It’s March, and I haven’t written in almost a month! I’ve had my head down and been busy making some changes. I figured now that the dust has settled a little bit, I can talk about the most major one.

Let’s rip the band-aid off: I have a new job! Officially starting on March 16th, I will be making an internal transfer within Microsoft from my current team to FUSE Labs, where I will be working as a Senior Software Engineering Manager on the Bot Framework Solutions team. I am incredibly excited about the opportunity, and cannot wait to get stuck in on my new team.

So, how did this all come about? Let’s rewind a little bit.

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After speaking with my counselor and doing a lot of reflecting, I realized that the time had come for me to do something about my work situation, as I had been feeling particularly stressed out and unhappy. I didn’t know exactly what to do – I just knew I needed to do something. Little did I know that the universe was about to send me a sign.

At the start of February, I took some time off to go visit my brother in Malaysia (pro tip: the Hotel Majestic in Kuala Lumpur is amazing!), and on a spur of the moment decision I started looking through our internal job postings. As I leafed through over four hundred different postings, I eventually found one that immediately caught my attention that had only just been posted on the same day. I wonder if you can guess which job it was?

I immediately contacted the hiring manager and scheduled an informational so that I could find out more about the job. After returning from my vacation and getting together, I immediately started getting the warm fuzzy feeling of genuine excitement about the role, the team and the tech – a feeling that I don’t think I’ve felt about work in quite some time. There have been individual moments and the occasional project that I’ve particularly enjoyed, and the people have been great – but the focal area of my current position has never been particularly exciting for me.

From there, I went through a whirlwind experience of updating my resume, applying for the position, scheduling and performing a day of interviews, and being offered the position in less than two weeks from my initial informational. I had convinced myself that I had done terribly in my technical interviews, and I am certain in myself that I could have done better if I had more focused time to prepare beforehand – but regardless, the entire round of interviewers apparently liked me enough that they all opted to hire!

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So, what was it that particularly drew me to the role?

For starters, it involves a location change – I will be moving from Redmond to Bellevue, which I am actually quite excited about for a number of reasons. It will ideally mean a significantly easier and shorter commute which, given how much time I seem to spend stuck in traffic on the 520 these days, is a huge win. Looking to the future, it will also be perfectly situated near the new light rail station that will be built in Bellevue, which will further simplify the commute. On top of this, there seems to be a healthy balance in working from home and at the office, which has all sorts of positive gains.

One of the firm realizations that I have come to while reflecting and attending counseling sessions has been perhaps quite an obvious one, but important nonetheless: it is hugely important to feel passionate about what I do, while being surrounded by like-minded individuals who support me.

I would say that for a good amount of my career, I feel like I’ve been lacking a clear direction. That is not to say that I’ve not enjoyed my work so far – quite the opposite! I have had the pleasure of working with some amazing people, and I have learned so much from everyone around me. I’ve become a much engineer for my experiences that I have had, as well as a better leader to my team. These formative experiences have helped me get to this point, and so I will always be thankful for them.

However, importantly, I’ve learned a lot about what sparks me, as well as things that I really don’t enjoy. When I tried to cast my mind back to things that I enjoyed, I think of my time in university where I was learning to make games. Sure, most of them were terrible, but the process itself was fun and rewarding because of the reaction that I got from others when they tried them. Making a fun user experience and trying new ideas was a way for me to express my creativity beyond just simply writing lines of code.

In particular, my dissertation was a big focal point in this thought journey: my study into the use of speech recognition in adventure games. I crafted up a pretty basic point-and-click inspired game in Microsoft XNA using a Kinect as a source of audio input for speech, with the idea that users could just simply utter commands to the game and have it respond. I have long held a belief that modern technology – while progressively becoming smarter and more powerful – still holds a large entry barrier for many users in terms of usability. One of the things that defines us as a species is our ability to communicate, and so the thought of interacting with computers using something as natural as a conversation to me is a really cool concept.

Last year, I took part in Microsoft’s annual Hackathon, where I spent a few days using the Bot Framework to build a simple operational assist targeted towards some of my team’s business partners to help them with common daily tasks. Although very much a simple proof of concept, the technology was surprisingly easy to use, and allowed us to take a process that was highly error prone and boil it down into easy-to-use guided steps that could interpret what the user said and smartly understand how to perform actions based on it. Demoing it to people yielded exactly the result I was hoping for: they could see the potential in the technology, and all talked about how it could transform their day-to-day lives at work.

It was this simple realization that, even looking at my most recent significant project at work which was one of my favorite projects I’ve undertaken in my career so far, I am incredibly passionate about user experience. I want to help build smart, intuitive and fun experiences that can really benefit people in all aspects of their lives.

And that is exactly what this role offers: the ability to work with customers and a developer ecosystem to help define this cool technology, and the ability to help build conversational AI experiences that can benefit people in a wide range of different areas.

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Sometimes it can be really hard to make a big change. This one is definitely going to be a big step for me – I am leaving behind people that have helped guide me through my career thus far, and a great team of people that I have greatly enjoyed being around. However, when you have such a strong feeling of excitement and deep-seated passion about an opportunity, that’s how you know that you need to take it while you can.

