The back half of 2024 was such a whirlwind I keep discovering new eras where I am behind on keeping the engines of my life tuned.
While I’m adding in new excitement to my healthcare like hyperbaric chamber oxygen therapy (in the market to acquire one for my own use if you have recommendations) I’ve still got to make the various rounds for everything from my general practitioner to my osteopath to my dermatologist.
If the world is going to insist on going at this pace and I’m unwilling to slow down (because why would I?) then it’s full speed ahead on regular time ups and maintenance.
I hadn’t been to my osteopath since August. I hadn’t been in for Botox since October. And apparently I’ve not had a haircut since July.
Yes some of these are a bit more cosmetic than health driven but I’m somewhere closer to an old Mercedes than the family Subaru when it comes to appreciating form and function.
When I got started with my daily writing project I knew there would be days when I did not want to write. Today is one of them.
I actually expected “ugh no want to write” days to be more frequent than turned out to be true. I’ve bitched about it 51 times which isn’t a lot in the grand scheme of things.
I knew I’d find a way to force the issue just as I had made other habits a part of my life. You really can make almost anything a habit if you are so inclined. But I rarely have to force habit. I just do the thing till it’s either a habit or it’s clear it’s not for me. They say it’s 21 days but I’d give it more like 100 to be safe.
Things I just do every day include applying facial moisturizer, brushing my teeth, squatting (no not just on the toilet I mean the full body compound exercise), taking my vitamins, Tweeting, playing a stupid pay to play Chinese mobile game, telling my husband I love him and opening up my mobile content management app to write this post.
And yet I am in a real “smh” place today with my attempts to find meaning in any of my habits. I’m disappointed in more than a few things. It’s all very Cthulhu and Antarctic cold vibes for me today. Sure it’s -20 in Montana but it’s very sunny so it’s cheery dread.
Anyways, the interregnum is over, we have a new President who is an old President and everything that is new is old and everything old is new again.
I’m recovering today from transcontinental travel. My body is reconciling itself with my soul after moving through the liminal spaces of German airports through the threshold of Chicago’s regional transit on to my home in Montana.
Travel always feels otherworldly to me and it’s not just the amazement of being above the clouds. The dreamscape surreality of time changing is disorienting to me. Time shifts ambiguously on long journeys which lends an added dimension of unease that comes with the change of place.
It doesn’t help that I’m already feeling the end of the political interregnum in America especially strongly. We may have vibe shifted but it’s unclear what comes next.
It seems appropriate to be uneasy. Everything as a Joker-esque “and here we go” craziness aesthetic to it. Memecoins and the Village People and algorithmic inflections makes the topology of the now impossible to map.
I spent most of last evening wandering the empty halls of the Frankfurt International Airport. If you’ve never had the chance to do your ten thousand steps in the privacy of the off hours of a travel hub I recommend it highly.
I am entranced by empty industrial spaces, particularly when it comes to transportation and logistics. Whole worlds of people and goods being ferried to destinations near and far from the mundane to the exotic.
Walking empty corridors at London’s Heathrow can feel like you’ve stepped into your own private world. They have an enormous amount of hallways that never seem to have a soul in them. And apparently so does Frankfurt after a certain hour.
An empty corridor in an airport at 6pm
I had arranged for a morning flight out of Frankfurt after flying in the night before from elsewhere. There was little to do as most of the airport beyond convenience stores was closed so I made my way from A to Z.
American chairs never recline but Germany lets its tourists nap comfortably in the liminal spaces
Frankfurt has a “pod” hotel in their Z terminal. I walked the empty halls from A with a brief ride on an equally empty train. I went through security (the only time I saw anyone) as I plodded through with suitcase and backpack. Liminal spaces just for me.
Finding my way through roundabouts
My destination had a flavor somewhere between Japanese pod hotel and a Norwegian prison. It is called MyCloud. That it runs upwards of $250 a night and is only for international transit should tell you a lot about how expenses in Europe and the quality of the Nordic justice system.
Industrial comfort for felons and first class passengers alike at MyCloud
It’s meant as an airport hotel only for those booked onto international flights and is located in the transit area of the airport in Terminal 1, Gate Z25. And yes it is behind the security checkpoint.
I was absolutely enthralled by it and recommend it if you feel comforted by small spaces. I deliberately chose a room without any windows on the interior for the quiet. It was a cool 16 C. The toilet and shower contraption unfolded elegantly when in use.
Opaqueness is good in pod grooming
I wore earplugs and an eye mask to sleep and felt like I was ensconced in a tiny module on my way to a mining mission for the Waylund Yutani corporation.
“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 am hoping to achieve some variation or flavor of relaxation before the new year comes in with 2025 and it’s back to full speed chaos.
Convincing my body that relaxation is possible, dare I say even preferable, apparently requires a complex blend of sleep, vitamins, nutrition and the occasional trip to a professional.
I don’t find some of the necessities of feminine grooming terribly relaxing but even a wax and an aggressive pedicure have its capacity to relax.
