Tag: Emotions

Categories
Biohacking Chronic Disease

Day 1041 and Short Notice

I’m extremely frustrated right now. I didn’t get much sleep last night. I won’t get into the details, but it’s mostly because I was overstimulated by a very long workday after what was a very productive week.

I didn’t think it would matter if I was a little fucked up today from overexertion yesterday as I didn’t have any major obligations.

Except I got invited to mid-morning to something tonight. I wasn’t obligated to go but really wanted to do so as the guest of honor may end up having a significant impact on my life. And I’ve had an interest in it which I’d expressed months ago.

Now I had strong interest in attending as it won’t be a repeatable opportunity. So I wanted to push myself to go. I did my best through the afternoon to rest and prepare myself. But ultimately my body just couldn’t do it.

I cascaded into a migraine from the smell of my husband’s cologne. All my efforts to try to be restorative with the few hours of my afternoon were gone through a single small instance of environmental stressor. An obvious sign that I shouldn’t be going anywhere if something small could set off symptoms.

Now I’d like to say that I could have made it if I’d slept more. Maybe if I’d not worked so many hours yesterday. But I feel good about the things I prioritized yesterday.

But I am so fucking angry that I couldn’t have been given a little bit more notice as I would have found a way to make it. Literally even one day would have been enough so I could prioritize sleep.

It’s obviously no one’s fault. I’m simply furious that in an effort to budget my energy and physical capacity for what was my priority yesterday, I couldn’t find any remaining capacity today.

I guess the lesson is that if you want me to show up please let me know at least twenty four hours in advance. Or even just the night before.

Categories
Emotional Work Travel

Day 1026 and Failure Modes

I’m not sure my current traveling is yielding the success I’d hoped. A bumpy road of geopolitical chaos, physical stress and emotional work has made my time in Tallinn harder than anticipated.

I don’t want to call the trip a failure as I doubt anyone is paying enough attention but me to notice. I didn’t get to attend as many meetings and events as I’d hoped and I feel guilty about it.

But I am noticing the challenge of doing work as a digital nomad while also coping with emotional family obligations and responsibilities.

I’m trying to decide what constitutes a failure mode for me. Am I doing what’s best for the longer term goals I’ve set for myself? And do I know where must I set painful boundaries?

I struggle mightily to be separated from family and friends. But I am also coping with the new reality of closed borders, impossible visas, and challenges to uniting everyone in my extended chosen family unit. Many people can’t get to America anymore.

It’s on my mind as I am considering rearranging some of my time in Estonia to go to the Netherlands for the Network State conference next Monday. It’s exhausting to be on the road but I also firmly believe the network state will be an emerging organizer for populations that aren’t well served by their current geographical state.

That’s ironically why I’m in Estonia in the first place. It is the most progressive of the nation states with its e-residency program and I’m excited to do more business here as it’s welcoming to all who can make a contribution.

And yet I feel like I’m not doing all that I’d hoped while I’m here. There are too many directions to go in and no good choices. I long to be more specific about some of them but the salient point is that I have freedom of movement that many others do not. And that’s the failure mode that undermines us all.

Categories
Chronic Disease Emotional Work

Day 1020 and Subdue

I felt like I was on fire. Itchy skin, weeping eyes, coughing and wheezing, a sympathetic nervous system run amok. I was on my second histamine reaction in less than two weeks.

I have had two days of intense emotional work. One tragic aspect of a daily chronicle that’s public is dancing around some of the more private aspects of one’s life while still managing to write. I’ve been doing “a look ahead” exercise for the next decade with my family. Our goals and our challenges and our structures were all on the table. What do we want and how will we pursue it and what stands in our way?

So I found myself needed to sooth the systems. Reactivity is a choice. I wanted to feel my emotions but I’m less convinced I need to feel my hives.

So I downed 50mg of Benadryl, a couple other generic anti-histamines, a white girl downer, and I plugged myself into noise canceling headphones and a face mask. I did a few rounds of Non Sleep Deep Relaxation nervous system exercises. And slowly I was able to subdue reactions. I slipped into real sleep.

I feel better for it. But I also know I need more restorative time. Remaining subdued would be valuable.

