze, which takes a lot of energy. It's going to take practice.

If you managed to read through this block of text, what I want you to take away is that everybody experiences mental health differently. My anxiety manifests in mind spirals, while others may experience anxiety attacks. We're all valid. If you feel like maybe something is different about you, and it's affecting you negatively, look into finding support.

Art in the Queer Community

This past summer, I attended a pride festival in my home county. Usually, Pride is an amazing, validating experience for me: I can dress up in rainbows like I'm rooting for some gay sports team, and I'm surrounded by other queer folks from many walks of life celebrating our history and identities. However, this time, I couldn't quite shake off this impatient, bad mood hanging off me and making me snap at my friends. In fact, I had such a mediocre time that I decided not to go to another pride later in the summer.

Honestly, the main reason was probably because I was tired: I'd just finished my first week as an intern, my first experience in a full time job. Although I had worked long hours in the library and had been conditioned by school to sit in one spot for several hours, there was something about the social energy I had to give in a brand new environment for eight hours that wore me out.

There was something else I couldn't shake though: many of these people were essentially queer as their job. I think Gaby Dunn and Cameron Esposito discussed on a podcast called Queery something along the lines of "professional gay people," which is a real concept describing the artist's responsibility to represent the queer community. And it's true: queer artists, writers, performers, journalists, and internet personalities all dedicate a portion of their lives to interpreting their identity. Having had a taste of what my life will be like after college graduation, I was a little jealous. It wasn't that I didn't want to do something technical, or even that I was upset about the lack of freedom. I was envious of the connection they had with the queer community that I was almost giving up by deciding to be an engineer.

Despite the fact that there are millions of queer people in different career paths, queer scientists and engineers are often underrepresented. This makes sense because engineers and scientists are not a cultural entity to society, but a functional one, and the celebration of a community often does not appreciate its functional aspects because they go unseen. However, because queer folks go underrepresented and often face oppression in STEM workplaces, it's easy to feel jealous of someone who, despite often having a less lucrative or socially acceptable career, has a more consistent connection with the community (not to say that it is by any means easier).

I think, for me personally, there are two parts of this solution. One is building a community around queers in STEM. This past semester, I was able to experience reviving my university's chapter of Out in STEM, and since we are a STEM heavy school, it was amazing to bring people together who fall under both of these labels.

Second, I think, is to keep a connection with art. To be honest, until college, I had always had an artistic outlet in some way: I have been writing since I could hold a pencil, I used to draw(until I realized how much better my friends were at it then I was), and I was in programs like musical theater and marching band. I didn't know I was queer until I was sixteen, but I was always socially anxious and an over-thinker and these outlets allowed me to let go. And, although I still write in my journal pretty regularly, it's a solitary hobby. When I was dabbling in my artistic outlets, I was posting online and performing, which forced me to interact with others and connect.

A digital painting I made when I was fourteen, before I knew that I was queer, during a time when people were changing their Facebook profile photos to the equality symbol. 

I think it's important for us, queer or not, to have some sort of artistic outlet. Even for the most technical minded, "right brained" people, there's a certain freedom found in making and sharing something, whether you perceive it as beautiful or not. It's something that makes us human and helps us grow and reach out as people.

A Confession About the Gym

So I signed up for Planet Fitness for a couple months, hoping that I would actually use it this time instead of cancelling my membership after a month and feeling guilty for wasting money and sitting in an office all summer. I was actually somewhat successful; I went 2-3 times a week for two months, which is a world record for me. Here's what I gained from it:

1. A little bit of muscle

2. A healthy habit

3. The realization that I hate the gym

Yet, I don't hate the gym for the reasons I thought I would. I figured I'd have an issue with self-consciousness, because social anxiety has always been my biggest obstacle for trying anything new. However, I was able to get around that mental block after a few weeks of going with a buddy and blasting music in my earbuds. I also thought I might just hate exercise and give up, but after sitting at a desk all day I was anxious to get out of my chair and wear myself out.

I think what I hate about gyms is that they're just so stagnant. I usually start off on the treadmill, which is running in place until I get tired or bored. For most of the summer, I stayed on the machines and worked out a different muscle group like the gym rats do, but later learned that machines aren't very good for you because they don't move with the natural tendencies of your body (big surprise). Now I just do the Nerd Fitness body weight circuit. 

And I got results: My arms look a little less like noodles and I feel like I'm getting stronger. But yesterday, as I got off a short warm-up run on the treadmill and dragged a mat off the pile, I asked myself, "what am I doing here?" First of all, my workout doesn't even require a gym, but more importantly, I was bored. 