It’s certainly going to be even more challenging given the current COVID-19 situation that is going on in Seattle at the moment. Despite all of that, I know that I am making the right decision for myself based on where I have been in my own pursuit of improving my mental health and happiness. This is a chance to take everything I’ve learned and put it into practice while working on a product that brings me great joy, and I look forward to it immensely.

Time to get stuck in!

As of the beginning of April 2020, it will be approximately one year since I began my journey to learn to play the Great Highland Bagpipes (which you can read about in my previous post here). Learning to play the instrument has certainly proven to be a challenge, but finding a new musical outlet and learning to master a new skill that helps tie back to my cultural heritage and connect me with like-minded people in Seattle has proven to be one of the best decisions I have made in my adult life.

So far, I can play six or seven tunes: Barnyards of Delgaty, Scots Wha Hae, Amazing Grace, Green Hills of Tyrol, When The Battle’s Over, Scotland the Brave, and The Rowan Tree. I can play these relatively competently now, although I’m still absolutely continuing to work on my general playing technique, getting them up to full speed, and so forth. As I’m now up to all three drones and officially playing a full set of pipes, I’m sure my neighbors are gradually going crazy hearing these tunes attempted over and over.

As much as I am enjoying learning and playing these tunes, the one question that would repeatedly come up was about the origin of each of these tunes: what was the story behind them? It’s not something that has been actively talked about in depth during lessons, which is understandable – given our relatively limited time of one hour a week as a group, I imagine the priority is to use the time to focus on learning and playing the core material.

However, the questions still remained. I haven’t made much progress into discovering more communal knowledge or websites or books on the pipes in general – answers on a postcard – but then one day I happened upon a news article as shared with the /r/bagpipes community on Reddit:

“Bagpiper pens book of stories behind Scotland’s most popular tunes”

Kieran Beattie, The Press and Journal | January 9th, 2020

Stuart Archer, a 47-year-old fellow Scot who has also spent time living abroad and who took up piping at the age of 25, had done a lot of the homework and research and put together this wonderful book, which you can order online from Deeside Books. Reading about his story and the book, I was immediately compelled to order a copy.

The book goes over the history of thirty different tunes that are popular in the modern piping repertoire, ranging from tunes traced back all the way to the 13th century up until modern day. From my own personal knowledge, this covered tunes that I can now play myself, tunes I know but can’t yet play, tunes that I recognize by name but don’t otherwise know, and tunes that I have zero familiarity with. It just goes to show how wide the repertoire of music is!

As can be imagined, a lot of the tunes can be traced back to war, particularly the Jacobite uprisings, as well World War I and II, and others such as the Falklands and Crimean wars. Learning about the origin of these tunes, many of them are songs with lyrics by a number of famous people (of course, including the bard himself, Robert Burns).

Putting together the historical context, and indeed revisiting parts of history that I had learned about years ago back in school but with new light shed to them, as well as an understanding of the people that wrote these tunes and indeed the lyrics in applicable cases, really helps portray at least the tunes I know in a new light. As I revisit existing tunes or gradually incorporate more into my own repertoire, I hope that I can really start to embrace the stories behind each tune and incorporate them into my own playing.

Aside from all of this, I also feel inspired that this is coming from someone who has clearly tread a similar path to the one I have started following: having lived in various parts of the world and taken up the pipes in his mid-twenties, it’s inspirational and provides a new role model for me to follow. Thank you Stuart for taking the time to write this book and to help shed light on these tunes. I can only hope you’ll follow up with a second volume in the future!

I am suffering from depression.

It’s quite liberating to say that out loud. Once upon a time, I would be much more reluctant to open up about my feelings to others – even those that I might consider to be close friends or family. It’s something that I’ve struggled with for some time, but particularly in the last few months I have found myself wanting to be more open with others about my state of mind.

I’ve found myself starting to write posts for my blog a few times now where I’ve ended up putting my laptop down and asked myself whether I should continue writing or if I should share some of these aspects of my life so publicly. How much of what I am writing about or feeling or perceiving is simply just an offshoot of what my current mental state is – in other words, is what I’m feeling genuine, or do I just feel this way because I am depressed? Should I be so open about these things?

I’ve decided that this is an area I want to be more open about. If I look at where I started this year, a lot of the desire to make changes in my life ultimately stemmed from this root cause. I am happy that I am continuing to make progress slowly but surely. However, we can still falter, as I acknowledged myself in my first post. If this blog represents my journey through life, then I think it is important to acknowledge my mental state and be able to look back over time to see how well I am progressing at tackling these problems head on.

As part of this, I think it’s also important to give air to how I am otherwise feeling on a variety of different subjects, and to not be afraid in sharing those feelings. Leading with my current state may give way to valuable discussion or perspectives that I’ve otherwise not thought of in addressing these feelings. The process of writing has been a great tool to help me focus my feelings and process them more actively. Although it doesn’t necessarily change the state of things immediately, giving air to them helps me make progress.

The other element of why I’ve chosen to openly write about this area is because I want to give visibility into this. Mental health can still be a sensitive subject to discuss in some circles, and despite reassurances that one can openly talk to others about their problems, I think having someone lead by example can help others to open up about their own issues. I have had a few coworkers come forward to thank me for my openness at work when I told my team that I would be blocking off some time each week for counseling sessions, and in doing so helping to normalize discussions around mental health issues in the workplace.

