Author: Julie

Categories
Chronic Disease

Day 472 and Missing Out

I never had headaches in my twenties. Migraines were a cultural phenomenon I was aware of it never experienced. After I did fertility treatments about four years ago my body went though a number of changes for the worse. I developed an inflammatory condition. And I became acquainted with migraines.

My migraines are the light and sound sensitive type. They leave me nauseous enough I have a prescription just for that. I’ve tried a number of treatments for the migraines prophylactically, but only Imitrax really helps once it starts. If I’m lucky I can turn one around in 3-4 hours with medication and a cold dark room.

Today wasn’t a day where I could turn it around fast enough. And I feel sad and alone and depressed about it. I was supposed to meet friends for a nice meal to celebrate with them and I’m missing it because I couldn’t control the migraine fast enough. Alex my husband made it to dinner with our friends but but alas at home in a dark room waiting for my Imitrax to kick in.

I debated if I could force myself into showing up but it was decided the amount of pharmaceuticals required wasn’t passing a cost benefit analysis. I tried to make a case for it saying if I just tossed enough pain medicine at the migraine maybe I could do it. But the rational vote from Alex was a veto. And he’s right if it takes an opioid to get me out the door that’s not something I can justify for a social event.

The irony is I actually dislike fancy dinners out. I find them to be exhausting. Having to sit on uncomfortable chairs and socialize for two hours is very expensive energetically for me. It probably takes a day to recover from the energy expenditure and I often have to up the doses of my stabilizing medications. I tend not to say yes to them as it’s expensive for me and I don’t enjoy them.

So I don’t know why I’m so upset that I’m missing this dinner. But I am so upset. Maybe it’s because I’ve had months of stability without any issue. When I said yes let’s go I expected to be fine. The last time I recall having a major crash was in early February. Since then I’ve flown internationally, lived on my own, and made it to a crypto conference in Miami with little incident. So maybe I was due for a bit of a crash. Maybe it’s just inevitable that if you push you need to rest.

But I feel miserable, inadequate and guilty about it. Like I should have tried harder. Should have taken more drugs. Or at very least been more upfront that sometimes my body is unpredictable and I find it challenging to have be “on” and in public for social things that aren’t strictly speaking crucial. But now do you tell beloved friends that they aren’t crucial? You can’t really. I just have to hope I can do it. And mostly I can. But not today. Today I couldn’t.

I feel like maybe I owed my friends a performance. I can perform in even dire circumstances. I never miss a dinner or event or appearance at which I’m required professionally. But I don’t hold myself to that stand personally. Sometimes things happen and I just can’t do it and I have to let my body dictate my schedule.

That reality makes me feel isolated and alone. Because I can’t make the same commitments as regular people to socialize and enjoy normal things. There is always the risk that I’ll have a bad day. And I save my energy for work because I have to. So that means I don’t get to have a normal social life like other people. I don’t usually mind but today I do. Today I’m missing out.

Categories
Aesthetics Internet Culture

Day 471 and Masculinity

Much as I cannot stand Tucker Carlson, the man has a gift for getting attention. I came across a truly marvelous advertisement for a new special he produced called “the end of men.” Which, sure, well trod territory if you are extremely online but probably new to his older Fox News audience. The ad is being mercilessly mocked on social media for being homoerotic.

I spent probably an hour this morning discussing the semiotics of this video. It’s just a fascinating cultural artifact of based extremely online masculinity. It claims to be about the decline of testosterone. But what it’s really selling me is an aesthetic about what makes a man.

It’s got the back to the land postlapsarian agrarianism. It’s got raw milk. It’s got meat. It’s got raw eggs being chugged. It’s got blacksmithing and lifting tires. There are ice baths. There are infrared saunas. There is infrared on dicks! Ok that last one was aesthetically out of left field, but it makes for a stunning Messiah image where a guy appears to be charging his dick. He is RISEN! Happy Easter folks.

