Going ost

I'm moving, and this newsletter is as good a place as any to share why

Note: This post was written during the first week of September 2023.

I'm on a train to Prague, rolling through the German state of Saxony on a warm afternoon. Birch trees are flying by in the window, and the sun is bright. Little towns appear every few minutes, with pale yellow and sun-bleached-white stucco houses dotting the forests and farmland. The route is standing room only, and young backpackers idle between the cars. I feel at ease, even though there are three hours to go on this ride.

It was 2004 the first time I visited Europe, and I was seventeen years old. I convinced my parents that I could pay my way on a school-sponsored trip by selling various nonsense out of some student "fundraising" catalog — candy, holiday decorations, gift baskets. I didn't; I went hat in hand to my grandpa, asking him to cover almost the entire thing, and he did. He was born in Oakland, just a year after his mother and father emigrated from Tuscany and the Swiss-Italian Alps, respectively, to California. Like many of his generation, those roots in Italy became lost in the fog of World War II. But he counted himself firmly Italian (his mother never did speak English) and he went back to visit Europe in the late 1970s, shortly after marrying my grandma. It was a trip he'd recount to me over and over as I grew up, and it was seared in my mind. (For example, the story of a blue glass ashtray he took from a hotel in Dusseldorf, which still sits on the coffee table at my grandma's house today. He couldn't figure out how to tell the inkeep he wanted to buy it — because he couldn't speak German — so he just took it and left behind what he figured was a fair sum in exchange. That was my grandpa.)

I had no heritage to speak of in that world — I wasn't even related to my grandpa (he was my grandma's fourth husband). I did, however, have a very strong desire to go on that trip. There was a girl, and I felt this was my chance. It most definitely was not my chance. A group of around 15 students chaperoned by two teachers from my Northern California high school set off for London, and we'd make our way to Paris, Lucerne, Florence, and Rome before returning home. I don't remember feeling much anxiety about the trip — I was entranced by a childlike (and unrequited) crush — but I was not the kind of kid who did stuff like this. I was quiet and reserved to a fault, and rarely expressed any feelings at all. This was all very out of character for a 16-year-old David.

On some level, I believe I knew something about myself, but that I was unable to express it. I hated high school. I loathed and feared the other kids, I avoided (most of) my teachers. I wasn't bullied, per se, but I was a social outcast from the time I was 10. I was weird; fascinated by archaeology, history, and a deeply romantic view of the past. Many of the kids I went to school with would never leave the 25-mile suburban radius we grew up in. The internet was the one place I found a semblance of community in my teenage years, playing video games like Starfleet Command, Call of Duty, and World of Warcraft with people I'd never met (and never would). But it was a distraction, an escape from the miserable world I found surrounding me on a daily basis in adolescence.

That trip to Europe was revelatory. Traveling with a group of peers was deeply uncomfortable for a teenage me. I could scarcely imagine sleeping away from home for more than a night or two unless it was at my grandparents' house, but said yes to two weeks sharing hotel rooms with kids I barely knew on another continent. When I came back, everything felt different. Of course, it was me that was different. I'd started to become the adult I would be, rather than an outgrowth of the child I was. I'd been exposed to the vast scale of this world, and it was something I'd never be able to "unsee." I went from disliking where I was from to actively resenting it. It was a soulless place and a constant reminder of the shallow pursuit of acquisition that is American suburban life.

Like most exposures to foreign culture at that formative age, I was shocked by what seemed a radically different way of living. Of course, I was shielded by the gentleness and ignorance of youth. I was serenaded by gelato in the shadow of the Ponte Vecchio, or my first beer on a cobbled street in view of the stunning Roman Heliopolis. These memories are so muddled by 20 intervening years of nostalgia, it's entirely possible I have those experiences backward! I do remember that the trip was a series of guided tours, the sort that many people only ever see the outside world through. It wasn't providing a depiction of "life" there in any meaningful sense (nor would our schedule allow for such things). I don't know that I ever considered the possibility I would return, it all felt so surreal — like a vivid waking dream. I wasn't "me" when I was there; I was someone else.

