I’ve been very wrapped up in my own problems of late. I have plenty of good reasons to be focused inward. When you feel as if you are fighting for survival, physical or otherwise, you can’t see anything else.
As I’ve looked up from my issues, I am seeing countless others caught in their own reactive spirals. Many of them are even directionally correct in their diagnosis of the problems facing them and the world as we know it.
The apocalyptic bent is especially strong in America at the moment. From politics to artificial intelligence to cultural wars, Americans are on the edge of change.
If your world is ending you probably can’t see beyond the horizon of the issues bringing about its end. Your view is myopic. Let’s call this phenomenon “apocalypse narcissism.”
It’s understandable to be wrapped up in fear when faced with all kinds of mortality. Your life, your nation, your culture, your planet and even your species all face world ending questions at some point. Sometimes change is so great we can’t see it as anything but death. Even if something better rises from the ashes.
I am in a challenging spot at the moment with our household mold issue and my attempts to accelerate changes in my care protocol for my autoimmune condition.
When things are challenging physically I find myself in tension. I want to share and be open in my experiment to write every single day. I am afraid that I’m doing nothing but share weakness by doing so.
I don’t want to telegraph only strain, illness, and struggle. Sure things are hard at the moment, but I am more than my current local minima conditions. Things are quite good.
Just because I feel too weak to articulate all the areas of strength doesn’t mean they don’t exist. I just can’t put them front and center right now.
This frustrates and even angers me. Large long term projects and investments are thriving and rather than focus on those I am curling into the fetal position and wishing I could disappear until I’m able to advocate loudly and proudly for my wins.
For as exciting as the last few weeks have been it’s hard to feel like as it’s the dead of winter. I’ve not gone outside in several days as we are in -20 land which probably contributes to fatigue. Thankfully it’s bright and sunny.
I don’t have anything useful to say as being in the middle of multiple health projects is a time suck. Any excess energy goes to work as there really is no way of stopping progress. I wish I could keep up as it’s exciting.
Partially because things are so “out of bounds” I can feel more comfortable prioritizing long term gains and changes. I think I can achieve a health level up and fixing it now prepares me for strain later.
I take this approach on everything now. The short term has been set by decisions in the past and the medium term is highly uncertain. Steer correctly now so future you is set up to succeed.
I have a hazy memory of my mother introducing me to 80s girlfriend the Bangles when the played a concert at Disneyland.
We’d play the song in the car when I was little but it seemed improbable that this actually happened. But sure enough they did play at Disneyland so maybe the memory really did happen.
Reality is so tenuous when it comes against the frailties of memory. How can we be sure of anything even with meticulously kept records.
We are finding out some of the limits of record keeping and we can unearth the secrets of the universe by total recall these past two years of consumer artificial intelligence.
I have been taking a few weeks to reset some of my health protocols. Being empowered with better tools for finding opportunities makes me more inclined to take action. There are new pharmaceutical options. We can piece together
I had a round of bad bloodwork and within days I was able to take action. It’s only been a few weeks but got back a fresh set today and am feeling more optimistic that the hazy shades of winter are being well used on improvements.
Somewhere in this blog there is a date error. It’s probably easy to find. I noticed the day I did it (I believe I was ill and got confused) and then time streamed on and now it barely matters.
Oddly I only care to mention it because I notice more when things are done in day by day format. We have 10 day retreats, month long sprints, quarterly focuses, if you are large enough to have yearly plans good luck to you.
We asked for acceleration and we got it. Timelines are so preposterously fast we can count them in shorter bursts. The Wall Street Journal has an administration day count for Trump. Today is day 21. Which is a light day involving golf with Tiger Woods and going to the Super Bowl.
I’m not inclined to dramatic pronouncements about the future (ok maybe a little). Humans don’t change too quickly their hard learned ways. But we are getting so much more information at such rapid pace right now that if you are inclined to count the days maybe set some goals for them.
I briefly was overtaken by the desire to travel to Washington D.C for the inauguration. I am however more focused on the work in front of me for chaotic capital and on my 2025 goals of putting my ankylosis back to remission.
I finished a ten day hyperbaric chamber oxygen therapy course which has made me feel significantly better.
I found a new potential candidate for an IL-17 inhibitor that has recently been released in Europe.
I’d had a disappointing set of bloodwork and I was determined to push forward on new improvements. I want a personal life that is more than lying prone in bed working on my professional passions.