All of these subculture callouts are speaking to specific niches of men online. There are men who promote raw egg. There are men who promote raw milk. There are the biohackers. There are the Stoics. There are the sun on balls advocates. Being based and pilled is actually an extremely complex signaling exercise.

Much of it in service to reclaiming and owning modern manhood in the face of a feminized world. Testosterone loss is it’s defining through line. I’m sure it could be argued that this obsession is part of the wider discourse on gender identity and the fight between it’s cultural and it’s sexual basis. I just don’t really care because men being pussies is kind of endemic and it’s not a partisan issue.

I myself am sympathetic to the based trad masculinity types. Their aesthetics often overlap in groups in which I’m an enthusiastic participant. The voice over in the ad is discussing hard times that are nearing, giving a little call out to doomer culture. I also believe traditional skills will be necessary in a more chaotic world. I think being prepared is a social good.

I am also a big fan of localism in food and am a drinker of raw milk and eater of pasture raised steak. I use cold therapy to manage my inflammation, which yes sometimes means ice baths. I schedule time in the sun to set my circadian rhythm. And yes I care about my own hormonal balance and rhythms.

I’m not a big fan of fascist curious fan boys like Tucker owning some of my spaces. It’s amusing that back to the land homesteaders have gone from being coded leftist hippies to now being coded as conservative and right wing. Rural living is now contested space. So is healthy living. And honestly that’s really fucked up. Health should be for everyone. But sure let’s laugh at how the video is gay.

Categories
Startups

Day 470 and Social Skills

Startups are just as much about social hacking as they are hacking something technical. We worship the archetypal “coding nerd” who is brilliant but awkward, but in reality building shit requires an awful lot of social finesse.

I meet with a pretty wide range of founders. A lot of them are clever but relatively normal people. But many founders are fucking beyond weird. I see a lot of neurodivergence. But it’s not all towards the awkwardly autistic. Plenty of founders, especially in web3, are almost supernaturally charismatic. No literally it’s magic.

And that magic is good for making something new. The ability to empathize and listen is hugely prized in leadership. Being present and able to socialize in any social context is key to bring diverse groups together. We are much more willing to throw in our resources behind a founder who can rally us together. And this is just objectively good for the startup. Of course investors want to back that kind of person.

I think some people are offended by this reality. We see endless pop culture depictions of narcissistic sociopaths raising shit tons of money and then destroying their companies. I’m honestly a little sick of it. It’s no secret that Silicon Valley, but capitalism on the whole, occasionally rewards charlatans. I don’t think it’s particularly indicative of anything but human nature. Like Fox Mulder I too want to believe.

Categories
Internet Culture

Day 469 and the Discourse

On the one hand, the discourse today is horrible. Elon Musk threatening to buy Twitter is breaking people’s fucking minds. On the other hand, it’s the height of culture to be so singularly obsessed with a topic of such little consequence. The zeitgeist is full on psychotic.

This isn’t about free speech. Fuck that. No one gives that much of a shit about corporate governance that they’d super impose a civilizational problem like free speech onto securities law. This isn’t an episode of Billions. In except that both make me want to scream “that’s not how this works, not how any of it works” into the void.

This is all an elaborate publicity stunt to feed the narcissism driven logic of markets obsessed with celebrity and personality. Because everyone knows what everyone knows, pricing discovery is a function of lurching forward a narrative for the vox popli. Except everyone is convinced they are uniquely brilliant so they can’t possibly also be manipulated by the transparent agitprop. Yeah yeah sure I’m a galaxy brain too. We’re all playing 4D chess. Everyone is winning and the markets only go up.

Categories
Startups

Day 468 and Small Moves

One of my favorite movies as a kid was Carl Sagan’s Contact. It’s not a great movie but it’s heart is in the right place. It’s a beautiful story about human curiosity and the long timeline of history. In one of the closing sequences the protagonist is told by alien intelligence as embodied by a representation of her dead father that all next steps are “small moves Ellie.”

