Tag: Chaotic

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Community

Day 577 and Whirlwind

The last few days have been a whirlwind. I probably owe at least a dozen “thank yous” to friends and family and neighbors. I hope my brain catches up to my body soon so I can appropriately express my gratitude to everyone that has come together to get Alex and I moved to Montana.

I woke up in my own bed in my own home today. We did laundry at 10pm last night so we could put sheets on a mattress and sleep at home instead of the Airbnb we had rented. Alex and I both had a moment where we just wanted to be home. And kindly my mother and her husband as well as our friend Austin took the Airbnb so we could enjoy our first night in our new forever home. Even if we hadn’t unpacked much more than a mattress and sheets after the long drive it was worth it.

At around 7am today folks showed up to help unload and unpack. Friends from Twitter arrived. I may have jumped onto a few folks in my enthusiasm to deliver hugs in gratitude. People’s teenagers came over (including the son of the previous owners). I am still somewhat astonished so many folks pitched in.

Everyone was good sports (somewhat less so me) about the heat wave hitting Montana and simply hauled ass to get everything out of the moving truck before noon. My mother and I were on errand duty as we ran across town to acquire food and sundries. And now as the temperature rises we are slowly coming down.

It is siesta time for the afternoon. It will be too hot to do much more and the single air conditioner we brought imploded on us. On its first use. You wouldn’t think you’d need air conditioning up in Montana but such is global warming. The stores here are all out of air conditioners as it’s such an intense heatwave. But that is a problem for another day.

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Travel

Day 573 and Great American Road Trip

I am about to set off on one of the great American pastimes. The drive from Boulder to Bozeman is not very long, only about 9 and a half hours, but it is a majestic drive that covers badlands and soaring mountains all along the Eisenhower interstate system.

The I-25 to I-80 route is one of the gems of the mountain west. It has corporate industrial hellholes, the haunting poverty of our reservations, and the entrance to Yellowstone Park. It’s as good a route as any to explore where we are as a country. Even when gas prices are high. Actually scratch that. Especially when gas prices are high.

We’ve done this drive a few times in both directions. We’ve got a routine for it. Heck we even have a specific McDonalds we stop at on the route. But we’ve never done it with friends and family. It’s generally been a simple married couple drive. There is less drama when it’s a duo and much more time for introspection. It’s either you driving or you recovering from the drive.

When we embark on this road trip this weekend, it’s going to involve a truck, several internet friends and my mother. It’s going to be a bit of a larger cast. In my fantasy version of events, it has all of the makings of a modern day Chevy Chase vehicle.

The kind of comedy that all Americans appreciate as a part of their birthright is the indignity and joy of the open road. When you add in vacations it’s a hoot. But a move? It’s a bit more pioneering in your mind. You see yourself in the fabric of life, narrative manifesting itself as intimate drama. Right before you step in piss at a gas station bathroom.

I frankly cannot wait for this glorious adventure. I am confident we will have pratfalls. I hope we do not have any actual calamity. At least not one that cannot be solved with a bit of wit, a truck and one’s parents. But expectations are just premeditated disappointment, so who knows where the road will take us. That is the magic of the great American road trip.

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Preparedness

Day 569 and Scarcity

There are a number of memes that have taken off in the last few years related to food scarcity as a mechanism for elite control Coverage of climate change and the need for change in agribusiness has been covered extensively in mainstream media so it’s no surprise there is backlash.

I Will Not Eat The Bugs is one of the originating memes in the wider World Economic Forum conspiracy universe along with “You Will Own Nothing” Great Reset discourse. It’s a rich memespace and one that every doomer should be watching closely. Twitter went nuts when a cultural review of cannibalism in literature and tv got posted by the New York Times.

Unfortunately the memes were a harbinger of the fundamental challenges of moving towards greener policies through dictate. Especially when you do poor planning that doesn’t account for transition times and significantly lower yields. Sri Lanka’s attempt to go cold turkey on industrial fertilizer turned disastrous.

With the war in Ukraine grinding on, the world is slowly realizing that chemical fertilizers and cheap grain are in danger of being in short supply. Commodity watchers reminded us that China stopped exporting key fertilizer components last year.

