Tag: Chronic Disease

Categories
Chronicle

Day 449 and Lost Time

I lost some time this week. I was living on someone else’s schedule and it cascaded into a wash of hours where I felt like I was completely out of sync with the wider world as I struggled to get back in my own time.

I’m not at my best when I have to push myself to live on other people’s time. Everything shrunk down to my bedroom and my body and my own myopia about righting my sense of reality. I was in a lot of physical pain which pushed me mentally as well.

I started to feel genuinely better and on track around 5pm in Frankfurt. Technically that meant I still had a half day in California to work. But I’d lost the will to push. I needed to regroup. I am telling myself that it’s ok because it’s not as if I work a standard 9-5 job. I can take the weekend to find my way back to the timeline. And if I’m honest some of my best work gets done on Saturday night.

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 448 and Disappointment

I’m feeling disappointed in myself. I want to shake the feeling as I’ve done nothing wrong that warrants punishment. But the feeling of disappointment is lingering which is a double cruelty I’m perpetuating on myself.

I have been pushing myself physically. I know this has consequences. And yet I’m frustrated by my body reacting exactly as I know it will when I run myself down. And worse than that, I find myself negotiating with my body to justify pushing just a little bit more. What if I take this medicine? Will that buy me more time? How dangerous will it be if I just keep ignoring how I feel so I can push a little bit more for a little bit longer? I’m rationalizing what amounts to self harm all because I want my body to be something it cannot be.

I feel like I should know better than to be so cruel to myself. I should let it go of the foolish need to push. What I need is sleep and my routine. I should take my medicine and instead of using the feeling of relief it brings to push, I should use the relief to rest in comfort so I heal and recover.

I hate that I keep relearning the same basic lessons of chronic disease over and over again. But hating myself for being disappointing is of course the pattern I need to break. It defeats the point. The self is not an attack surface. Being disappointed serves no purpose in this moment. It’s not driving me to be better. It’s driving me to be worse. So I’m letting it go. And I’m hoping tomorrow I’ll go a little easier on myself.

Categories
Chronic Disease Travel

Day 440 and Twitchy

Last night I had a poor night of sleep. My body was just all kinds of weird. A muscle spasm thing kept me awake. I tried magnesium (it’s a natural muscle relaxant), several rounds of Theragun routines, a few stretches, and finally actual muscle relaxers.

Nothing stopped the weird twitching. It was 2am in Germany so I was resigned to a bad night of sleep. I just laid in bed waking myself up every couple of minutes. It was exhausting.

Eventually I got to sleep and seemed to wake up in the morning no worse for wear. I wasn’t especially alarmed, as my body has a tendency to just go off on weird physical tangents for no reason. Whatever the fuck happened it seemed to have passed so I went about my work day.

I broke for dinner around 6pm or so. I ordered Ethiopian and chowed down hard. I was feeling full and sleepy and I figured I’d lay down to digest a bit. I put on some television and was promptly out like a light. I woke up two and an hours half later and realized it was probably time for me to call it a day.

I swear the only thing that woke me up was the knowledge that I had to write my blog post for the day. I’m mostly kidding. The heater turned on and roasted the room so I needed to open the window. But now I’m absolutely going back to sleep now.

Categories
Chronic Disease Medical Travel

Day 437 and A Mood

I’ve been struggling with allergies ever since I arrived in Frankfurt last week. The stress of travel and the constant itching affect my mood more than I’d like.

It’s a weird situation if I’m honest as I’m so happy to be traveling and on my own after two years or being in the same place and with the same person. I love my husband and I love my home but I’m sure everyone can relate at the end of the pandemic for the need to be alone.

My mood has largely been buoyant except for the constant low level misery that is these damn allergies. My eyes water. The skin around them is red and raw. My skin keeps finding new intermittent patterns to express hives and eczema. And I’ve built up quite a tolerance to Benadryl.

The allergies stress me out and then my spinal pain worsens and then suddenly I’ll find myself in just a miserable sad mood. I’m grateful I can write it all down so I can get the mood out. I just want to be comfortable in my own skin and smiling again.

Categories
Biohacking

Day 434 and Taking a Toll

I’ve been feeling engaged and energetic. The combination of a new environment (I’m in Frankfurt) and one of the most dynamic & chaotic investing environments has had me on focused.

But it would seem that my body would like me to maybe take a step back from from the current moment and care for it. As you may know I’m an avid biohacker. This is a screenshot from my Welltory HRV app which is part of my stack. And it is not thrilled with now I’m coping.

That means I should go to bed early and maybe take a day or two off till my metrics improve. So I’ll keep this post on the short side.

Categories
Medical Travel

Day 428 and Allergies

I’m staying in an Airbnb while I’m in Europe. I genuinely love the application and it’s community. I was an early adopter of Airbnb. Thanks to Airbnb I saved 60,000 dollars in one year. That cushion allowed me to quit a corporate job and pursue a startup without any anxiety.

My love for the application is pretty deep. It’s responsible for my marriage in some ways. I would only rent if I had another place to stay that allowed me to turn a profit. That usually meant I would rent while I traveled or if a friend has a place to crash. Alex was fascinated by my side hustle immediately. We’d only been on a couple dates when he offered to let me stay in his apartment while he traveled if we split the profits from my Airbnb. Naturally I said yes. I never moved out. And yes now we are married.

So yeah I really love Airbnb. But you do need to be aware of the community’s idiosyncratic norms. You are staying in someone’s home. That’s part of the charm. But also can can occasionally turn out in unexpected ways.

Since I arrived I’d been struggling with allergies. I broke out in hives. I had to figure out acquiring hydrocortisone in a foreign language. I was popping Benadryl like candy so I could barely stay awake. I was getting a little desperate to be honest. So I went on a long walk. Everything cleared up. I returned to the apartment and immediately started breaking out in hives again.

