Category: Chronicle

Categories
Chronicle Internet Culture

Day 25 and Ease

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to my self limiting beliefs lately. The ideas I hold about myself and the world that get in the way of me changing. And one I seem most attached to is the myth of hardship.

I’ve fetishized the idea that life should be hard. Working through tough problems is good. Sticking it out through bitter failure is worthy. That goodness, attention, wealth and status are achieved through a moral pain.

I’m fairly sure I got this ridiculous idea as some type of parasitic add-on from Calvinist thought. It’s also preposterously, comically untrue. Like objectively the wealth, status and power in human society do not come from anything even resembling moral good. It’s this annoying fact that gives socialists succor in an otherwise unforgiving climate of capitalism (an objectively true statement that equally frustrates adherents of communitarian philosophies.)

So somehow I’ve equated hard work with good. So instead of pursuing talents in life where I enjoy ease and facility I force myself into difficult pursuits. I rationalize this as noble. But my core self knows that it’s bullshit to keep me stuck in the mud

So I am trying to resolve to not poo-poo that in my life that flows smoothly. I can do well at life by being at ease. I can lean into my talents and enjoy where they go without judgment.

But in the immortal words of every thirst trap: feel cute…might delete later.

Categories
Chronic Disease Chronicle

Day 24 and Going Easy On Ourselves

I keep a daily journal with some terse observations. I found it a manageable habit over the course of several years. So I was disappointed to look back over January 24th’s 2020 log today. It seemed as if everything in my life had slightly better metrics.

I couldn’t quite figure this out as I think in general my life is going quite well. I’m happily living in Colorado. I’m near my parents (even if needed isolation has meant seeing a lot less of them than hoped). I’ve had some excellent health breakthroughs thanks to more holistic care available in Boulder. So why did it seem like I was struggling more year over year?

And then I realized, oh of course, I just got used to the pandemic. The stress is clearly more but I’ve acculturated. Last January it hadn’t hit daily life yet. The daily stress and turmoil of an uncontrolled disease was still in its “oh shit if this hits us it will be bad phase.” A year along and I’ve become accustomed to the little indignities and struggles of pandemic living. But even as I’m happy with the changes it’s brought to my life it has sadly lowered the quality of life in meaningful ways for everyone. I don’t like dwelling on this as I need the improvements to be meaningful too. And I’m sure they are in ways I’ll appreciate once (if?) this all goes back to normal. But I know it’s going to be another six months from here.

I’m generally optimistic about my preparedness for all types of outcomes. And I am thrilled for the four year reprieve that comes with not having to constantly hear about political news. But this is all still taking its toll. So maybe it’s ok if my medication load is a little higher. I’m alive and well. Who cares if I need a bit more support. If I don’t feel like I look and move as beautifully and easily as I hoped that’s alright in the face of a generational crisis. I can take it easy on myself. If it’s all frustration and pain that’s no way to live. I don’t need to fight for progress every inch of the way. Sometimes it’s alright just to be comfortable and alive.

Categories
Chronicle Preparedness

Day 23 and Learning Anxiety

It all started with basil. Buying those plastic clamshells filled with herbs felt like insult on every grocery bill. You pay a couple dollars for wilting produce to complete some elaborate recipe you got from the New York Times (because Bon Appetit would never do you wrong that way) and are subsequently bathed in a broth of guilt and regret over your ambitions and poor budgeting.

Now a normal person would probably start an herb garden and enjoy its seasonal bounty. No winter herbs for you but plenty of summertime basil. But I am a yuppie. A full David Brook’s hippie turned bohemian consumption machine.

So on Black Friday I bought an Aerogarden. It’s a good Boulder company so that felt nice. Until I learned that it’s owned by Scott Corporation otherwise known as the purveyors of Miracle-Gro. But because I’m a yuppie I can let that one go even if I’ll cry indignation in public. I want my easy year round herbs.

So fast forward a few months and this is the best consumer product I’ve purchased all year. Up there with the $14 stovetop espresso maker. So I’ve got stars in my eyes about how in our townhouse we can do more than herbs. We can grow tomatoes! We could get two Aerogarden and grow lettuce too. Imagine if we could stack them. And so my husband and I start a familiar cycle of manifestation wherein he and I churn our cycles on making something we want a reality. He handles the logistics. I handle the the desires outcome. Together we have both decent ideas and follow through. The trouble is when we try to switch rolls.

“Oh honey there are Aerogarden subreddits. Check it out before you decide what we should do.”

That sounds innocent enough. I click in on the link. Cue instant panic. Post after post after post about optimizations. “I bought a pollinator” and “I pulled out seeds to improve lower light filtration” and honestly I can’t even type out anymore it’s giving me hives.