It’s not that Americans haven’t noticed the higher costs of food before. The inflation issues plaguing the country are often framed in terms of simple costs like eggs, milk and chicken. Doomberg sounded the alarm in January that we would see a significant food crisis. But there is a new urgency around scarcity that is exploding into the spotlight. My favorite preparedness website Unprepared published a whole guide to dealing with the coming food crisis.

I personally don’t know what will convince people that we are in for much higher prices and harder times. A lot of cascading factors are converging. But I think it’s wise to keep a close eye on scarcity discourse. If you want to keep ahead read things like AgriNews and Bloomberg’s commodity and supply chain newsletters. It’s better to go in with eyes open.

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Politics Travel

Day 551 and Enjoy The Decline

I didn’t celebrate Independence Day yesterday. At least not in any meaningful sense. Typically I like to watch Roland Emmerich’s classic film Independence Day and cheer on American exceptionalism with explosions and hamburgers.

Instead I’m abroad and trapped in a small Airbnb that has me tethered to the nearest air conditioner. Pollution and climate change isn’t very good for enjoying time outside. 100 degree heat and a lack of EPA pollution standards are not a great combination so best of luck to my friends in Texas.

Nothing breeds appreciation for capitalism quite like spending time somewhere it hasn’t existed for long. Even at the end of the empire, American capitalism is so effective, our living standards still eclipse eastern block countries and other experiments in strongman style socialism. There is a reason people want to come to America and it’s not because we make it easy on immigrants or offer a strong social safety net.

It will be better to live in America for another fifty years or so than nearly anywhere else. Even with all our problems and bullshit, America at its worst is better than most of the planet. Entropy is a bitch though so you may you may as well enjoy the decline as eventually our lack of infrastructure and crumbling institutional capacity will destroy us.

Eventually “the crumbles” and the “Jankening” will eat away at our quality of life lead over the rest of the world. And let me tell you having been reminded of how much it sucks to live without the comforts of modernity, life this life to the fullest while you can. You are not going to enjoy the average lifestyle of a Balkan or Baltic state.

Which might be optimistic given some of the reactionary types striving to be the next Victor Orban. So might I recommend going out to eat at some fine fast casual restaurant and then making a Target run for things you don’t need. It won’t be around forever.

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Aesthetics Travel

Day 548 and Shame

I’ve got a pit in my stomach. My throat has the constricted feeling of embarrassment that gets trapped in your gullet. I failed and lost money on something stupid. I tried to do a pleasant vacation sort of choice over a long weekend. A “nearby” Riviera town was supposedly within driving distance. I thought what could go wrong. Let’s go to the Ionian Sea! I briefly thought I could enjoy something like a regular person.

I said yes as everyone was so excited by the fresh air and the beaches. It will be healthy and fun! I was worried it would be without the basics I need to keep standing upright but I wanted to try anyway. Consistent air conditioning is really important to keeping the rest of my bodily system’s functioning. It’s a very Marie Antoinette need, but once my spine swells it can go very wrong very fast. Summers are hard for me.

My system begins to cascade within a pretty short window. About half a day. Eight hours without being able to lay flat for a break ended up fucking me up badly in this case. The “oh it’s close, just a three hour drive” ended up being a ten hour ordeal over badly maintained roads. I was sick to my stomach and in pain as we took hairpin turns and popped over potholes. I was in so much pain it was over a 10. It was “lose consciousness” levels of pain as my body knew I shouldn’t be awake for it. I was afraid it would get so bad I’d need a hospital. Instead I settled for opioids. Keeping out of the hospital was probably wise.

I hate needing those kind of drugs. The “your pain is a 10” drugs push me off the plane of reality by a few ecliptic degrees, and suddenly I can tolerate the pain and discomfort again. I understand how addicts get made now. It’s not real comfort. It’s synthetic but most people can’t tell just by watching. The fake relief looks real.

I’ve never felt tempted to take pain medicine recreationally. It’s usually only when a pain is too big for my reality that I tap out in defeat and take an opioid. It’s when reality crushes my soul as one variable starts to degrade the whole machine. I only use it to stave off collapse. And I was very close to collapse.