I texted my host to ask if he has any ideas. It turns out the host of my Airbnb loves scented candles. And he’s got great taste. The apartment has tons of candles and diffusers. But he’d put them into a cabinet so I didn’t know they were there. Alas I am extremely allergic to the chemicals that are often used in scented candles. Limonene in particular. So my body was going haywire over these candles but I had no idea they were there.

Thankfully we figured it out and moved them outside. But it’s a good reminder that context matters. At an Airbnb you are in a home furnished by a person with different needs and tolerances from you. And that’s ok. We figured it out. But me being upfront about my allergies from the start might have saved me a day of misery. Lesson learned.

Categories
Internet Culture Medical Startups

Day 415 and Accessibility

I don’t think of myself as disabled or requiring special accommodations, though I have a well controlled medical condition that swells my spinal cord called ankylosing spondylitis. But for the first time since my diagnosis I really felt like I was handicapped. And I am feeling so much sadness over the idea that I might genuinely be disabled.

I’m attending ETHDenver and it’s wildly over capacity. No consideration has been given to any kind of basic accessibility. I didn’t think it would effect me though till I got here. I can walk without a mobility aid and if you met me you’d never know I have an issue. But I can’t stand in line on cold concrete for two hours. It turns out I would need a wheelchair for that kind of activity. And even if I had a wheelchair the first two days were in the cold and snow so I couldn’t have wheeled over or around the slush and water.

So I have only attended private parties and small events and group outings. This is great for me as I’m a well networked established member of the startup ecosystem. I’ve got a popular Twitter handle and can easily reach out to people. But I’m noticing just how much a bit of inaccessibility will gatekeep the crypto and web3 community. If you don’t have my heaps of privilege there is no way you could navigate this conference.

And we really need web3 to be welcoming and accessible. To build a better future with infrastructure and economies we all collectively own and benefit from we need an order of magnitude more people participating. But if no one can get in and experience things first hand than web3 will just be a repeat of the oligarchy of web2. It’s honestly my worst fear for crypto. We will accidentally exclude the people who will benefit the most from our innovations.

Categories
Medical

Day 408 and Getting Ahead

My first piece of international travel since the pandemic began is coming up. I’ve not been on an airplane in over two years which is wild. But I needed to get a booster shot for my travel papers.

I was a bit nervous about how I’d react. I didn’t have the easiest time getting vaccinated. But I had a mild case of Omicon in December which made me slightly more optimistic about it.

I got caught in a snowstorm getting the booster yesterday. Which is so far the only inconvenience. I slept fine last night. I didn’t appear to spike a fever. I had no aches or pains other than the ones I live with normally. I’m so far enjoying having little to no reaction.

I did however take very good care of myself. I felt a migraine coming on mid-morning and I rushed in with all the good drugs. I wasn’t going to let myself suffer at all. And I am suspecting that keeping any and all stresses away has in fact been excellent for my body. Just another reminder that drugs are in fact good. Loving yourself can often mean mean treating yourself kindly. Removing the option for suffering and maybe all recovery can be this easy.

Categories
Internet Culture Startups

Day 404 and My Process

Being sick gave me an investing process. I have ankylosing spondylitis which is an inflammatory condition of the spine. It’s well controlled but still affects my day to day routines. It means I spend a lot of time in bed on my phone online. And this is how I generate alpha.

I spend my entire day on Twitter, in Discord, in DAO governance chats, in news RSS feeds and on Reddit. I’m extremely online. Terminally so. Like a LOT. I’m talking twelve hours a day. Which has turned out to be great for deal flow and diligence.

Being extremely online gives you some significant tactical advantages as an investor.

  • Persistent read of zeitgeist
  • Always online intaking discourse that will move market sentiments
  • Omnipresent availability to founders and ready to interact

Being online and intaking discourse gives me additional time and analysis with emerging trends, personalities and opportunities. By the time something has gained traction I’ve already made a move. I can move fast and confidently ahead of others because I’ve just had more time with the materials.

In somewhat bleaker terms I already live in the metaverse. Having a disability gave me early access to new ways of living online by forcing me to live a lot of my life virtually. If I wanted to socialize I had to do it in bed. I had experience with this before the pandemic. And I’m already been living where the rest of the world will be migrating now. You are gentrifying my neighborhood.

Categories
Preparedness

Day 399 and Life Finds A Way

Postlapsarian literature is arguably the first type of story in the human mind. A fall takes place. What comes after? Paradise Lost is an entire genre of folklore. I’ve been watching the new Station Eleven television show having made that mistake of reading the book early in the pandemic. I say mistake because it’s an emotional book.

Maybe it’s America’s obsession with second acts that gives me optimism. We will have a fall. A shuffling towards Bethlehem style shambles perhaps. But we will rise. Our national bird has never been the bald eagle. It’s been the phoenix.

Maybe this is why we tolerate horrible work conditions and miserable days fighting our fellow man for a scrap of security. Because as the saying goes, each of us is only a temporarily embarrassed billionaire. Don’t worry we will be back. The show must go on.

And so we concoct elaborate fantasies about how this too will pass. One day our chronic poor health will get better. Just you wait. We believe in science here you see. Science means an Epcot better tomorrow just hang in there.

Our Hollywood fantasies are riddled with “life finds a way” punchlines because well the struggle for survival in an inhospitable world is a universal struggle for our species. There is no lost cause.

But also there is no enjoying the moment or savoring the little things in life if we are always watering for our heroic moment in “the after” and holding back in the now. But don’t worry. Life finds a way. And so will you. Just remember that the end of the world is mostly a change in circumstances.