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As I’ve already mentioned, I am taking steps to help improve multiple facets of my life. In January, I actively worked to spend more time with people to mixed results. I ultimately view the experience as positive – I have taken away learnings from my approach, but knowing that I tried something and that I can continue to refine my approach brings me reassurance of dealing with feelings of isolation and loneliness.

Piping of course has become a big outlet for me over the past year and continues to be one of my main ways in which I spend my time. Being able to focus on something and take my mind off other areas like work or relationships, and more importantly feel myself improve at my own technique and playing abilities while connecting to others who are also learning, continues to be a source of much happiness for me.

No one is perfect, and of course other areas continue to elude me right now. I still haven’t started running again, which has been hard to get motivated about due to the dreadful weather that plagued the Pacific Northwest over the course of January. My solution to wake up early with the intent of minimizing my commute to free up more time for myself outside of work has not worked well thus far either. It turns out that being dependent on public transit schedules which poorly line up and have low frequency in the mornings and afternoons still leads to having a significant commute time, which isn’t ideal. Let’s not even get onto the subject of improving my diet.

The point is, I still have a way to go to get to my ideal state of being. I have up until this point felt relatively good about the progress I have made in the areas that I have been able to start making changes in. As a result, I have been pretty forgiving with myself, knowing that progress will be slow, steady and incremental. That alone has been good.

So, of course, it didn’t particularly help matters when I ended up having a breakdown in front of my family while travelling in Malaysia. It wasn’t expected, and I don’t know if I can truly explain what triggered it yet, but it happened. It felt like a major blow, as if I had suddenly taken a step backwards when I had finally begun to feel like I was making progress. I am thankful that my family are as loving and supportive as they are, as they helped me through that particular episode.

Identifying my emotions that I have been feeling lately – particularly, stress, anxiety and even anger – has been a big step. I am still working to truly unravel all my feelings. I believe there are years of pent up emotions that I will need to work through before I can truly start to make progress. I alluded to my current feelings around work in my previous post, in which I think a lot of lingering issues in that area have particularly been affecting my current mood. Interactions with people and the undertaking of new projects – things which I have done before and managed without much issue – suddenly have felt particularly overwhelming in the past few weeks.

This is only a subset of what I am feeling, but I will keep reminding myself that I have to work through these issues one at a time.

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One of the new initiatives I have started in 2020 is to see a counselor. Once a week, I get an hour with someone to talk through whatever I feel like talking about. This is a new experience for me, and so far hasn’t necessarily yielded any breakthroughs, but it is definitely helping. Having someone I can freely speak to about whatever issues happen to be impacting me in a given week, and particularly my ability to do so without bias or judgment, is a huge help.

As part of this, finding time to write as and when I can continues to help in this process. I haven’t written as consistently as I would like over January, largely due to getting trapped in my own thoughts, or not having courage to follow up on the subjects I start writing about, or lacking the energy or motivation to write. I am committed to trying to use this outlet more. Maybe it will mean smaller and more frequent posts, but the key area I want to embrace is publishing my thoughts and given them space to breath.

Given my recent episode, I expect that I am going to seek medical help beyond just counseling to help deal with my current mental wellbeing. I imagine that it may not yield things I don’t already know – for example, I should make time to exercise, improve my diet, and so on – but I’m hopeful that maybe additional insight or help can be offered to get over this hump that I have encountered.

Here is what I will leave you all with for now: I do not intend for this blog to turn into a “woe is me” series of posts, but I will be more open with issues that are affecting me, and sometimes that may mean slightly more controversial topics. I lead with this post in the hope that being open about my current headspace may help others to see where I am coming from. I will strike to find a balance of writing about more serious topics and things that give me pleasure. After all, having a focal point for positive energy and channeling that into my writing is a way to remind myself about the good things that I have, and not just focus on the negatives.

I also offer up to anyone reading this: if you are dealing with issues and you need support, then I am here to listen. You are not alone, and there are resources available to provide you the support and help that you need. As someone who is currently in this position of addressing mental health, then if you find yourself walking down a similar path, then let’s walk down that path together.

One step at a time.

January sure did fly by quickly. I had been intending to write something for the last couple of weeks, but through a combination of a somewhat hectic work schedule and lack of inspiration in topics to write about, I didn’t make time for anything sadly. However, in reflecting and dealing with some recent work-related sources of stress, I realized that maybe it’s worth talking about my career and the transformations that I wish to enact.

As Maria von Trapp once said, let’s start from the very beginning – a very good place to start!

Relatively early on in my life, I always had a fascination with computers. In particular, video games were a great source of joy for me. While I should have been probably spending more hours dedicated to studying or music practice or other such things, a large amount of my time growing up was spent with a controller or keyboard and mouse in hands, poring over a screen, and absorbing whatever experience had come to grab my attention as of late.

Video games to me have always been a great source of escapism. There is nothing that I enjoy more than rich narratives with complex and deep characters, colorful settings, and events that spread across the entire emotional spectrum. Storytelling in general is something that I deeply respect and care for across the variety of media in which stories are told, but there is something special and meaningful about the interactive nature of video games which other forms cannot quite replicate in the same way.

As a result, it should be absolutely no surprise to anyone that I decided relatively early on that I wanted to make video games. I wanted to be involved in the creation of these amazing experiences, and help forge titles that in my wildest dreams I could only hope would live up to the caliber of some of my favorites.