What is fucked up is that people like me off the axis of reality. The hazy hyper vibe’d unreal “reality” of encroaching nihilism is bop. Dystopia seems cool and consumable.

But it’s not an adventure for me. Living when sick is a daily dance with the devil who could use any chance encounter to end it all for you. The kind thing might be to stop fighting. But I rarely give up so I must enjoy the sticky Sisyphean crawl towards towards reality and the search for my own dignity.

I’m ashamed because I couldn’t make good decisions in that kind of pain. When the first hotel turned out to be a scam I happily laid down a card to stay till Monday at another hotel. Anything to get me relief. I just needed a safe cold place to heal.

It was a bad decision. The air conditioner didn’t work. I couldn’t get comfortable. I was sleeping in a dark sort of cold room as I couldn’t work up energy to go to the beach or even see the rest of the hotel. Not that it mattered as none of it was air conditioned anyway. I decided to go home after I had built up energy reserves back from sleeping for hours. I couldn’t tell you how long I passed out for but it might have been close to a whole day.

Alas I was again scammed for my efforts. The hotel clerk says no you paid for four days so you cannot get a refund even if you leave early. No refunds ever. No early checkout. No one cares if you are sick. Fuck her but I said hotel California for me. I was sick and needed safety.

I made some efforts to get receipts and documentation. I asked a receipt attesting that they wouldn’t let you cancel for any circumstance and that I was sick but it made no difference. Maybe I can take to the credit card or even the health insurance to show that I crashed. I’ll work it out on the backend.

I often wonder why I need special care. Surely I can try to do regular things like drive to the beach. But I couldn’t. I lost 48 hours to driving and bad air conditioning and pain. I didn’t have the health to stay at the beach. I needed to go back to the city with air conditioning.

I felt so stupid. I tried to fight to hold space that maybe I was a person that could do a vacation. That I was normal. And it was firmly corrected by reality. And then you think this is why I don’t go on vacation. The additional friction makes it a hell. It’s not a joy it’s a visit to hell.

I cut bait quickly this time.I’m ashamed at now much I must firmly maintain the no. No I don’t want to go to the beach. No I don’t have the energy got a full day road-trip. And definitely no on an empty stomach.

I feel like I’m not fun. That being friends with me is joyless because I can’t agree to fun things like a weekend at a beach. I find myself in tears having failed again at trying to do a nice normal fun thing. I ruined the weekend for myself and everyone around me.

Fun with me is being in a dark room. We watch television. Or maybe a movie. We make fun of a plot hole or bad casting. We sleep a lot. If we are at my home we do the chores. We keep up with the farm. There is no reason to turn consumption of recreation into a thing. It just hurts me. No cheap facsimile of an American vacation in a resort in a cheaper country.

That hideous example of colonial expectations of western domestic standards turn out to be required for a disabled woman. Air conditioning and short trips keep me alive. And at quite a cost. Since no one will refund me any of these damned scam hotels. I should have known better. It will probably take me a week or so to recover. And I’m so ashamed.

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Travel

Day 539 and Hurry Up and Wait

As summer travel is turning into a source of horror stories and tears, I decided the best way to handle transiting across various borders is to pad every flight with extra time. To hurry up and wait as a strategy.

This has naturally lead to some significant mind numbing waiting issues. Two hours in an airport lounge isn’t as fun as I imagined or even remember. Lounges seemed nicer in the past. Sitting in the liminal with lots of other bored, stressed, and otherwise disengaged humans gives you plenty to watch but little of interest.

My lounge experience went as you’d expect. People giving each other a wide berth while they sip mediocre white wine. Teenagers trying to not to look at their parents in case someone cool passes by. All forms of athleisure and sweat pants swaddling the asses of women just hoping for a comfortable flight. The occasional child demanding a cookie from the two poorly stocked snack sections

When it’s time to board everyone simply mobs the doors. No one care about any system. It’s just a throng of desperation yearning to get on and claim overhead baggage space. I’d like to be irritated as I paid for business class but status is funny that way.