I never feel like I’m moving fast enough. Every day presses against me. I long to slog through them with speed and alacrity. It’s almost embarrassing how inadequate I find my progress. But then I remember that I move fast. I live ahead of the mainstream. I get to sit in the future that William Gibson said was not evenly distributed. Even if I don’t think I’m particularly good it’s hard to deny just how much of my life is lived in a tiny sliver of humanity.

Someone recently asked me how I moved so fast when I’m dealing with a chronic illness. I found it to be such a shocking question. I feel like I’m glacial compared to the reach of my desires and imagination. But then I’m reminded that even in shorter hours I’m forced to hone my crafts. I can’t afford to waste energy or focus so I simply do not. I imagine this focusing out of need is similar to what parents of young children operate in. The subtle art of not giving a fuck.

And so what if I am slow on a day to day basis. Rome wasn’t built in a day. I’m not a market trader. I invest in ten year cycles. Everything in venture is actually small moves. But as time adds up so do the aggregate of the moves. Compounding interest is up there with gravity as a force. So even when I yearn for more and for it to arrive faster I have to trust the numbers.

Categories
Preparedness

Day 467 and Taking Inventory

I’ve got the urge to do some spring cleaning. But not in the typical “the house is messy” way so much as I want to take inventory of my shit. I’ve got just a little bit of an unsettled feeling watching food prices creep up over the last few months. I was insulated in many ways because I buy local and I buy upfront in farm shares. But a new season means new prices and reasonably so as everything is more expensive.

If I’m totally candid even a tripling of food prices wouldn’t really hurt us. We’d absorb it and have been absorbing it in our expensive takeout habit. Our local BBQ joint has been slowly upping the prices on our favorites. Even the burger has gone from a fancy $14 affair to $17 over the last six months.

It’s not that I haven’t encountered the dreaded $20 burger plenty in Manhattan but there is something surreal about having ground chuck basics be that expensive in Colorado. It’s just so clear that life is getting more expensive and it’s doing so rapidly.

I’m not a total doomer about rising fertilizer costs and the knock on effects of the war in Ukraine. I’m not anticipating famine in America. But I also feel like I need to take stock and do better planning around my food supply.

Categories
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 with others.

To further this goal I do a weekly session as well as group work. It’s meaningful to me and I recommend to all my founders that they find a way to get into coaching as well as therapy. Taking care of your own inner child is the only way you are going to be able to lead a team. If you want to build a billion dollar company and manage thousands of people you better be able to manage yourself first.

Where I think people can go wrong is treating this process as if it’s one of optimization. Do I think founders who have taken the time to understand themselves do better? Absolutely. It’s pretty rare that someone’s coping mechanisms help them reach the heights of their talents. A chip on your shoulder is great but eventually you learn to transcend it.

I think this is because if you don’t understand yourself you are a painting without shadows. It’s flat. Boring. Doesn’t read as true or trustworthy. Maybe you are really good at showing emotions to get your way. Lots of people are but if they just off enough from genuine then it reads as the uncanny valley of empathy. People just know when you are hiding something. And hiding your dark side means hiding your shadows. Without them you are a flat human.

A painting without shadows wouldn’t be any good. You without your shadows wouldn’t be who you are. The best of you exists because of the worst of you. I really do hope more people are able to see that truth and love themselves.

Categories
Internet Culture

Day 465 and One Step Closer

I often start solving my problems by posting them on Twitter. If I need to understand a subject I’ll just ask. If I am trying to get to someone I think I’m only a degree or two removed from I’ll just ask Twitter. There is some powerful magic in asking the group mind to come together for you.

I am an avid participant in this practice of using social media to get one step closer to your goals. When I see people asking questions I try to answer if it’s in my particular expertise. I have an almost reflexive need to check my Rolodex for people. If I think I’ve got a hookup with someone where a little social capital goes a long way I will absolutely ask for favors for other people.