At the ripe old age of 18 years old, after having finished high school, I packed up my things and I moved from Edinburgh, Scotland, to Derby, England, where I would begin my pursuit of a BsC in Computer Games Programming.

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I loved university. Despite the grueling amount of coursework that we had to undertake, I absolutely loved what I did. There were many late nights involved, as well as plenty of caffeine and coding mistakes that were made that I’m sure current me would chuckle at with my additional years of professional experience under my belt – but there was no replacement for the feeling of accomplishment when a big project finally came together, or when you finally solved a particularly complex problem, and could take a step back and look at your work with a sense of pride.

I didn’t particularly overthink just how much I was working during that time. My parents had always raised my brother and I to have a very strong work ethic, and encouraged us to work hard for our goals. As I was surrounded by friends who all lived and breathed the same existence as myself, who all shared that same love of what we did and actively encouraged and supported one another in our endeavors, I thrived off of that energy.

However, despite all of that, I was thirsty for more. What I did was educational and fine enough, but I wanted to build something meaningful. I wanted to be working on a real project, something that would contribute to the real world, not just academic assignments towards achieving my degree. Thankfully, my course was structured to support that. After the first couple of years, our third year was to be a year-long internship at a company which we would have to successfully secure for ourselves. It would give us the opportunity to be a member of the real world, so to speak, and experience first-hand what development would be like as an industry professional.

And so along came Microsoft.

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From 2011 to 2012, I lived in Reading, England and worked at Microsoft’s Thames Valley Park campus as an SDET intern on the Mediaroom team, where I helped work on test automation systems for streaming TV applications. Which, as I’m sure you’ve no doubt picked up on, is not the same as game development.

So why the shift? Well, there were numerous reasons, but the key ones were ultimately:

1. Having a company name like Microsoft on my resume was inevitably going to look good from an interview perspective.
2. Microsoft, as one of the leading software companies in the world, was surely a place that I would be able to learn a lot and improve my own skills.
3. I started having concerns about working in the video game industry due to constant reports of crunch hours and the toll that it ultimately took on individuals’ mental health.

That last one in particular was a big one for me. Around that time, as much as I enjoyed the projects I undertook at university, it was hard not to be aware of the ever-growing volume of stories and articles that you would hear through the grapevine of the terrible working conditions of the industry, or of people burning out because of the pressure and hours that they were obliged to work. In essence, a fear that by going down that path, I would become a slave to my own work, and beholden to the thing that I loved.

For better or worse, I decided that an opportunity at Microsoft was too good to pass up, and so I embraced it with open arms. In retrospect, I didn’t particularly enjoy my internship. It was a good learning experience, and I took away from it a number of things – for example, that testing is absolutely not my cup of tea – that have been beneficial. What I worked on, however, didn’t spark great joy in me.

Returning to university for my final year in 2012 was particularly difficult. The one thing that I had taken from my internship was the feeling of working in a team environment, and contributing to meaningful products that would live and breath beyond the scope of a simple academic assignment that was destined to gather dust once the goal of the module had been accomplished. Going back to an academic environment after having that initial taste of what real life would entail – of a career – meant it was hard not to always be looking ahead to the future, instead of focusing on finishing my final year and my dissertation at the time.

What made it even more difficult was that, before I had even finished my first semester of my final year, I had successfully secured a job not only at Microsoft, but at their main headquarters in Redmond, WA on the Xbox team. Not only did it feel like a step towards my goals that had shifted to be close to the area that I loved but not necessarily embroiled with the same chronic culture that seemed to permeate in other areas of the games industry, but it also was a move to a country that I had long dreamed of moving to in pursuit of career goals.

It felt like everything had fallen into place.

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I could ramble on about the various experiences that I’ve accrued over my career thus far, but I’m more interested in the general outcome of where I am today. I am sure that there are plenty of interesting stories that I could tell, but I’ll save those for another day.

For now, what matters is that I’ve obviously moved to the Seattle area and continue to work at Microsoft. In my 6.5 years there, I’ve worked across two teams on a variety of different products – from Xbox to Windows and now Azure – and have moved up the ladder from a junior engineer to a senior software engineering lead, with seven people reporting to me that I’m responsible for, as well as managing a scrum team of four engineers and myself. To cap it off, I’d like to believe that I’m firmly on my way to reaching principal software engineer in the next year or two.

I have achieved a lot in my time, and there is a lot to be proud of. However, now that I’ve almost reached that main goal of an arbitrary career level that I’ve held for the last few years, I’m realizing more and more that I need goals that are not just driven by a title or an increase in salary. I need to feel enthused about what I work on. Although I can enjoy elements of what I do on a day-to-day basis or find happiness in individual tasks or working with some pretty great people, I do not feel passionate about what I do. I’ve lost that feeling that I had growing up, and frankly I don’t know how to reclaim it.

Reaching this goal has not been without sacrifice either. Despite fooling myself that this path would be a safer route to avoid crunch and associated stresses, it hasn’t. I constantly deal with the ebb and flow of a work schedule whose ever increasing demands on my time and sanity gradually take their toll. I find myself unable to switch off from work or stop thinking about complex problems that I have to solve, and end up sacrificing the limited time I do have to it more often than not. I find myself often wasting the free time that I do have due to feeling exhausted and the constant need to recharge my mental batteries.

