Tag: Emotions

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Chronic Disease Startups

Day 1519 and Steady

I am doing my best to remain steady. The world at large doesn’t make it easy. Every day we have a new crisis, impending doom and looming fascism.

I would be more inclined to reactivity if it didn’t seem much more important to pay attention to the actual problems over which I have some agency.

Some days that agency is used on frustratingly small things and others it’s the most fantastical science fiction come to life in our day to day reality. The indignities of human embodiment and the miracles of applying knowledge to problems exist in the same reality.

There is so much pretending and posturing in the process of pursuing any goal, it’s understandable that people mistake the symbols of things for the thing itself.

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Emotional Work

Day 1513 and Forcing Function

I’ve not in one thousand five hundred and thirteen days of writing in a row set forth a m standard for how I might quit. Four years (or 216 weeks) is plenty of time to come up with a criteria for making a decision.

I have in that time embraced the haziness inherent in self trust. I’ll just know when it’s time. That’s obviously a rationalization. I assumed that circumstances would decide for me which meant I’d never need firm criteria for stopping. It would just happen.

Given my health and the general state of the world surely in this long timeframe some calamity, crisis or mishap would keep me from writing one day and that would simply be that. The chain would be broken.

It has not yet happened. No forcing function has stopped me from my writing practice. And I’ve not yet set worth anything firm about how I’ll know.

So far 2025 has tested me. There are many short posts. I have been hampered by health and home issues which sorely make me want to give up some days.

I’ve tried to included more sporadic “linking and thinking” to make my writing space more blog-like and less essay oriented. Backing away from narrative forms is a fine way of introducing flexibility into one’s writing.

I can’t help wondering if I should introduce a forcing function and create a set of criteria for when I’ll stop. But the truth is I’m scared to give myself a clear way out when I’m struggling. Perhaps it’s better to keep that trust that I’ll know.

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Politics

Day 1511 and You Are Here

Watching institutional powers and public figures goes through the Kübler-Ross grief cycle as they grapple with technical and political change sucks. People are all over the place.

Institutional distrust from the public has America and Europe at odds just as our geopolitical position relative to China is most precarious. And yet this strange new world cannot possibly be coming. Having spent the last year in denial Germans have moved into anger.

Imagine what bargaining will look like as power shifts over the next few years. I’ve seen the depression stage already in technology as the shift in intelligence and computing washes over us.

I’ve come to acceptance only because I’ve got a head start. I didn’t look terribly sane at the time and now I am sitting pretty. Taking action while we grieve the loss of the world we knew is the human condition. If you can accept change is inevitable you might even start to enjoy the process.

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Chronic Disease Emotional Work

Day 1508 and Dorymaxxing

I am pushing myself to continue with the daily writing habit even as I am on a rollercoaster of health and home challenges that have put me well on the back foot.

I want to rage against the symptoms, the system that can’t solve anything, and even my own body for being tricky. But that won’t fix anything. I’m need to give the new protocols the space to work.

So it’s one foot in front of the other. Whatever is happening out there in the real world I just need to put one foot in front of the other. Or if you prefer a meme. Just keep swimming Dory.

Just keep swimming

I’m doing my best not to get it get me down. I’m afraid of the setbacks. I am afraid of the length of recovery and the potential for things to be worse. But I’ll Dorymaxx. It’s all I’ve got in me

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Emotional Work Politics

Day 1507 and Apocalypse Narcissism

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.

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Chronic Disease Emotional Work

Day 1506 and Breaking With Convention

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.

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Culture Media

Day 1505 and Warping Reality

We are all avoiding reality to some measure. Be grateful that our egos can cushion the horrors of the world at all. I’m unsure how removed one can be from reality anymore but as an American I’ll probably one of the last to find out.

Rationalist and all-around Twitter in-group personality Aella went on a podcast called “whatever” which I’d wrongly believed was a marketing funnel for OnlyFans creators.

It turns out the host is some sort of debater Christian and this is a popular podcast for feeling better about the state of the gender wars. In some of the ensuing debate Kim Ono (I’ve lost the link) said something very insightful.

The whole business model is warping reality to comfort the fearful

Whether it is dim men dunking on sex workers, panicked liberal women on MSNBC, or Fox Blondes screaming at Boomers, our entire media environment is about making sure you can’t see what’s real while simultaneously pandering that your fear is justified. Nervous systems be damned!

I find reality to be plenty terrifying but I try to avoid needing my own version of reality to cope with it. Not to say I don’t have my own biases and priors (and I’ve written about them at left) but the world is such a jumble at the moment I very much need to confidently act in the face of warped realities.

Categories
Chronic Disease Emotional Work

Day 1504 and Dead of Winter

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.

Categories
Biohacking

Day 1503 and Project Managed Health

You have to work the problem in front of you. Fixating on past problems or potential future problems does not fix the problem in front of you.

Bottlenecks are such a useful construct as most humans have experienced their all of their progress being stymied by one single obstacle. Be it a fallen tree in the road, a bureaucracy or a health problem, the bottleneck stops you.

Alas I find myself with multiple health projects that have to be project managed with timelines, budgets, and externalities on each other.

We’d been planning to start a new care protocol with an updated biologic but the discovery of mold in the master bathroom is a bottleneck.

We need to decide if starting new immune suppressants is safe in the house before remediation. Mycotoxins at a load marked as unsafe for autoimmune conditions makes me nervous.

Sure we are staying upstairs but is it removed enough to be a sensible move? Can we isolate me and begin treatment? Do we wait the multiple weeks remediation will take? How an we run parallel paths. It’s crazy to project manage one’s personal life like this but it’s also necessary.

This excitement has also slowed down movement on acquiring a hyperbaric chamber. I’d love to offer it as a service locally as there isn’t a single available one for off label use in the entire state.

I really do think this would feel unmanageable if we didn’t have new tools at our disposable. In particular the new ChatGPT’s Deep Research has made it much easier to find different bits of information to reach an actionable conclusion. Because I want to clear these blockers.

Categories
Biohacking Emotional Work Medical

Day 1501 and Hazy Shade of Winter

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.