I want more time with my family. I want the capital to pursue children. I’ve had embryos on ice for years and been too ill to carry them. I may be too old. I have family that live outside the United States with no easy visa solutions at and that I’d like to have near me.
If we are able to put together the capital investment required for surrogacy (or the miracle of being able to carry myself) a family means having everyone able to be a part of the children’s lives.
Maybe my health will never support the strain of this with the workload I choose. But I pray that visas will come, that health can be granted, that capital will be liquid, and the possibilities of getting it all together isn’t impossible even in this crazy moment. Pray for my family if you are so inclined
It’s hard to trust, well, anything. The uncertainty of the near future looks like the uncertainty of the far future right now.
It feels as if one is in a fog so thick that you can’t see your own hand reaching out to touch something at arm’s length let alone glimpse gjr far horizon
How do we set goals and work towards outcomes in that kind of world? I find it unsettling despite having years to prepare for a more chaotic world.
I am learning to let go of grasping for specific outcomes and lean on process to bring me to outcomes. I work the problems in front of me. I maintain the protocols that work for me. When they cease to yield results I change as rapidly as I am able.
“We aren’t quitters” could be a tagline from a sports movie, a speech about the American people or your parent’s family philosophy.
Fortune favors those with fortitude. Gritsums up entire pedagogies of successful education and institutional cultures.
And here I am, one day at a time, continuing to log my thoughts for anyone who might care to read them on this public journal.
When I first began I thought the experiment to write every single day I thought would last a month. Then I thought maybe I could make it to a full year. Now I’m unsure if I will ever want to stop. I’m not even sure I know how to stop?
I’m less sure the narrative aspects of this log are as crucial to me as when I first started . I wanted to improve my capacity to write regularly so I set out to practice that creative process.
Having achieved my goal to write and publish each day, it may be time to evolve this narrative into a more traditional blog format from the past.
We used to include links, asides, and unrelated tidbits alongside narratives and storytelling in old school weblogs. I may try to try to include tidbits of what I am seeing each day as a way of sharing my context and inference process.
If the mood stokes for essays (as is my usual habit) that’s fine and if the mood strikes for a log of influences that is fine too. Year five has permission to be whatever it likes.
Hannu Rajaniemi an entrepreneur and science fiction author has a new book Darkome about a world where with a corporate giant who invented a mRNA vaccine wearable and an underground of biohackers working to keep those vaccines and edits available online not available in America but thankfully I got a copy in Europe.
Why do we know so little history? Bogus airport bestsellers are one culprit. Or a bestseller anyone who took an AP history course “A World Lit Only By Fire” is mostly bunk. Turns out that’s common.
“Style is a magic wand; everything it touches turns to gold.”
I began my review of my “round up” for the year post today. I was going post by post dredging memories and taking notes by hand. I’m embarrassed to say it took me almost 7 weeks of post scrolling to realize I was going through 2023 and not 2024.
Now you might argue that I’m tired as it’s been a long year, but just how crazy do things got to be when time is so punctuated with “happenings” that it’s genuinely hard to remember even the most shocking of events?
How is it that wars, elections, and major technological breakthroughs are just the daily happenings? Can it be that this much travel is required to do business? How long have we been living through this acceleration in politics and technology?
I want the narrative through lines of life to be more comprehensible. It is however clear that we are in a roiling period of chaos and even as I may remain ahead of some aspects I’ll always experience a trend multiple times.
Things that were huge this year were trends last year and were mere subcultures the year before that. Such is how information propagates in a networked world. I’m not even fully saturated on my own thesis.
I must have taken fairy tales and “just so” stories quite seriously as a small child as I have deep faith in process, repetition, and routine. J
Just keep at it. Practice makes perfect. Chop wood and carry water. To be worthy of the opportunities that might present themselves in your life you must live each day moving forward your intentions with your habits.
Luck is where preparation meets opportunity. If you maintain the course of your life by consistently apply skills and focus, you may find even the most esoteric and specific dreams of your childhood becoming a reality.
Just yesterday I was invited to participate in something that I had dreamed of being worthy of being included in since my teenage years. I kept the interests my whole life and now out of the blue I was being recognized. I could not be happier.
I had aspired to be a certain kind of person as one of my childhood dreams and here I was finding that I had indeed become worthy of my own aspirations. All it took was going in the right direction, keeping a consistent interest in learning more, and being present in public with those skills. I am so happy that years of simple regular action and interest had indeed yielded fruit.