When I took a Karate class, I could bridge the conditioning to better self defense: I was getting faster and stronger and my body was a tool. When I was bouldering once a week, I was getting higher up the wall or moving onto more difficult routes. When I bike or run outside, it's a sustainable mode of transportation. All of these were functional. Doing the same thing three times a week in an air conditioned gym really wasn't.

My school's gym is a little more dynamic with a rock wall, intramural sports and "functional" classes such as kickboxing. The grocery store, though on a dangerous road, is biking distance. I'm hoping I can rework my workout without losing the structure I gained over the summer.

Values vs. Paycheck: Wondering What I'm Going to Do for the Rest of my Life

It takes me a long time to make a decision, and when I finally do, I follow through. At my worst this makes me both indecisive AND stubborn: every time someone asks me what I want to do after I graduate is a personal crisis because even though I understand career choices aren't a straight line, I can't jump the hurdle that whatever I choose could be permanent. I usually come up with the weak answer, "I haven't really had enough classes to decide," or "something involved in sustainability." That works now, but what about when I have to choose electives? Or when I'm actually graduating?

One of my biggest fears is selling out. I'm a compassionate person, but a little bit of an idealist. If I become a professional engineer or a project manager, it's possible that I could be working on projects that directly oppose my views on sustainability and social issues. One example of this is that I was recently reading a booklet sent out by a company advertising resilient cities, and showed off plans about big urban centers and new neighborhoods. On the surface, this was exciting: a private sector company that cared about making our cities more environmentally friendly seemed too good to be true. However, in an effort to sell their ideas, they discuss how much the rent would rise as an added benefit. With this, you have to wonder if we have an issue making green communities inclusive to people who can't afford higher rent.

This was in the middle of my internship, where I was learning about the cut-throat construction industry-- I came to realize that the profit driven nature of the private sector strays too far from my values. Owners generally go for the lowest bidder. Who decides what projects I work on, and who they're going to benefit? Even if I am working at a company that won a huge sustainability project, would my team be as interested in making an impact, or will they just be looking for a paycheck?

I've also thought about the public sector, but that also lacks some agency (pun not intended). I can't imagine how employees at the EPA feel in our political climate if they went in hoping to make an impact. However, I have not immersed myself in this side yet and want to do so before I decide that it is also not for me.

Another option I've been seriously considering is furthering my education and getting a PhD, perhaps in a field other than engineering. My practical training in engineering may translate well if I were to end up at a think take like the Earth Institute or UCLA, but becoming a tenured professor is a bit of a gamble. I do love technical writing, and I'm hoping to get some undergraduate research experience in to see if I love it enough to put that much money and time into extra schooling. I also enjoy teaching.

It's apparent I have an internal conflict going on about what my values really are. I want to be able to sustain myself AND the planet, but I'm not sure how feasibly I can get both. At this point, with three years left of undergrad, I'm just trying to get my hands on any exposure possible and talk to a wide variety of people in various aspects of industry.

A Love/Hate Relationship With My Car

I moved a lot as a kid but I always lived in the suburbs (or as I like to call it, purgatory). Therefore, public transportation was awful, nothing was walking distance, and I always had to rely on my parents to drive me everywhere, which didn't always happen.

That means, when I finally found a car, it revolutionized my life. Suddenly, the possibilities were endless, and I could go and see my friends whenever I wanted to. I could go to the beach. I could get boba. I could go to the library. No more waiting for Mom to pick me up from band practice! I remember my family had me pick up Starbucks a couple days after I got my license and it was the first time driving without someone else in the passenger's seat. When I realized I wasn't going to crash and actually knew how to drive, I turned up the music and sang at the top of my lungs.

But here's the catch: I'm in Southern California. And, if you've ever lived here, you'll know first hand that the traffic is the worst in the world. At first I was staying local: I didn't get on the freeway for a whole year and stayed in my town and the surrounding areas. I didn't mind driving at this time because most of my friends were a couple miles away.

Of course the time came when I had to start using the freeway. My radius expanded: my new found freedom multiplied. My road rage started.

I'm not the kind of person who will actually confront drivers who do something stupid, but most people in the car with me know that half the time I'm screaming and swearing at everybody. At the stoplight. At the dude who just cut me off. At the lady who's tailgating me. At the traffic that came out of nowhere (and boy, does it come out of nowhere). It's taken on its own character, as sometimes I'll sing Frozen when I'm trying to keep a Suburban from passing me on the right. "Don't let them in, don't let them see!"

Maybe it's because my car is so small and I can be easily taken advantage of; maybe I just don't have to drive much while I'm at school so when I do I can't stand it. Either way, I've really come to dislike driving. Going 85+ on an open freeway is one thing but LA traffic...

So I've come to really dislike driving.