Why? I don’t learn this way. But my husband does. My husband learns by seeing. A bunch of questions, and a lot of show and tell, gives him the confidence to dive into a project. He is the master of the Subreddit. A king of the DIY Youtube tutorial. I on the other hand can only learn by doing. I take one step. I don’t milk myself. I gain confidence and then I take another step. I have done a lot in my life with this “one foot in front of the other” method. And I know it works for me. Because if I start seeing too many complex steps and tools or gadgets I immediately undercut myself. I assume it’s too complex for me. A hobbies forum assumes a degree of detail and devotion I believe I can’t ever muster. I’m too much of a dabbler for that.

So I panicked. I kept reading the threads and slowly convincing myself I could never handle this hydroponics shit. Look at how complex all these set ups were. Look at all these questions I never thought to ask before I just started doing it. This panic surfaced despite the fact I was reading posts by people about the identical device I have. Which all evidence suggests I have been using correctly for months without even once looking at a subreddit or forum for hacks.

A hydroponic garden made by Aerogarden with six different herbs growing

I very nearly talked myself out of getting an additional Aerogarden at all by attempting to learn the way my husband does.

And he didn’t mean to spook me. He got excited on the forums and wanted to share it with me. I thankfully caught myself in the emotion before I let it run away from me too much. But it was a valuable lesson in not judging yourself for not having the same style. My method of learning is more any better or worse than any other. It just happens to be the one that keeps me excited to keep going. And that’s half the battle with learning something new. If you get bummed out the fire dims and you won’t continue learning. And that’s really where you fail.

Categories
Chronicle

Day 22 and The Lull

I have two more parts to write in my public relations for normies series and I have a bunch of thoughts percolating through my mind from my first day of dopamine fasting. But nothing has coalesced into something worth writing about for the day.

I kept myself from intaking over saturated news. I had a couple fun social media interactions but otherwise have largely kept myself to topics and people that don’t make me feel reactive. This has has a bit of a creative dampening effect for the day. I don’t feel terribly inspired to say much as so much of my day was focused on internal priorities. Several of which don’t seem like topics for sharing, even if I have generally used the “write longer form every day” prompt to mine the personal. I’ve quite literally shared my regrets on fertility which is as personal as it gets.

But today was a day where I hiked, checked on loved ones, made yogurt, played some mobile games and had several doctors appointments. But I have little that seems cohesive to put on the page. So I’ll stay the course and see what tomorrow brings.

Categories
Chronic Disease Chronicle Media

Day 21 and The Fast

A perennial topic for the harried is the benefit of fasting. A timeless religious tradition and spiritual practice, fasting cleanses the mind and body. Typically when I fast I do it with food. And I generally do my 7 day water fasts over the Holy Nights between Christmas and epiphany. But as I push through the final stages of healing my previously chronic illness I am considering a media fast instead.

I have a consistent meditation practice but the kind of mindfulness that comes from a break in the information flow seems more appealing. I’m exhausted from the constant crisis of the past three weeks as we careened from Georgia to the Capital insurrection to media deplatforming and silencing to finally the Inauguration. I had my hilarious shopping binge where I picked up every relaxation facilitating product I could find. But perhaps it’s time to admit I need some forced distance between me and the information firehose.

A proper retreat requires a significant break with outside stimulation. Which I’m not entirely sure is necessary. But I am concerned about overstimulation from media arcs both political and pandemic related. In Dr. Sepah’s original writing on dopamine fasting he presented it as a way to regain control over automatic rigid behaviors that have negative stimulus triggers.

In his words this type of cognitive behavioral therapy “weakens the classical conditioning in a process called ‘habituation’, which ultimately restores our behavioral flexibility.” So perhaps rather than seek a fast or a retreat or a detox I’m simply looking to break the impulses and anxiety that the media arcs have implanted in me. I do not wish to engage in the narratives of anxiety or jubilation (neither have inherently more truth) when they are not my own impulses or emotions.

My energy and my emotions are my own. I need them for my own health. They are not meant to be manipulated by outside players with their own agendas. That I need my energy for my own reasons should not even need saying. Media or political players don’t own me. There is no moral obligation that I stay tuned in. My attention cannot save anything but myself. So I will explore putting some distance between myself and the media for a but. My goal is to break from reactivity that was created externally. I’ll still be writing daily. And I suspect I’ll dabble in the bits of Twitter that bring me enjoyment and connection. But I’ll give myself the space to heal.

Categories
Chronicle Internet Culture Media Politics

Distraction unto Death

I wasn’t allowed to watch television as a child. My mother has a firm view on the pedagogical benefits of using your full cognition range as a developing child. She simply thought the television did too much work for you which hindered building mental acuity in a child. But she also has a more personal reason. She believes distraction breeds stagnation.