I went on to college, then law school, and finally landed a career in journalism, mostly by dumb luck. In 2012, when my job gave me the opportunity to travel to Barcelona, I didn't hesitate to say "yes." But I was terrified of visiting a new place without the safeguards of a chaperoned trip. I may have been 23 years old, but I was emotionally still a teenager, and I had a teenager's anxiety about going it alone far away from home. (I wasn't alone. My boss at the time, Artem Russakovskii, joined me — and I was very glad to have his company, even if I probably did a terrible job of showing it.) I remain convinced that, had that high school trip to Europe never happened, I'd never have said yes to Barcelona, either. And so I'd never have said yes to Berlin, and London, and Hong Kong, and Beijing, and Sapporo, and Vienna, and Zurich, and Lisbon, and so on. My parents had never set foot outside the country, and here I was trotting the globe. Thanks, grandpa.

I met wonderful people, saw amazing things, and learned to love new cuisines. I began to truly understand what an enriching experience my travels were, even if I'd sometimes spend an embarrassing amount of time cooped up in my hotel or Airbnb. Simply being somewhere different was transformative, cognitively. My mind's eye would light up the moment I set foot in an airport. In the years to come, my life would change in myriad ways that don't really have a place in this essay. I grew, but probably not as much as or in the ways I always should have. My career and travels went on, and I started to take both for granted. Then 2020 happened.

COVID was hard for us all; I don't want to give you a sob story. And there is an immense privilege in jumping on a plane and going halfway across the world to do something as unimportant and objectively unnecessary as touching some new gadget I'd have FedExed to my house a few weeks later anyway. But when the pandemic came into full force, I felt like someone had clipped my wings. It wasn't long before I became depressed — and I mean that in the clinical sense of the word. I'm a strong advocate for education and treatment around mental health in my personal life, though I don't discuss it online as frequently as I should. Because, frankly, it's a bummer. But I was already managing a lot of anxiety day to day, and, around that time, I started going to a very dark place. While I never contemplated self-harm, I was not kind to myself or my body. I was damaged, reeling from a collective trauma that left its wretched stamp on each and every one of us. I stopped loving the things that brought me joy, stopped seeing a way forward for myself. My life became aimless and cynical. I am not proud of this, because it was not just me who suffered, but also those in my growing shadow.

Maybe one day I'll talk about that time more. I know that normalizing mental health struggles helps destigmatize them. But right now, it's all painfully fresh — as I imagine it is for a great many people. I am still so newly emerged from that dark, deep cavern that to even recall it brings up a lot of unwelcome feelings. Still, I want anyone reading this to know that you are not alone, and that your experience is valid. If you ever want to talk, I mean this: reach out. Email, Telegram, LinkedIn, whatever. I'm genuinely happy to be an ear.

At the end of 2022, after another seismic life change, I traveled to Austria over the New Year. It was my first time outside the US since March 2020, and it reawakened so much of what I know is inside of me. I am a happier, more open, and more engaged person in a living, breathing city. It was a life-affirming experience, in more ways than one. At the same time, I was adapting to a new home in Seattle, Washington, here in the US. My life was in flux and, shortly after I returned, my confidence was cut down when I was laid off from the startup I was working at. I was just beginning to rebuild my emotional house, only to have a wrecking ball fly through it. And I've been clinging to the ruins that were left in its wake ever since.

I took a new job at another startup, and it wasn't right — for me or for the company. I decided to quit last month. A few days later, I made the decision to fly to Berlin, ostensibly for a trade show. There's nothing particularly special about the show, but the context associated with it in my mind is powerful. The weather in Berlin in September is splendid, and it's a city full of fantastic art, food, and people. That energy is infectious. It didn't take me long to make a decision I've been afraid of for most of my adult life.

I'm moving. I'll be leaving Seattle and the US behind for Berlin. Maybe Berlin is where I'll stay for a long time to come — maybe it isn't. But I have a feeling I won't live in the US again for some time, fortune and finances willing. Each time I leave Europe, I feel like I've made a mistake. Like I'm not being true to something deep down that I know about myself. I'm finally listening to that feeling.