My awareness about sustainability hasn't really helped with that, either. When I drive a lot, I am actively killing planet. New roads are constructed, and then get congested, so we have to build more new roads. And yet, cars are continually made a priority over bike lanes or train tracks.

It gives me a good perspective, though: I have to drive, and so do millions of other people. There are only so many hours in a day and ultimately it's the fastest way to get from point A to point B. We could definitely deal with cutting down, though: I took the train to LA last week and it was excellent. But individuals can only do so much until cities make decisions to make sustainable options more accessible and more efficient.

On Productivity Blogs

Around this time every summer I begin to get excited about school starting again: I put my classes in my calendar, buy a bunch of discount school supplies, and, most of all, fall into the rabbit hole of productivity blogs. For some reason I think that just reading about stuff is going to actually make me more productive: in high school I think I spent more time looking up how to get my work done than actually getting my work done.

To be fair, I've actually started to take some of the tips I've seen in blogs like College Info Geek, one of my favorite sources even though I have literally NOTHING in common with Thomas Frank. I think that's what makes him so marketable, he has very practical tips that apply to pretty much everybody. I also appreciate that he's not always right and often contradicts himself. I've been watching him for four years and he definitely helped my college productivity.

I have loosely developed my own style for academic success though, and I was never really sure what it was so it's not like I could hone in on it and improve it. However, on CIG I ran into Tom Miller's Phyzzle and it clicked. Like, his how-to articles are almost to the T in what I do to pass my courses but he actually put it in a step by step process. It's what I should say when people ask me how I did so well on a test: it's how I can cut out the things that don't work.

These blogs are amazing in contradiction to the person I've stopped listening to -- that is, Cal Newport. I'm not going to sit here and bash him, but I'm just going to say that he needs to get of his soap box and leave room for the productivity bloggers who are more practical and don't infantilize their audiences. I think the newer techniques are more mindful of the modern world and actually, in my experience, work without being so dogmatic. 

Those Who Can, Teach

This past Saturday I attended a funeral for the director of an after school drama program I belonged to while I was in middle school. This was a program near and dear to my heart: a shining beacon in the insecure and closeted time in my life that I tried to block out. At 4 pm every Monday, I got to go to a place where I didn't have to be the smartest, or the most sociable, or even the best singer, dancer, or actor. It was a necessary creative outlet and, to be frank, a safe haven from own head.

This wasn't some exclusive program for serious aspiring actors. It was just recreational, an after school program that met only once a week that was more built like an adult enrichment class where the curriculum was built around our personalities. Even so, we always ended up with a great product at the end of the eight to ten week period.

I can't even imagine how many students she affected in my town since the seventies when she started the program, but the service was one indicator. Older students who were taught directly by her as well as some of us from the younger generations and other teachers gathered to speak and sing. Her friends and family talked about how she never forgot a birthday, brought her students to ice cream after performances, provided them the same outlet.

I didn't feel sad at the end: I felt inspired. I realized that I want to make people feel as special as my drama director made us feel. It confirmed what I've known for a long time -- teaching needs to be a part of my life, whether I am a professor, tutoring math, or helping queer kids find their own outlet through art on the weekends. Even in high school marching band, my favorite part about being section leader (and arguably the only good part) was teaching the incoming freshmen. It's not easy -- as I'm sure it was difficult for the adults in my drama program to wrangle several middle school girls -- but it's a fundamental part of who I am.

So when all is said and done, thanks to the teachers who inspired me. I hope I get the opportunity to tell all of you that.

Mainstream Sustainability

Before I start this post I just want to make a statement that I am not an expert on social issues nor environmental issues. Much of my knowledge comes from simple exposure to discussions held on a college campus in class or with friends. As always, anyone is welcome to provide information that I have missed or an argument that I didn't cover.

My favorite definition of sustainability is the simplest, and it comes from the Brundtland Report of 1987: "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." It's the most literal, and it implies that whether you interpret this as the future of your country, your children, or the state of the Earth, sustainability isn't optional: it's a necessity.

However, the problem with something so flexible is that sometimes instead of interpreting ourselves and collecting information, we take our opinions from the media. The mainstream image of sustainability tends to be well off, and frankly white people, who are vegans and drive electric cars.

Now first of all, I could go off on how veganism isn't actually the most sustainable diet, or how electric cars may contribute to more carbon emissions in their battery life cycle. However there's a deeper issue here that sustainability is being marketed to us at a high price.

I'm white and well off myself, and what I say to my parents and neighbors is hey, if you can afford the products that actually help reduce your carbon footprint, then great, but don't push it on other people.

The cold hard truth is, sustainability is about accessibility. The city my school is in has no bike paths, so I have to drive to the grocery store. It's cheaper and more convenient to go to a supermarket than to go to a local farmers market once a week. People who live in cities are probably living more efficiently than a person in the suburbs with solar panels and an electric car because they're walking to work, and walking to get their necessities, or taking public transit. As smoggy as cities are, urbanization makes everything closer together and easier to get to.