As I sat down with my counselor the other day, we talked a lot about work and the demands that it has on me. As I continue to evaluate my life and seek to make positive life changes to start putting my life back on track and filling it with the experiences and people that matter the most to me, I have come to the realization that there is no happiness to be found in a passionless career which overwhelms me without much in return. I feel so bound to my salary in order to be able to continue to afford living in Seattle, as well as maintain the lifestyle that I enjoy. There is an inherent fear to change those things.

However, I think I may have finally reached my tipping point. At what point does this all become worth it? At what point do I think that the long hours and mental pressure start providing benefit? Do I think that if I work hard enough that I will magically fall in love again with what I do and reclaim that spark that I once had?

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As things stand right now, I’m a little bit lost on that front. I feel that the right way forward is to try and rediscover my passions, and find out what makes me happy. I can only hope that by doing so, I may be able to find some idea of career opportunities that would lend themselves to reignite my creative spark, and ideally allow me to feel more centered and less overwhelmed.

My raw thought is that I would like to see if I can find something to do with interactive storytelling. I don’t really know how one forms a career out of that, or if indeed that is something that can be maintained without some serious lifestyle changes at the prospect of taking a serious hit to my finances. That said, I know in myself that I need to figure out this for myself.

After all, all work and no play makes Peter a dull boy.

Well, it’s certainly a new year. I’m not sure about the happy part just yet, though.

True to my letter that I wrote to myself at the tail end of last year, 2020 has marked the beginning of a slow but gradual process to start implementing changes that will ideally improve the quality of a number of areas in my life: my health, my relationships, my passions, and other such things.

I’ve been taking steps to start implementing these changes in a few areas. Perhaps the biggest change that I’ve started embracing is making better use of my calendar – I want to be more explicit about scheduling the activities I want to do. Everything from setting aside blocks of time for going running, or for doing music practice, or simply just spending with friends, going on dates, etc.

I still believe in the core principle behind it. Ensuring I’m setting time aside for all of the different parts of my life that matter to me and investing time into those areas should surely yield the results that I’m seeking so desperately, right?

Silly me. How quickly I forget that Rome wasn’t built in a day.

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In fairness, the first few days of January were actually quite good. My parents had been visiting for the holiday season, so with my mum departing on the 2nd and my dad shortly behind her on the 7th, I’ve been able to start slowly settling back into my regular schedule with work. I’ve managed to start finding time to get back to piping, which has been greatly missed over the last few weeks. Better yet, I’ve attended a house party, and spent time with a couple of friends that I’ve been eager to catch up with, which helped me feel like I was making a good start to my goals.

“Helped”, as in past tense. It’s amazing how easily and quickly feelings can be changed.

For example, those morning blocks I had set aside to go running before work? It turns out that you actually have to get out of bed when your alarm goes off to be able to go running at the time you intended. What a novel idea!

And all of those social plans that I had made? It’s all well and good that I put them in the calendar, but if nearly all of the people in question I had scheduled time for this week bail at the last minute, then that’s problematic.

Beyond that, when you deal with unforeseen circumstances at work that forecast a torrent of pain in the near future, as well as landscape designers who had kept you waiting for months to be able to perform an initial assessment, only to tell you that they’re not suited for the job and reset the hunt to find a professional capable of helping you…the little things add up.

Even at the one social commitment I could rely upon this week, which was playing Pathfinder with good friends of mine, I found myself succumbing to the worst of my own anxiety. For an evening that should have been a guaranteed pleasure, it certainly wasn’t.

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One of the most difficult things I’m finding so far is coming to grips with the sobering reality of the health of the relationships in my life. I took the plunge and removed Facebook from my phone, which I think overall has definitely been the right move. It’s only been a couple of days, but I’m already finding myself wasting far less time on my phone than I used to. I’m moving to use Instagram as a means of sharing the more immediate moments with people, which I think is helping itch that scratch. Hopefully it won’t become quite the same time sink that Facebook was.

The biggest element of this, however, is that when you’re suddenly not being bombarded with the posts of a large number of people, and you strip away your phone contacts to the ones that you are actually maintaining some level of semi-frequent interaction with. Simply taking a moment to look at that number against all of the friends and followers and whatnot that I possess across the social media sphere, it’s rather frightening just how little active communication there is with one another.

I don’t blame anyone for this, as that would be incredibly unfair first and foremost. Everyone has to make a choice about how to best spend their time, and that includes who they choose to focus their energy on in their life. I’m not going to suddenly start turning my nose up at others because they haven’t reached out to me directly in some time, as I’m not any better as things stand right now.

That said, as difficult as it can be to confront my reality – that I need to think hard about the definition of the word “friend”, and what that really means, and evaluate my relationships against that definition – the one thing that I am thankful for out of this is focus. I’m at a crossroads where I can now freely choose where I am going to invest my energy, and build the relationships that I want and need in my life.

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It would be unfair to neglect some of the good things that have happened this week, and imply that it was all negative – it wasn’t. For starters, I did get to spend some quality one-on-one time with good friends of mine that I feel are a core part of my current local social circle. I did enjoy seeing my gaming group and being able to catch up with them. I even started counselling sessions, which I feel will help a lot with this journey I am undertaking.

As I told myself, there are things that aren’t going to work out the way I want. What matters is that I recognize that, and be kind to myself, but continue to work on these areas until I get them where I need them to be.

