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Emotional Work Medical

Day 896 and Watching Pain

Two of the people closest to me emotionally are having bad days. I’d like to discuss what it feels like to watch someone’s pain when you yourself are intimately familiar with pain yourself. It hurts to watch someone else in pain when you yourself know how much it takes from your spirit and how little […]

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Aesthetics Community Finance

Day 863 Abstract The Pain Away

When I was a small child I attended meditation retreats with my parents. Hippies amirite? The particular branch practiced was some variant of Kashmir Shivaism, but I’ve got to imagine it was heavily edited for the consumption of white Boomers. Who else would take a vacation to sit in silence, chant the Bhagavata Gita at […]

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Chronic Disease

Day 621 and Pain’s Anxiety

Before I was diagnosed with my spinal condition ankylosing spondylitis, I didn’t really understand that I was in pain. I know that sounds weird, but I just knows I felt like shit. I hadn’t yet pinpoint the origins of the crisis in my own body. I was a stranger to myself. Back then getting a […]

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Chronic Disease

Day 540 and No Pain

I’ve come to accept an ambient level of pain as part of my daily existence. I’ve logged over fourteen hundred discrete pain measurements over a three year period. It’s likely one been in pain for a bit longer but those are the documented years since I had a diagnosis and began working to overcome it. […]

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Chronic Disease

Day 513 and Pain Myopia

It’s a testament to how excellent my health has been for the past five months that I’m absolutely indignant about feeling shitty today. Last year feeling shitty wouldn’t have been a surprise. It was more like my default to be in constant pain. Today my brain was fogged, my energy was low and much of […]

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Emotional Work Startups

Day 466 and A Painting Without Shadows

I take therapy really seriously. I’d put being emotionally capable of managing myself at the very top of my life priorities. Honestly it should be number one and if it isn’t I need to stop and ask myself why. Being an adult requires an intimate understand of one’s emotions and the capacity to share them […]

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Chronic Disease

Day 183 and Pain

I forget the contours of pain when I’m not in its grip. Such is it’s overwhelming power that pain is the only thing you can focus on when you are in it, but it melts away from your consciousness like snow on a sunny day the moment it dissipates. Pain is both all encompassing and […]

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Chronic Disease

Day 88 and The Insistence of Pain

It’s only with hindsight that I realize pain has been a persistent companion in my life. If something is normal for you the grandiosity of ego can tend to make you assume its true for everyone else. I spent much of my life thinking it was normal to be in pain, to be tired, to […]

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Biohacking

Day 1135 and In The Red But Climbing

I’d love to know if this happens to anyone else. I find I’m easily influenced by the data that my fitness trackers share with me. Sometimes it will even affect my mood negatively. A green recovery can make me feel more optimistic. I’m a user of both a Whoop and an Apple Watch. I’ve got […]

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Emotional Work

Day 1134 and Happy Being Miserable

I am in a lot of pain today so I’m not thinking as clearly as I’d like. But I have learned to be sanguine about misery over the years. When you have chronic illnesses you can either become a victim to them or accept them as part of the tapestry of human experiences. I have […]