I can’t even find anyone to Karen at to say I’m supposed to be up front. So I wait at the back of the line. No one is following orders because no one is giving them. I packed compact & sensibly but everyone else is testing the limits. No wonder everyone wants to get on as fast as they can. Overpacking must be a stress response.

The entire experience is a war of all against all. If everyone is priority boarding than no one is a priority. It’s just pushing and shoving and giving no fucks. Sadly I give fucks about decorum and politeness so I didn’t have the balls to try to make a run around. I just said and wait and wait. Hurry up and wait.

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Travel

Day 538 and Anticipated Anxiety

For someone that dedicated years of my life to making travel better, I sure do hate it. I’m a country mouse, and a homebody, these days. The prospect of having to travel is making me nauseous today. It’s the anticipation that is getting to me.

I’ve been having nightmares for days. It’s probably the Melatonin I started taking to improve my sleep quality but it ironically appears to have has the opposite effect. I think I’ll stick to Magnesium.

I’ve never be a good traveler. I get terrible anxiety about all of it. The packing, the waiting, the transit that isn’t flying, the flying that isn’t the part of the final route; all of it makes me anxious. I only really relax once I’ve made it though customs on the other side.

You can see it in my biometrics. My average heart rate goes up. My respiratory rate ticks up. I get sick to my stomach. My body clearly keeps the score. I was prescribed Ativan for long haul flights but I’m just as anxious to take it as I know the dangers of benzodiazepines.

The irony is of course not lost on me. My doctors and my husband try to remind me that elevated cortisol levels for extended periods are just as bad for me as the occasional Ativan. The impact of being stressed is not great long term.

My upcoming trip seems like it might be a bit worse than usual as I’ve been reading news story after news story about how bad flying is this summer. A flight attendant did a remarkable job laying out all the ways you can survive the tumultuous times.

I’m doing everything she suggested and then some. I’m not taking any chances. I under-packed. I have long layovers. In one instance, I opted for an overnight stay on the return so as not to struggle with a late evening connection that could easily be canceled.

But I still suspect I’ll find new and exciting ways to learn how travel is a mess this summer. But isn’t that just the theme of the moment. Everything is a bit of a mess. And we are all a bit anxious about what any of it means and how we are meant to cope with the crumbles.

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Preparedness Travel

Day 528 and Oppressive

I would love to be writing about my impressions of the Consensus experience in Austin. I had a terrific time seeing friends & colleagues, the content was good, my talk was well attended (and well received) and I genuinely felt the experience was worthwhile. My general impression is winter is good for crypto as we will get back to building.

But as I wrap up my trip all I can really focus on is how oppressive the heat feels. How exhausting it is to consider it’s consuming nature at every step of your day. The heat is edging towards the point of being hostile to life. 29 million people live in Texas and there is no focused effort to harden infrastructure for climate extremes or drought. If you want to picture what life might be life here for your children read the Water Knife by Paolo Bacigulipa.

Last night I found myself literally sitting on top of an air conditioning vent in the attic of a private house to avoid the evening heat. I was hosting a little gathering with a few close friends (and new folks) on top of what eventually turned into a Burning Man reunion. As the older folks (otherwise known as anyone over the age of 35) and the square folks decided it was time to head out for dinner, we piled back into the night heat. The sound of revelers dancing and laughing in the 95 degree heat impressed me. Texas was showing life in the face of death.

In what I can only call a rookie move, we went to a community meet up in the backyard of some sort of coffee house and Eastern European bun shop. Even at 10pm it was too much for me. The adults decamped to a nice restaurant for air conditioning and steaks. It was bliss. Expensive privileged bliss. And yes I enjoyed consuming more than my share of resources. I’d contributed to the resource depletion that has changed our climate and made me suffer.

My period started this morning so I’m obviously tired, bloated and cranky. The last thing I want to do is cope with heat that’s supposed to get up to 109. I’m doing the dance where I rush as fast as I can into a waiting car. I try to avoid the natural world and it’s cruel requirements. We’ve not conquered nature, merely found ways to shield ourselves from its worst ravages. But those protections only intensified the natural patterns of our planet.