Onward and upwards.

Growing up, music was a very big part of my life. Initially spurred on by my grandfather’s playing of the fiddle, at a young age I started taking violin lessons at St. Mary’s Music School in Edinburgh every Saturday morning. As part of their Saturday morning lessons that were offered to the public, I also took part in a choir where I was quickly identified as having potential to join the school as a full-time student.

Following a successful audition, I became a chorister within St. Mary’s Cathedral choir for the better part of six years, and joined the school at the age of 9. During my remaining time, in addition to continuing to sing with the choir – gradually rising through the ranks to eventually become head chorister – I also began taking piano lessons in addition to carrying on with playing the violin.

During the remainder of my high school days, where I went to George Heriot’s School for the remainder of my secondary education, I continued to sing as part of our school choir (which admittedly wasn’t nearly the same caliber as the cathedral choir), as well as with an external choral group which my mum sang with. The latter was in desperate need of basses, and although my voice had settled at more of a baritone level, the singing ability and experience from my cathedral days was greatly appreciated. My violin playing continued to expand into participating in my school’s orchestra, while my piano playing was largely relegated to solo playing.

Sadly, that’s where much of that story ends. Once I began university, which in itself was a thoroughly demanding schedule just keeping up with coursework, my music playing continued to dwindle. That largely held true once I graduated and moved to Seattle as well. In the last few years, I was able to finally buy a digital piano that was compact enough to fit into my apartment at the time, but otherwise had not made any significant strides to resume playing music in any serious manner.

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In the years since I have moved to Seattle, I have begun to miss Scotland quite a great deal. That’s not to say I have any immediate plans to move back – and frankly, that topic is probably enough for an entire post on its own – but I do miss everything about it: the people, the landscape, the architecture, the culture, and all of the other great things that my home has to offer. I try to visit at least once every year, but as proven by 2019, there are some years where even that can’t be achieved.

A few years ago, I ultimately decided that I wanted to start playing music again. I wanted to find an outlet that would allow me to do something that I greatly enjoyed, as well as possibly challenge myself to learn new things along the way. On top of this, as a means to expand my social circles, I ideally also wanted to find something that I could do with a group. Better yet, anything that could help rekindle and solidify my Scottish roots would just be a bonus.

So, naturally, there was only one possible outcome:

On December 27th, 2018, I finally decided to pull the trigger and undertake my journey to learn to play the bagpipes. I would have ideally liked to have looked into it earlier, but a big blocker for me was the fact that I lived in an apartment up until April 2018, when I finally purchased my own home. Admittedly, it is a town home, but as it has its own garage with no adjoining neighbors, I determined that it would be adequate to begin with.

On the fateful day that I decided to commit to this idea, I ordered my first practice chanter and a copy of the College of Piping Volume One tutor book (or, as I have discovered it is commonly known as within these circles, the “green book”) while visiting Edinburgh. Upon returning to Seattle, I arrived home with the package already delivered and awaiting my return.

On April 17th, 2019, I began taking beginner’s lessons with the local Keith Highlanders Pipe Band. For the course of approximately 10 weeks, I received tuition with the Pipe Major and a couple of other members of the band, learning the basic fingerings and embellishments that were required to begin learning my first tunes. I even received a second or two of air time on television! (I am around the 1:46 mark. Apologies in advance for the terrible finger work – they decided to record just as I was being introduced to playing grips. I’d like to think I’ve improved considerably since then!)

Learning to play with the band has been an absolute delight. Everyone has been incredibly friendly, welcoming and patient as myself and the other learners in my group battle our way through learning to play this tricky instrument.

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At the end of the initial session, my Pipe Major sent me off for the summer to begin learning to play on a goose – and no, I don’t mean a bird. A quick anatomy lesson for those of you who aren’t familiar: bagpipes consist of (unsurprisingly) a bag; a blowpipe which is used to fill the bag with air; three drones (two tenor and one bass – the bass drone is the taller of the three) which produce a continuous sound; and a chanter, which is held and produces the main melody through different finger positions.

The goose in this case is a stripped down version of a set of pipes minus the drones, and intended to help introduce pipers-in-training to playing the full instrument. Where a practice chanter is primarily focused on learning the fingering and techniques, the goose expands upon that to include blowing, breathing and squeezing into the equation. Despite the fact that there are only nine notes in the standard bagpipe scale, once you throw in the additional mental load of managing this cycle, as well as the complex techniques and playing up to full speed, you quickly realize just how much of a challenge it is to play!

Over the course of the summer, I definitely struggled making progress at this stage and building up sufficient stamina to actually play. For many of my attempts at practicing, there were good chunks of time where I was simply focused on trying to sustain one note consistently for 30 seconds or longer. I could imagine that lacking some level of perseverance at this stage could have nipped this idea of mine in the bud, and that would be that – but thankfully, my Scottish stubbornness kept that in check.

After resuming lessons in the last quarter of the year, my progress has been pretty reasonable. I’ve continued to make sufficient progress on the pipes, now having worked my way up to include the full set of drones, albeit minus reeds with the exception of one tenor reed, and am at the point where I’m about to receive a bass reed on top of this. I am continuing to practice and improve my general technique, work on the harder embellishments, and am able to play approximately five or six tunes relatively comfortably at this point. Of course, there will always be room for improvement – but the fact that I can play an entire tune in a recognizable manner is definitely a solid starting point.