Having hairs ripped out of delicate follicles isn’t exactly relaxing but it’s much chiller than the torture tools they use to get your toes appropriately trimmed back.
Winter legs and medieval torture tools
I feel like a Clydesdale with a patient farrier if I don’t get them trimmed every two months or so.
Watch out for the collegen and biotin supplements. They make everything grow faster apparently. I do feel like it was nice to do a little maintenance in the mania. It makes you feel so lucky to be able to have the torture of beauty be a luxury.
I used to have a habit of extended fasting during the Holy Nights. I would fast for ten days between Christmas and New Years though never all the way through to Epiphany.
I have no special Christmas traditions beyond worship as my own family does not do gifts or gatherings. I prefer it this way. Quiet suits me now.
Advent is a season for reflection on the cycles of life. For me the time between Christmas and Epiphany is a rare season. Some consider it a liminal time or still point where the veil between physical and other realities are thin.
Holy Nights can be thought of as a still-point in earthly rhythms as we transition from Christ’s Birth to Epiphany. Northern European cultures call it this time the Raunächte or “rough nights” similarly it represents the thin point between worlds.
There are many traditions associated with this time. Cleaning and cleansing and warding off bad or unwanted energy, the paying off of debts and reconciliation as well as rituals of burning, cleansing and smudging. It’s a time for introspection and reflection.
I’ll likely meditate and journal as normal perhaps with some divination exercises. I enjoy any excuse to pull tarot cards and toss a Nordic rune.
I’m so unsure of how the next decade or two will play out. Anyone with a firm degree of certainty on the matter is suspect in my mind.
History is alive and material progress rests on the intelligent coordination of resources. We are in the middle of an explosion of intelligence. Will we rise to the challenge as a species?
I’ve had a wild year. I suspect many others feel similarly. The global year of elections exposed many tensions even as it resolved some questions of who has the power and how it will be used.
I’m more optimistic than I expected to be at the start of the year. We are living inside William Gibson’s Jackpot. As intelligence explodes and my own capacity to coordinate with others improves I am hopeful.
It’s Christmas Eve which puts me in a reflective mood. Changes in human nature are rare. If we change at all, it happens over generations of incorporating cultural change as it is combined with significant changes in technical and material circumstance.
Christ’s birth represents a significant cultural change for humans. From low circumstances arose a new way of living. The mighty see the grace of the meekest among us.
I partook in the time honored tradition of going to a mall before Christmas. My family was inconsistent in its treatment of the holiday when I was growing up and consumerism was not a value we celebrated.
And yet now I think it’s a wonder America has exported the triumph of the American consumer at its most intense and made Christmas shopping a mentality globally. Consumer debt is a marvelous when it’s priced in American dollars.
Our holidays are now times for displaying status and taste in so much of the world. I think it’s reasonable to say we’ve been post scarcity since the mass commercial fertilizer and it’s all been status signaling since then. We all live materially better lives. Arguments for the impoverishment of our souls are still quite valid.
Yet here I am buying stuff before Christmas. Nothing makes me feel more like a piece of the capital markets like buying consumer electronics at Christmas.
The prices are better only because we’ve been trained into a consistent purchasing pattern. We can predict consumer sentiment and meet those demands partially as a function of training the consumer when to shop. The propaganda of the markets.
So I get to enjoy the overstimulating existential horror that is the wall of televisions ready to be Christmas gifts. The high fidelity color and intense noise is an assault on the senses. No wonder reality is a disappointment. I’ve never seen so crisp a picture. It’s all just a bit too much.
One of my resolutions for 2025 is to use LinkedIn. I know it’s a little weird, but a whole swathe of professionals simply don’t Tweet, shit post or blog.
Many professionals brand themselves with polished post on more poised platforms. Their branding is less about authenticity or raw insights and more about composure.
As I’ve been popping in to my old “work” networks and encountering long lost colleagues from my past life in the lifestyle trenches of fashion, beauty and luxury I’ve noticed a grim trend amongst the composed and polished.
These professionals were concerned that in the wider style industry, quality has all but disappeared while costs are way up.
Like my sad Kiki boots, much of old-school luxury — the kind that was so glamorous, lush and exquisite that everyone understood it, many craved it and few could have it — is beyond repair. Once-revered establishments that prided themselves on craftsmanship, service and cultivating a discerning and loyal customer base have become mass-marketing machines that are about as elegant and exclusive as the Times Square M&M’s store.
Everyone has their own style and preferences naturally. When everyone from the tried and true heritage heads to the nouveau grunge appreciators complain that everything is crap and there is far too much of it then a we’ve got a problem.
Ms Zarrella’s Marc Jacob platform boots may be more Doc Martin Hot Topic than my own preference but I doubt I could replace my beloved kitten heel knee high Gucci boots either. We are both stuck with expensive choices that won’t last.
I’ve simply stopped shopping anywhere but a few select unbranded stores like Italic. Repairs are the only option if you have existing pieces you love. There are no replacements available. Even if you are willing to pay the new prices the quality is terrible.
Freshly repaired by LeatherSpa after seventeen years of service on the mean streets of New York