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 1016 and Carrying On

It’s been a terrible week. I feel stupid even typing it. How many times can I state the obvious? It’s as if the repetition of stating that I’m in a hard place physically, and emotionally, somehow shames me. Can’t I say or feel something new?

But I don’t have any desire to dig any deeper into the wounds of the present. I am in too much pain. I am deeply emotionally affected by the situation in Israel. In ways I frankly didn’t anticipate. Those horrors overlapping with being sick, being far from home, and having a significant personal milestone, have collectively laid me flat.

I’d prefer to remain silent but the exercise of daily writing pulls at my habits no matter the extent of the misery. And maybe that’s the point. No microcosm of personal suffering or global macro view of atrocity changes the reality. Pain is an equally shared human condition. And we walk through it no matter our circumstances.

I have to assume I am not alone. The ambient misery is both personal and collective. The human experience is terrifyingly universal. I am fearful of my own physical fragility when abroad certainly but it’s bigger than being away from home. I’m afraid of being fragile in a cruel world that is getting crueler.

I’ve struggled to maintain a level head and a healthy routine this week as the whiplash of a hostile immune reaction and steroids took me from one misery to another. Prednisone is a cruel drug. It tamps down any reaction from your immune system. It’s a hard reboot for a physical system gone haywire. How appropriate given the circumstances.

It wasn’t quite how I envisioned turning over from one decade to another. And while I appreciated the stormy Baltic solitude to savor the weight and significance of my personal milestone, I can’t help but also notice that carrying on feels like a heavy burden.

Categories
Emotional Work Travel

Day 1014 and Choices

I’m sick. I’m in a foreign country. I feel fragile. The way life, and history, keeps progressing it’s not surprising that I feel fragile, sad, and wistful.

It’s my birthday today. I’ve been looking forward to the new decade all year if I’m honest. The final official marker of middle age is now mine. The childhood yearning to be an adult is now finally satisfied. There is no youth left for me. Only the joyful responsibility of shouldering my burdens.

I’ve never been good at making the safe choices in life. I make choices that are driven by my desire to live a life that makes sense to me. Those choices don’t always make sense to others. I take risks. I suffer their consequences. I pick myself up off the floor. I start over. My regrets are few and my experiences varied and colorful.

I feel proud of where I am in my life. I’ve failed in ways both significant and silly. Any success I’ve had were paid in full by my failures.

I am trembling between excitement and exhaustion at the prospect of the next decade of my life. I have personal and professional goals that are risky. Unlikely even. But I feel as if I must take this new decade upon me with as much energy and momentum as I can muster.

If I do not speed up, then the friction of the world will slow me down. My life is filled with friction. I know the pain of a chronic disease and the curse of Cassandra.

But these are motivating factors for me. I see these risks as worth taking for an interesting life. I hope my next decade is as interesting as my last. And I intend to make the choices required to bring about that outcome.

Categories
Emotional Work Travel

Day 1013 and Fragile

I feel awful. I’m having some kind of serious histamine reaction and the cascade of stress and secondary symptoms have been extremely hard to cope with. I do not feel well physically.

I dislike feeling fragile when the wider world feels like it’s in utter chaos. You’d think I’d be used to it. I’ve staked my reputation on increasing volatility.

It’s simply frightening to feel fragile physically and emotionally at the same time while so far from home. As much as I love Tallinn it is a place that is not my home. It takes extra energy to navigate a new place. I love it but it does drain me.

I hope with rest and taking things slowly I can help myself navigate through the fragility. All types of things contribute to making you feel safe. Sleeping a little bit more. Eating nutritious food. Meditating and breathing exercises. Maintaining a healthy routine is the luxury we cannot forgo when faced with crisis.

I hope I’m taking care of myself well. Seeing the fragility and accepting it reminds me to do what is necessary so I can keep going no matter the stress.

Categories
Aesthetics Travel

Day 1005 and Settling In

I really appreciate being able to get into a routine in a new city. Doing some grocery shopping is a grounding experience. If you can sort out breakfasts and sensible lunches you can probably keep a routine going.

I personally love the search for a grocery store that caters to a hipster class. There is always demand from some some band of picky upper socioeconomic band that expects a lot of its retail.