I idly thought to myself if I was ever to have a daughter I’d name her Cassandra. That could be quite a parental trauma to give a child. Imagine the anger she might feel dealing with a world where it’s either innovate your way to safety or accept a declining living standard with degrowth. It’s a horrifying choice. I want to be an optimistic natalist that thinks we can innovate a better future for our children. I want their confidence.

But it’s hard to be confident about a future where an enormous vibrant place like Texas will be forced to run the gauntlet of a chaotic age to a singularity not everyone will live to see. I wouldn’t place my fate in a place with drought, extreme heat and reactionary right wing populism. But I’m also not sure I’ll ever come back. But I hope I do.

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Emotional Work

Day 519 and Dogged

I am a obsessive. I latch onto shit. If I’ve got a problem in front of me I will absolutely fixate until the every blocker to solving said problem is removed. If a blocker cannot be removed, say it’s 11pm and shit is closed, then I hope you want to hear about it all night. It’s absolutely one of my most annoying personality traits. I just do not let up.

I had a bulldog as a kid. Her name was Maybelline. If she was playing tug you better believe you were going to lose. Bulldogs were bred to latch onto a bull’s nose and not let go till they had brought it down. An 80lb dog could corkscrew and thrash its body till it brought down a thousand pound bull. Don’t play tug of way with a bulldog. They just don’t fucking let go.

You are actually discouraged from playing tugging games with a bulldog because it will only excite them. And you don’t want to encourage a dog that can fuck you up to engage in behaviors that will fuck you up.

Equally if you see me latching onto something you should not engage. I will not let it go. I was looking at Airbnbs today as I’ve got some travel coming up. I knew I wasn’t going to book anything as I needed to get answers from a few hosts on basics like air conditioning. I had a few criteria I knew I wanted met so I just kept scrolling.

Suddenly I’d gone through several hundred properties and several hours has gone by. Sure I’d narrowed it down but I hadn’t actually picked a place. I couldn’t till I heard back. And so I just kept scrolling. Maybe if I kept at it I’d find something matching every single one of my criteria.

Eventually I had to be pried away. The bull wasn’t going down. I wasn’t going to be able to book as it was past midnight in Europe anyway. I’m pretty sure I’ll have the perfect place to book when I wake up. I did the work. I have lots of chalices. But fuck I cannot let it go. And it’s getting in the way of me thinking about other productive shit. Which is a metaphor for how something I’m sure. Being dogged is good. Until it’s not.

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Media

516 and Shoot the Puck

There is a Canadian comedy called Letterkenney that has absolutely won my heart. It has snappy writing that shines through characters that are given real depth over multiple seasons. It’s funny as shit and absolutely vulgar. I couldn’t recommend it more highly. It’s about a small town living and being a hick, but that’s almost besides the point.

The show had an ancillary character, Shoresy, played by the creator of the series Jared Keeso ,who is a foul mouthed hockey player. Shoresy was spun out into its own series and recently premiered. I binged it over the long weekend with my husband. I won’t spoiler any of the plot, it except to say it’s got one of the strongest season endings I’ve ever watched.

What started as a truly disgusting bit of scatalogical humor ends up being the basis for a show with real heart. I found myself getting teary eyed as a story of teamwork unfolded. There is some classic underdog (literally the team is called the Bulldogs), tropes but you genuinely don’t mind. The emotional journey still works.

I’m a startup person so I’ve got a soft spot for watching something messy come together. And nothing is messier than a team that is dysfunctional. You root for them. As teams coalesce and a sense of identity forms, you cannot help but root for the improvement.

I’ve got a theory that the emotional rollercoaster of that process makes you prone to latching into aphorisms and simple wisdom. Its got something to do with the humility that comes from learning shit and being being bad at that shut. I suspect because everything is so chaotic when it’s new. The process of “becoming” so simply do mind shattering that koans and just-so story pearls of wisdom have added weight. They anchor you in the chop of uncertainty.

For Shoresy, the aphorism that tugged most on my heart strings was “you can’t score a goal if you don’t shoot the puck.” A simple sports metaphor so evocative you probably saw it on Naval’s Twitter account. Well ok maybe in just in second stringer venture capitalist sincere post. Clearly Ted Lasso isn’t the only sports sitcom show that can teach us something about becoming our most best empathetic selves.