As I’ve mentioned before here, my parents were utopian hippies committed to the manifest destiny of Silicon Valley. A classic book of the radical “information longs to be free” crowd Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves To Death showed distraction as the primary tool of the tyrant. The real tyrant wouldn’t need force. They only need us to be distracted. Bread and circus for the plebeians to keep us complacent. In this sense my mother feared Huxley’s Brave New World more than she did Orwell’s 1984. In her view information need discourse, disagreement, and nuance. Television wasn’t a medium suited to debate. Particularly news programs who digested and provided a narrative and a moral arc. No one could discern facts or testable hypotheses from a story. That was an affront to enlightenment values, science, and frankly even religion (she hates when you drag belief into science). So I didn’t watch television as a child as quite literally it would make me stupid and lazy.

It is with this knowledge that I realize the main weapon the populist right has wielded the last four years was distraction. A constant drum beat of incessant crisis after crisis. Never having a moment of peace after outage after outrage was laundered through mass media insistent on making sure it never became normal. The #Resistance committed to remembering that “this is not normal” wore us down daily.

So in a way I think we have come out from under totalitarian thought. It was impossible to make progress on problems when one could only see the next crisis. The question is now how do we react from having constant distraction finally relieved? Do we realize the mess we are in? Distraction bred stagnation. But can we shake it off and begin to the think for ourselves again.

Categories
Chronicle Politics Preparedness

Day 19 and The Anticipation

I’ve been hit hard by the sudden (lol) realization of the chattering classes that “it can happen here” both with the discourse surrounding the pandemic and America’s democracy crisis. Clearly anyone who deals in nuance has been concerned about our institutional capacity for sometime. But that realization becoming mainstream freaks me out.

I don’t mind being seen as a bit of a Cassandra. I think about doom precisely because I’m naturally optimistic. If I didn’t look at worst case scenarios I would live in a perpetually Pollyanna-ish state where I exude complete confidence that it’s all for the best. So I’d rather my public persona be one of concern and worry as I think it’s tactically more worrisome if I’m perceived as being overly bullish. Bulls never get the best prices. Please continue to think of me as one of your favorite bears.

So because I’m a bull hiding in bear clothing I really loathe when the zeitgeist tips into fear for everyone. I don’t know if that means I need to dial in my personal meter to greed to take advantage of the fear. Because if everyone is fearful then I need to go against that grain and be a bull. Contrarianism pays the bills right up until the second it fails spectacularly. The thing is I don’t actually believe anyone is fearful. We are talking a mile a minute about the threat to democracy and the rising death tolls but the entire upper class is riding the rising prices to greater and greater wealth. In a sign that I don’t have a particularly diverse social class everyone I know has has very good earning years. Everyone is rushing to invest and brag about their good fortunes. While simultaneously belly aching about how unfair it all is but really there is nothing they can do.

So what can I possibly use to temper my own temperament when it’s not at all clear where the zeitgeist lives? Is it fear? Or is it greed? is it possible that we are just petrified fat cats the entire lot of us? That would probably explain the banner year for gun permits. I quite honestly haven’t the slightest idea how the midterm plays out. All I can do is anticipate the second order effects. So I did a grocery order before inauguration and I looked at numbers for the spread of the nee covid variant. Only time will tell.

Categories
Chronic Disease Chronicle

Day 18 and How Much Money Did My Unborn Child Make You?

I’ve never been much of a privacy nut. I figured I came of age too far into surveillance capitalism to ever truly recapture the dignity of my own body. I thought the classic tag “Your Privacy Is An Illusion” on Gawker was genuinely funny. What was the worst that could happen to me?

I was an early adopter of quantified self. The industry’s rise dovetailed just well enough with the security Obamacare provided. By outlawing insurance companies from discriminating against preexisting conditions I figure it was safe to use my data to improve my health now.

Prior to that I engaged in various bits of dodging having my chronic conditions logged, avoiding telling doctors I took even the most banal of medications like a daily allergy medication. After it passed I joyfully logged everything.

In hindsight, this may have slowly shifted my mindset towards my own commodification. Again, an issue never at the forefront of my mind as I worked in aesthetics. My job has often relied on putting metrics on the physical ephemera of bodies. But the inexorable progression of viewing my body as a commodity led me to a terrible choice: I froze my eggs.

At the time my husband and I were busy with careers. We had the disposable income to “buy an insurance policy” that would allow us to treat a life altering decision like having children with the casual mindset of buying an insurance product or making a moderately sized investment decision.

We were referred to the “La Mer” of fertility clinics by a friend who had successfully conceived through their help. Mind you we didn’t know if we had fertility issues, this was purely about optionality. Indeed genetic testing didn’t reveal anything shocking. We did it because we thought “why not, it’s just some money” as we may regret not having given ourselves the option. God damn we were stupid. We got sucked into the marketing hype.

Freezing my eggs was invasive in a way I simply couldn’t conceive ahead of time. No pun intended. I thought it was some extra time and drugs. At every step of the process our fears and questions were allayed with the utmost professionalism. The risks were low was repeated over and over.