Does this mean we should be complacent? No. We need to tell our officials to enact policies that make being sustainable more accessible to the average citizen, and hold corporations responsible for the emissions they're producing. Stop yelling at each other.

As always, if you see any inconsistencies in this post or want to contribute your own ideas, feel free to comment.

On Not Coming Out to my Great Grandmother

Nobody ever really had a eulogy or made an obituary about my great grandmother, who her grandkids and great grandkids called Gran. She passed away last September, about a week into my second year of college at 96 and I haven't really processed it properly. Maybe, since she lived so long, nobody had really processed it. I like to write poetry in my free time and have started and scrapped numerous pieces about my relationship with her, which only grew complicated in the last couple of years when I came out as gay.

When I came out to my my mom, the news traveled through the grapevine to the rest of my family. They disagree whether it ever got to Gran. My brother says he recalls having a conversation with her and my grandmother about it, and yet the Christmas before she passed she asked me if I'd met any boys. It didn't bother me too much until the grapevine extended to my more distant family.

It's not like Gran, our stubborn, silver-tongued matriarch wanted us to all stay in line: she'd be a hypocrite and she knew it. She'd been through too many crazy things.

When she was five, she was kidnapped by her kindergarten teacher and forced to join the Evangelical church, where she dressed as an angel, 'flew' on wires, and spoke in tongues. Her own mother, my great great grandmother, had to convert just to get her back.

She pretended to be sixteen, two years older than she was, when she met my great grandfather on a blind date. She married him at sixteen and had her first and only child when she was seventeen. She wanted many more but her heart condition prevented that. She was supposed to die in her forties but almost lived a hundred years.

She and my grandmother went to Russia with one of the first American tourist groups that were allowed. While there, she saw a child being abused and went to tell the person off, which got her thrown in jail. My grandmother had to flirt with the police to get her out.

Those are just a few tidbits of my favorite stories about Gran, who was the epitome of "tiny and mighty." This wasn't to say that the time she grew up, and her link to Catholicism, didn't make her traditional: she and my Aunt didn't talk for an extended period of time after she lived with a man before getting married, and she was utterly shocked when my mother got pregnant with my brother before marriage. She grew to overcome it, though, and while deep down I knew she'd overcome my queerness I wasn't sure I'd be able to deal with the initial reaction.

After I'd made it official with my girlfriend I brought her to meet Gran and introduced her as my significant other. Granted, I guess I'll never know if she thought I meant "girlfriend" in the romantic sense: my timing was impeccable because several of her neighbors came to visit, who DID know what I meant by "girlfriend," and outed myself to about five more people than I really wanted to. Her lack of reaction only gave me temporary relief.

She passed away a month after that. A few days before I sat next to her bed and all I wanted to do was leave. I couldn't stand the fact that my great grandmother, who loved the beach, and life, was spending her last hours in pain in the desert. At one point she looked at me and winked, probably thinking "why the hell did your mother bring you here?" She'd seen me almost pass out just walking into a hospital.

Upon telling her I was at school to become a civil engineer, the nurse said "she must be very proud." I sure hope so.

When my mom, brother and I each saw one in different locations on the same day, we decided that Gran was now a praying mantis. 

Intern Journal: Thoughts from the Copy Room

Last month I started my first internship at a huge international consulting firm. I'm in the infrastructure line and technically am supposed to be working under a construction manager, but since it's the middle of the day and I'm typing up this blog post from an office computer, it's obvious this isn't really the case.

I'm a rising third year Civil Engineering major, out of what will probably be five years as is the norm in my program, so I've barely scratched the surface of my core classes. Maybe I don't have the transferable skills yet, and it's possible nobody really has time to train me, but I've been disappointed to find that there hasn't been much for me to do.

In the meantime, I've been humoring myself on personal projects, like reviving the Out in STEM at my school, and falling into the rabbit hole of the internet in researching graduate programs and companies, trying to figure out what I want to do for the rest of my life. Civil engineering is so broad, and sometimes it feels like whenever I get closer to deciding what I want to focus on, the more information comes in and the less sure I am. I've even been thinking about ditching the professional engineer path and doing sustainable research in a university setting (which I may do a post about later).

I'm starting this blog for something to do, but also as a personal outlet and a place for me to write about things I find interesting. I hope to write some articles more targeted on the technical side, some about LGBTQ+ issues, and some about my experiences combining the two. This will be a personal project to utilize my extensive downtime in the office... but hopefully I get more work soon. I did spend the whole morning gaining my intern credentials in the copy room.