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Now that 2020 is here, I very much intend to continue to learn with the band. Our next tuition session begins later in January, and during this time I am hopeful that I will be able to move up to a full set of pipes, as well as continue working on improving my playing and learning the minimum repertoire for the band to be able to audition and join.

Towards the end of last year, I was truly appreciative of having this outlet. Despite many times where work or other sources of stress in my life would bog me down, the one genuine pleasure I had was being able to set aside an hour or so each day, practice, and feel like I could recognize myself improving. Music is such a rewarding experience and I am thrilled that I have been able to reestablish its presence in my life.

Happy Hogmanay and best wishes to everyone for the new year. Play on!

Relationships are hard. On top of a fairly demanding career that often leaves me feeling like I’m running on fumes mentally, there’s the additional pressure of establishing, maintaining, and evolving relationships with the various people in my life.

Whether it’s coworkers, old university friends, that one person that I hooked up with one time that I would like to see again, or my mother nagging me to call her because it’s been three weeks and she hasn’t heard a peep from me, there’s a common desire to allocate and spend time with them.

Whether it’s simply exchanging messages on your platform of choice or – heaven forbid – actually spending time together in person performing a shared activity, every relationship needs some level of investment in order to keep it alive lest it wither and, in the worst case, die.

Sometimes I will fondly recall memories that signify these relationships at their strongest. Memories of seeing extended family as we gathered for our annual Christmas celebration; going to birthday parties and having sleepovers, talking about our favorite video games or movies and what we wanted to be when we were older; dancing and singing along to our favorite songs until 3:00am when we were hot, sweaty, drunk and ready to go to bed; or simply snuggled up on the sofa in front of the fireplace, glass of wine in hand, pretending that what’s playing on Netflix actually matters when in reality all I care about is present company.

That’s not to say that my life has become devoid of these experiences – absolutely not. However, it feels like the frequency at which I have these experiences has decreased drastically. Naturally, I find myself asking what has changed to allow this to happen.

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I’m not saying it’s Facebook’s fault, or that it’s indeed anyone’s fault really. However, as I look at my own behavior, I feel it all the time: an obsessive impulse to constantly refresh my feed and see what others are contributing, sometimes liking or sharing content, and less often commenting.

The content I share myself is often done without a great deal of thought. Although sometimes I like to think it sheds some light about me – for example, a movie or an album that I really enjoyed, or a place I visited – I suspect that, more often than not, it’s just another drop in a sea of content. Yet another voice crying out into the echo chamber for attention.

Granted, there are times where I do get enjoyment out of some of the content that is shared. In those brief moments, sometimes posts will elicit a wry smile or a great guffaw that will draw the glances of those around me. However, when so much of the content I see even myself post has turned into sharing memes that will be but a distant memory by next week, or another BuzzFeed article about five hundred and seventy two flavors of potato chip you won’t believe exist, it’s hard to feel like there is any merit in this shared experience.

With platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter taking over so much of how we communicate and interact on a daily basis, it’s hard to not feel like we’ve traded in authenticity for convenience at times. Relationships have been turned into a game, morphing into a quantitative experience instead of a qualitative one. We measure and compare ourselves based on the number of friends or followers we have, or the number of times someone likes or shares the content we contribute.

At particularly low ebbs in my mood, as I lie in bed at night with nothing but the glare of my phone screen to illuminate the room, I can only imagine that my expression reflects my feelings: ones of isolation, and loneliness.

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If I’m being completely honest, I hate texting. I find it exhausting. Sentiment is easily misconstrued – when something is intended as light and jovial, it can be interpreted as rude or offensive. Our expectation of receiving a response can waver simply based on whether the recipient chooses to respond now or later (often without conveying their decision on such matters), leading to worst case scenarios running through one’s head: did I say something wrong? Why aren’t they paying attention to me? What if they died?!

Don’t even get me started on the one word “Hi”s, “Hello”s, and “Hey”s on the dating apps of your choice.

With the introduction of email, SMS and other forms of digital communication, the floodgates have been opened. We constantly tell ourselves that these are great inventions – how now, we are able to communicate much more easily and quickly than ever before. As a result, we often hold the same expectations of in-person communication to these other formats.

When I intentionally engage in communication with someone, it is a different experience. There is purpose to it. I find it easier to express myself. There is a tangibility to it that provides depth and substance. In that moment, we as individuals are choosing to connect with one another, to give each other our attention, and to listen. There is someone else on the other end who cares about me, even if only for a brief moment, and sometimes that is enough.

On the other end of the spectrum, however, it is a completely different story. When I am barraged with emails and text messages across applications and from numerous people, I feel overwhelmed. I feel like I have already fallen behind before I’ve even started. When sometimes I just need a moment to myself to stop, breathe and think, my phone buzzes once more to serve as that ever constant reminder that something – someone – requires my attention.

“Pay attention to me,” it screams. “Why aren’t you paying attention to me?”

Far too often, I find myself freezing up at the sheer thought of responding. Fear of judgment for being too slow to respond, or failing to provide something when I said I would, or other such thoughts. I just put my phone down, and I stop. I do nothing. The cost of respite from an overwhelming volume of communication? Damage to a relationship. Sometimes, in the early stages of one, that can be deadly.