It felt like we were buying a mutual fund. Sure there were some risks in the fine print but really we were investing in our future. It’s only now that I realize if I thought it was such a wise investment why were both sides so clearly invested in the transaction closing? The legalese and paperwork ran was hundreds of pages.

Surely at some point someone would have pointed out it’s not without risks. And it’s also not remotely guaranteed. The cohort of women in my social circle were all sold on the benefits of egg freezing with its potential to finally liberate us (from what who knows) only to find it was just another product that had a high price tag physically and emotionally.

You see pregnant women are worth a lot of money to data brokers and advertisers. So of course the people at the start of that arc are going to cash in on that land grab. The clinic was getting upwards of $30,000 from a few months of care from me. Plus a subscription fee to keep them on ice. No wonder the egg freezing game is quickly becoming a status symbol for the upwardly mobile making it just another purchase for well funded venture backed millennial girl bosses.

I’m honestly astonished no one said a fucking thing. Not a peep. Just a glance at the fine print. No maybe you should talk to a counselor. No here is what could go wrong. No here is how you might feel. No disclosure or discussions of some of the outlier cases of how these hormones might impact me. Where were the angry right to life folks when I needed them? All those abortion laws that tell women the risks might have actually been useful here. Ironic huh?

Because I wasn’t a picture of health. I’d struggled with some inflammatory conditions as a kid along with a never ending parade of “allergies” and aches and pains I mostly ignored with an Advil. But no one ever brought up that being stimulated to produce eggs for harvesting might set off a chain reaction with my latent autoimmune complaints. Highly unlikely anything goes wrong. It’s low risk. It’s just not discussed beyond platitudes.

And so I thought it wouldn’t be a big deal. Except that it was. After two rounds of retrieval (11 eggs of which a portion are fertilized) life was supposed to go back to normal.

Except that it didn’t. Slowly but over time I became quite sick. I developed an autoimmune disorder that leaves me in constant chronic pain. I had to sell my startup and stop working entirely.

Of course, it is still not definitive that the hormone treatments kicked off my illness but the endocrinologist and the rheumatologist tell me it’s the most likely culprit. So what I want to know after having my life completely torpedo by an elective procedure, is who made money off my unborn children? Children I may never have as (updated on 12/10/22) five years later my health has not fully recovered. I am still too vulnerable to carry a pregnancy.

Who profited off my poor health? Who thought this was a consumer product? And why oh why was I dumb enough to believe them. My best guess? The business of birth is simply too lucrative for us to treat it any other way. I’m just another outlier. Maybe someone else will use those eggs and unwittingly trap their kids into the next cycle of commodification of their bodies.

Categories
Chronic Disease Chronicle

Day 17 and The Break

I’ve been putting my energy into other people for the past few days. Drawing on my reserves to help me and mine solve problems. Mostly emotional issues but all with a professional set of implications. Everyone has working solutions now which has given me the space to realize how tired I am. I see just how much work I put into others in the space of very little time. Quite frankly more than I should have because I have been feeling physically quite well so I thought I had more capacity. The closer I get to good health the more tempted I am to act like energy is an infinite resource.

This makes me feel bad as I often think I should be more generous with my time and energy. I remember being able to give more. I thought saying no made me unlikable. Now I realize boundaries are appreciated. They make us feel safe which lets us open up.

So I have tried to take today to rest. I put my routines on a bit of a pause. And frustratingly it only made me feel worse. The build up from the adrenaline spike wearing off. But it was a reminder that living life with highs and lows may sound fun but ultimately takes more out of you than being diligent about routines and rhythms.

Categories
Chronicle Media

Day 16 and The Yips

I’ve always felt safer knowing more than less. It’s a childish view as the world is filled with unknown unknowns and the quality of information someone like I can get is better than it used to be but also potentially dangerously over saturating. Safety is illusory. Knowledge only gives you so much.

And yet I’d rather be on top of the information wave than slip off the board and have it drown me. Silly a metaphor as surfing the web can be, its helpful. Your ride your information environment you never let it crash over you. But last week I lost my footing on the information and got dragged under the wave. I was drowning in emotions. So I gave myself some time to catch my breath on the proverbial beach. I asked my husband to stop sending me information flow. I bought a bunch of relaxation driven products (because consumption ever solves anything). I promised myself that I would give myself more distance between myself and the yawning sea of media. And I became afraid of getting back on the board and riding the next wave. I got the yips. Every time I tried to navigate a story critically I couldn’t think it through. All my finely tuned skills for being extremely online. Poof! I thought perhaps I’d reached a point where media would only provide me anxiety and not power and knowledge. But after a few days of hikes, conversations with my mother, lots of meditation, and hours of talks with friends I found myself back online today surfing. The yips has passed. I had some good insights. And I was back on the wave again. Confident and without anxiety.