Climate change: my mountain to climb

My life is like climbing a mountain.  I take it one step at a time.

The marbles have sure been rolling inside my head! I am starting to notice a pattern in my emotions and feeling when I am wrestling with a particular topic. In the past two weeks, I have encountered a variety of situations and topics that have made me feel uncertain about what I should do. When faced with something where I don't have a clear idea of what I want to do, I try to pull out my feelings and thoughts and after pulling them out, I generally have a clear (or at least clearer) idea of what I should do.

There are a few ways that I pull out those thoughts. I make a voice recording on my phone and just talk through what I'm feeling. I like to call my dad and basically do the same thing as making a voice recording by talking through what I am feeling. I do find some additional emotional comfort in talking to my dad, and often this is my favored option. I find pulling those thoughts out of my mind is more helpful than just thinking about them. In my head, all of the different perspectives and feelings pull me this way and that in a kind of emotional soup, and it's hard for me to make sense of what I want to do.

I think blogging can be another way in which I pull some thoughts out of my head in part because the thorny topic I have been stewing on in the last 14 hours is..... wait for it.... climate change.

For anyone who knows me, I have spent much time and effort thinking about climate change, though my experience has been a bit of a journey, and I believe this journey is entering a new phase. Writing a series of blog posts about this journey, I believe, will be an important part of the start of this new phase.

Chronically my journey will take longer than a single post (I suspect it may take many in fact), so rather than spilling a portion of my soup into this text, I want to give a high-level overview of where I think I will be going.

Before I give that overview, I feel it important to share where this renewed feeling came from. I went skiing today (see the photo above) and on the drive up and down the mountain I listened to three podcasts from the Energy Gang and the Interchange, two great podcasts about energy and climate change. The first one was about how machine learning can be applied to address climate change and was an interview with Priya Donti, a college friend from the environmental club. I am just over the moon about the work she is doing, and I intend to chat/ interview her for an article I intend to write about the same topic she is doing her PhD research on, machine learning and climate change.

This podcast was significant because it unifies two of my main interests, one old, one new. I started acquiring a skillset in machine learning nearly a year ago and have thoroughly enjoyed my journey. In many ways, doing machine learning work fits me very nicely, and I am currently in the early stage of getting a full-time job in machine learning. Priya's work and this podcast, in particular, is significant because it shows me that there are applications of machine learning to climate change.

The second podcast was an interview with Jason Jacobs, who has been documenting his transition from working in consumer technology to understanding climate change. One point that Jason kept reiterating in this interview was that it doesn't matter how you are addressing climate change, what matters is that you are addressing it in a way that "gives you energy" and feeds you as a person and is in accordance with your interests and skills.

I have had thoughts similar to this idea of "giving you energy" over the years and so this was a helpful reminder. Jason also contrasted the approach of focusing on things that "give you energy" against the approach of looking at addressing climate change by looking at the "biggest impact". This "biggest impact" approach is one that I have suffered from for a long time and still do so to some extent. I find focusing on what is the "highest impact" pretty frustrating, demoralizing,  and painful because I am so worried about picking the right thing that I get lost and paralyzed. Also, developing a company or an initiative that has a BIG impact is really complex, uncertain, and takes a serious, long-term commitment. It is too easy to jump ship on an idea that could have an impact because you don't think it will have a BIG enough impact in a FAST enough time.

And, climate change is the type of problem where it is really easy to fall into this trap because it is such a HUGE problem and is happening really FAST. So, addressing it effectively requires, you know, only changing fundamentally how our global society functions over the span of about 10-20 years.

I think one of the most challenging parts about working on climate change for me is managing my anxiety. And when you have anxiety over a topic for a long period of time, you develop a sort of emotional sore. And I do have an emotional sore regarding climate change and this series of blog posts aims to help me massage out that soreness.

I learned from my divorce that you can take very challenging emotions and emotional sores and work through them with persistent care, and I want to work through my emotional issues surrounding climate change because, like a partner, climate change means a lot to me and we have been together for a long time. We have been on a break for nearly a year, we have interacted a bit during that time, but nothing serious. Now, I'm ready to roll up my sleeves, get my hands dirty, and tend to my emotional garden (ugh - so many metaphors).

So, having said all that, here is a list of topics points that I would like to write about in the future:

• Reviewing the research that Priya and her colleagues have written about climate change and machine learning at www.climatechange.ai. 
• Describe the anxiety and sense of failure I felt in the two years after my first Watson when writing for Jigar and working at Stem. This one is important because much of the "soreness" I feel stems from this time, and I need to work through it. I need to reframe my feelings of "failure".
• Think about how I can frame climate change in a way that will reduce my anxiety towards it. A good start is focusing on things that "give me energy" and being more focused on the journey than the outcome. Also, emphasizing the importance of doing something that feeds me so that I am able to persist and push through the more challenging times.
• Ponder on the relationship between how I feel about climate change and how I feel about my divorce. I think there are lessoned learned on both topics that could be helpful with the other one. 

I intend these posts to be rough drafts of thoughts that may appear in more polished forms like an article on machine learning and climate change or writings on medium about how I am addressing climate change.

Thanks for reading :)