Mental Health

Weather

To someone who has spent time reading my website, or watching my videos, it will come as no surprise that I have had struggles with my mental health. Honestly, I’m sure I’m not alone in that by any stretch. I would even venture to say that at some point in their life everyone will wrestle with their mental health in some capacity, some more severe than others. However, what I’ve been making a more conscious effort to do over the past few years is pinpoint the triggers that cause changes in my mental health, whether that be positively or negatively.

Throughout my life, I have lived in a variety of different places and climates ranging from the overcast, dark winters of north Idaho to the seemingly perfect, sunny every day weather of the Hawaiian Islands. Without a doubt, one of the things that is guaranteed to affect my mood more than anything is weather. I know many people suffer from seasonal affective disorder, and while my experiences with weather doesn’t reach that level, it was significant enough for me to take note of.

I never noticed it during the Idaho winters until I moved away and then returned to visit. The days, weeks, or sometimes even months of seemingly endless overcast days was too much for me to handle. I could deal with the cold, or the thick blanket of snow, but not even seeing the sun would wear on me. And still does.

The sun, and its warmth, pulls me out of my bed in the mornings. It motivates me to leave the house. The heat on my skin makes me feel alive. On the flip side of that, when I wake up and see gray clouds outside of my window I’m far more likely to roll over and try to get five more minutes. As you would expect this can quickly become a problem, and destroy any kind of productivity for the rest of the day. Luckily for me, I now live in a place where this happens infrequently.

Albania, on average, has about 300 days on sunshine per year. That doesn’t mean it’s always warm and “perfect” weather like Hawaii is, but the sun is shining. It might be windy, or cold, or even a bit cloudy, but the sun is shining. And even if I have to wrap myself up in two sweatshirts, feeling the sun on my face keeps me balanced.

Alone

I’ve spent a large portion of my life alone. I don’t necessarily mean that I’m completely by myself, but if there are people around, I don’t know them. Even before the last few years have forced so many people into isolation, I was trying to learn to be okay with just myself. From roadtrips through New Zealand, train rides across France, or hiking in remote corners of Iceland I’ve worked on how to thrive on my own.

Don’t take this as me complaining, or whining that I am lonely, because neither of those things are the case. I’ve come to appreciate being alone, sometimes to a fault. Maybe it’s coming from big family, or maybe it has slowly been growing in me since being an 18 year old packing my life up and moving across the United States to somewhere that I knew virtually no one. Wherever it started, becoming comfortable being alone was one of the best things for my life.

Lookout Mountain, GA, USA {2018}

Over the course of my life I’ve been to almost three dozen countries. If I hadn’t been willing to travel alone, that would have never happened. Since graduating from college I have moved my entire life across multiple oceans, often to places where I knew fewer than five people. If I hadn’t been comfortable being alone, I would have been miserable. In the three and a half years I’ve been in Albania, I’ve made almost 50 videos about my life here. If I hadn’t been able to work on those alone, I would be in a far difference place in my career. It all comes down to one thing, not being afraid of my own company.

Somewhere in Iceland {2017}

Not being afraid of my own company does not mean that I hate being around other people. When I take trips I am often looking for someone to join me. Experiences are more fun when you can share them with others. Reminiscing is far more fun when you can text someone and say; “Remember that rainy night in Cancun when a bus drove through a puddle and the splash completely engulfed you?” As I get older, I’m realizing this more and more. I’m far less likely to hop on a plane - or in my van - and head to somewhere random without someone else I know involved in the trip.

However, in my wanderings around Albania it’s rare to find someone. Those who are willing rarely have the time, and those with the time rarely have the willingness. So for the foreseeable future, I will have to tap back into what led me here in the first place.

But again, I’m not complaining. Being alone is how I got myself to this point. I owe my career to being able to work alone, without someone pushing me. I owe my mental health to being alone, giving myself time and space to process. I owe most of my accomplished goals to being alone. So I say bring it on.

,

Tafelberg

,

Life is never easy. This is not a revolutionary thought. But as young children we often forget that things don’t get easier as we age. Maybe it was just me, but when I was younger I just assumed that once I got to the point where I was accomplishing goals and living dreams that my life would become easy. This couldn’t have been further from the truth.

The truth is that I found myself actively living out one of my dreams and yet I was in one of the darkest mental states I had ever been. The reason is not the point of this particular story so I won’t get into it, but what is important is the bigger story. How I got out of that state, and what helped pull me from those depths.

I had just finished up a five week trip to one of my favorite places on earth, Hawaii, and was set to have yet another epic adventure roadtripping through New Zealand for the next month. For a variety of reasons I was not feeling myself, I was in a dark place and going through some of the most severe depression I’ve felt in my life to this point. Luckily for me, one of my favorite artists, Jeremy Loops, released a new album in the middle of my road trip. Jeremy Loops is a South African musician from Cape Town that I had discovered during my many hours spent watching YouTube videos and he didn’t have much music released at the time. This album, Critical as Water, was only his second album.

For whatever reason, Jeremy Loops’ music was always able to be a mood booster for me. Every time I listened to his first album I couldn’t help but to sing along with all the words that I knew. So when I was driving the backroads of New Zealand I would take every chance I could to put on Critical as Water. It pulled my mind out of the dark corners I would so often find myself in, and help lift me up.

In some small effort to pay tribute for what Jeremy and his music has done for me, I had the outline of Cape Town’s most iconic landmark put onto my wrist.

“A semicolon is used when an author could’ve chosen to end their sentence, but chose not to. The author is you, and the sentence is your life.”

Project Semicolon