I dread to think how many relationships I have damaged this way.

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My experiences are my own, as are my perceptions. However, I can only imagine that if I am feeling this way, then something – anything – of my experiences must be felt by at least one other person. Someone who is also feeling isolated or lonely. Someone who is waiting for someone to say hello back.

If I reflect on how these experiences make me feel, I can only think of how I also contribute to this problem. How many times could I have acted differently to reach out to someone and make them feel heard, or invested time into our relationship?

Behaviors aren’t unlearned overnight. It takes time and effort to make a change. However, as I inch ever so closely to my 30s and think about what I want out of life and the relationships that mine is comprised of, I realize that this is something that I must do.

I want to be someone that spends more time getting to know people in person, sharing experiences and learning more about who they are as an individual. I want to be someone that gives my time to reach out directly and ask someone how their day was, or what they have been up to, or what’s on their mind. I want to be someone that chooses quality over quantity.

Does this mean that I’m going to delete my Facebook account altogether or stop engaging in social media, or that I’m going to start responding to messages as soon as they are received? No. Swinging too far in that direction would just be the polar opposite on the same spectrum.

Does it mean that some of my relationships will suffer, or that some may even disappear? Most likely. After all, simply expecting to maintain an equivalent level of relationship with each and every person in my life would be naive at the very least. It seems almost counter-intuitive after having allowed my brain to be fooled into thinking that a larger number is better. And yet, deep down I know that it is necessary.

I choose quality.

Dear future me,

First of all, congratulations on surviving the 2010s! Technically, as it’s December 29th, you’ve still got two days left – but unless something major goes tits up, I’m fairly certain you can survive for two days.

It was one heck of a decade, and so many things happened that it’s hard to name them all, so let’s review a few of the highlights:

• You successfully graduated from university with a pretty respectable degree.
• You achieved your dream of moving to the US straight out of university and have been fortunate to call Seattle your home for over 6 years.
• You landed a job at one of the leading software companies in the world, having worked on two different teams and progressing from a lowly junior engineer to a senior engineering lead.
• You bought your first house within the city and in a beautiful neighborhood.
• You have made some amazing friends who care for you, love you and support you every step of the way, along with the continued love and support of your family.

It’s not been without its challenges. You have dealt with the stresses and long hours involved in a challenging career. You have struggled to find a good balance between work and spending time with those that matter to you most, or doing the things that you love most. Home ownership has overwhelmed you. You have struggled through the Seattle dating pool to little avail. You have dealt with the isolation and loneliness that can come with adult life, as well as anxiety, depression and self-doubt.

I’m writing this as a reminder to you to stay focused on your goals. Your wants and needs might change over the next decade, and that’s fine. You have the rest of your life ahead of you to figure it out, and it’s never going to be perfect – that’s OK too. So, here’s what I want you to focus on:

• Love yourself, warts and all. Take time to look after yourself, and don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. Your brain may tell you otherwise at times, but your friends and family will always support you. Never doubt that for a second.
• Be true to yourself. In the last 10 years, you’ve learned a lot about who you are, what you enjoy and what’s not for you. This is always going to change, but stick to your guns and trust your gut. It hasn’t let you down this far.
• Accept the change, and embrace the moment. People will come in and out of your life, you will probably change jobs, your interests will evolve, and you may even move to a different city. No matter what happens, stop to smell the flowers and take the time to enjoy what you have right now while you can.
• Be intentional. You’re never going to get what you want if you allow life to pass you by. Reach out to the people that matter and let them know that. Pursue the things that give you passion. Don’t ever think for a second that there is anything you can’t do. If you want it, work hard and go for it.

You have so many exciting things to look forward to. You’re so close to reaching your career goals, so keep pushing hard on that one and make it happen. You’re going to meet new people, make new friends and strengthen relationships – maybe you’ll even hold house parties and host social events! You’re going to get on top of your fitness and run more 5Ks, 10Ks, and maybe even a marathon if you work hard enough.

You’re going to pick up your musical pursuits, and embrace new challenges to learn something new, engage with a group that shares that passion, and rediscover where it all began. You’re going to turn your house into a home. You’re going to travel and see new locations as well as revisit some of your favorite destinations (better keep that Annual Pass renewed!). You’re going to figure out a way to spend more time between the US and Scotland and address the heartache of missing home and family.

You’re going to find him. I don’t know who he is yet, but he’s out there, so don’t give up. When you find him, you’ll know.

I could keep going, but the point is, there is a lot to look forward to. If I know you as well as I do – and I’d like to think by this point I know you pretty well – you’re going to have moments where you falter. Things will not always work out the way you hope, or you’ll lose confidence, or you’ll feel overwhelmed, or something similar. If you ever feel that way again, I want you to look back at this message, and remind yourself of the feeling you have right now as you sit in front your fireplace typing this on your laptop: hope.

You’ve got this. Never doubt yourself for a second, and if you do, stop for a moment and breathe. Remind yourself of all of the good things that you have. Take your time, and don’t beat yourself up over the mistakes. Pick yourself up from the dirt, dust yourself off, and keep going. The only thing that’s stopping you is you. Enjoy your 30s when they start, stay focused, and keep moving towards your goals.

One day at a time, one step at a time.

-P