I just think it’s the golden rule. Do unto others. And if you take that seriously (and as a Christian I do) then it’s your obligation to try to pitch in on the global game of making life reflect our values. I do genuinely think this is how luck gets made. If karma exists it’s part of the great game of seeing the human in each other. Empathy is the only true super power. Everything else is grasping to hold a fraction of its catalytic energy. Sometimes a little effort on your part can completely transform someone else’s life.

Categories
Internet Culture Preparedness Travel

Day 464 and Miami

Miami is a real American city. You know those criticisms lobbed by conservatives against New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles? It’s not a real American city. It’s bullshit in plenty of ways as our urban populations define America as much as rural, but it’s also true. Places like Miami maintain an essence, a kind of “here-ness” that reveals a thriving ecosystem of all classes, backgrounds and beliefs living in the same place.

It’s a thriving cosmopolitan city with an extremely wealth ruling class. It has welcomed it’s new leadership in the form of startup expats from “fake cities” moving in. The irony is that those are fake places and no one lives there. It’s transient wealth moving in and out for opportunities. Which is exactly what they are doing to Miami. The churn comes for us all. Before it was tech it was drug money and mortgages. It’s a free enterprise kind of place.

But it’s a relief to see mix of people. To see the shitty neighborhoods and the anxiety about crime, reminds you we have to do better for each other. To see the luxury houses and the amenity industry pop up to service everyone rich from yuppie to billionaire. It’s a vibrancy of hustle that isn’t everywhere. It’s a positive thing. For me it smells like America. A belief in the future where things could be better. A sense that capitalism is working.

As I write this my Uber driver is complaining about the local cops. How unfair their targeting is of everyone going too fast. A real class solidarity moment against the fuzz. Lambo owners and ride share drivers. I feel like that doesn’t happen in striated societies where the top use the police to torture their plebeian neighbors.

I didn’t really enjoy my time here. It’s way too hot. It’s facing intense pressures from climate change so I’d like to come more often before it’s too late. It it’s already too late maybe.

There really are issues related to inequality and the challenges it manifests via societal issues. It’s got crime and infrastructure issues and intense political culture war currents.

If I’m honest I’d rather be in a colder less populated state where some of the existential risks of the future are better mitigated. But I admire the optimism of people who do. They are the optimistic people we need for a better future.

Categories
Biohacking Chronic Disease

Day 463 and Caretaking

My husband has a a weak immune system. He used to get colds once a month or whenever he would travel. I, on the other hand, have a wildly overactive immune system. I never get colds.

His immune system doesn’t fight shit off well, whereas mine seemingly never ever stops reacting. I have an auto-immune disorder which is marginally worse than getting colds so on balance Alex does more caretaking of me than I do of him. But it wasn’t always that way.

I used to take care of his regular colds when we first got together. When he married me and we lived together, he slowly absorbed my overly active immune system, eventually cutting down on his colds to a couple times a year. And yes this is weirdly a thing that happens. Your partner affects your gut biome. My health sadly got kinda worse over the course of our relationship. I doubt Alex’s shitty immune response made my life any worse (if anything I would be thrilled for mine to chill out and I take drugs to subdue it) but arguably him getting my overly active immune system has done wonders for him.

I stopped being a caretaker for him. He became a caretaker for me. It was an interesting transition I didn’t really clock at the time. Alex was used to constantly being sick for years but through exposure to me he kinda forgot how much it sucks. This was further exacerbated when the pandemic hit and we stopped being exposed basically any infections.

Alex went two years without a cold. It was miraculous! Alex really enjoys his identity as a health person. Hell he thrived as an active Colorado outdoorsman in a way he never did as an indoor New Yorker. But travel and life is rebooting and it would seem Alex’s old weak immune system is so out of practice it doesn’t do well with crowds and travel and public appearances. We’ve been in Miami less than a week and he’s sick as a dog. Thankfully it’s not Covid. But guess who got to remember what it was like to be a caretaker again? Yeah, I’m responsible for Theraflu and nose spray. I didn’t do any of the conference I’d planned for the day and had to cancel on a bunch of plans but honestly it’s not so bad. Caretaking is an act of love after all.