I found a spot inside of a mall that appeared to be some variant of an Erewon meets Whole Foods. It had an organic section. It had several choices for high end vinegars. There were multiple types of fish counters. I got some gravlox and horseradish sauce. I got some nice bread for toasts. I was got a nice head of lettuce and some balsamic.

I was very pleased with the basics for living. I realize it’s a little cringe to discuss a day in the life but I think people imagine much more glamorous meals. When the reality is always some variant of prepared food no matter where you are. Though I will say I appreciated good bread and good smoked fish. I’m feeling very cozy Baltic. It’s nice when a town has good vibes.

Categories
Chronicle

Day 1000 and The Milestone

When I first started writing every single day I had modest goals. I wanted to instill a habit of writing more often. My initial goal was to write daily for one month as that seemed both significant but also manageable. But I deliberately didn’t put any pressure on what I would write or for how long I’d keep at it.

Once I had reached my first milestone of writing daily for an entire month, I began considering extending the habit. Maybe I could do it for two months? Maybe I could do it for 100 days? Every new milestone made me excited to reach for a new one.

Once I got to 500 days, I began to feel confident discussing the possibility of reaching 1000 days of writing. I even called that blog post my halfway point. Still I wasn’t sure even then that I’d actually make it to a thousand days. A lot can go wrong in a year or two. But as I learned, with a little bit of perseverance, a lot can go right. Or if you will indulge the pun, a lot can go “write” too.

Still, even as I became accustomed to the habit, I didn’t want to do anything to jinx it. Locking myself into an outcome seemed like a recipe for disappointment. But locking myself into a daily habit? That seemed like a recipe for success. I knew I could keep showing up.

My philosophy for writing has been to take it one day at a time. Habits compound just like money. Small change over time can have a dramatic outcome. I committed to showing up and putting the proverbial pen to paper every day.

And here I am a thousand days later with enough writing for any number of other goals. I’ve got answers to most of the regular questions I encounter in my personal and professional life. I’ve got enough content to turn into a book if I’m so inclined. The volume of my writing is so extensive I could easily train my own artificial intelligence agent.

I don’t know what I’ll do with this body of work other than continue to hyperlink it together and see where it takes me.

And to answer the most obvious question, I do plan to keep writing. I don’t have any desire to stop. I enjoy this practice. It’s conceivable there are other milestones ahead of me. Maybe I double it. Or maybe at the end of the year I decide three years of writing daily is enough.

Who can say? I reached the stretch goal I set for myself. It’s an unbounded journey from here.

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 999 and Auspicious

Tomorrow is the big day in my daily writing experiment. I am chuffed to see 999 on the title. It seems very auspicious to me. While 888 was a lucky day, today’s number feels like I’m on the cusp of something.

I am set to travel to the Baltics shortly. Perhaps I’ll find some next phase on the adventure of life. I need this optimism today as I don’t feel particularly lucky or auspicious today. I unexpectedly had a few things go wrong this morning and then was rewarded for it with a migraine. I was very angry about it as I had a lot of exciting things planned for the day.

I have to remember that trying to get to the larger numbers is about compounding the many small days filled with mistakes, imperfections and failures. Life happens all around you at inconvenient times. It’s how you muddle through at your goals steadily over time.

Categories
Chronicle

Day 990 and Rounding The Turn

You see the marker up in the title that says “Day 990?” Yeah, it means I’m getting close to a thousand straight days of writing.

It’s not a thousand posts interspersed over years or weeks or decades. Though that would still be impressive. It’s a thousand days in a row of writing. No days off. No vacations. No missed days. Every single day I write something and post it on here publicly.

I got started with this experiment in the middle of the pandemic on January 1st 2021. A lot has happened in the intervening years. And I’ve chronicled so much that happened in my own life. I still have quite a bit of 2023 to go but if you want to see my favorite posts from 2022 and 2021.

Because I approach this as a habit, I am intending to make to my thousandth post but I can’t say for sure even with ten days left that I’ll make it. A lot can happen in ten days so it’s entirely possible I won’t. Though the odds have never been better.

I do intend to continue the habit of writing every single day past day 1000th. It would be weird to stop in the middle of the year and I like the symmetry of an entire year of writing as much as I aspire to write Day 1000 in a title.

At this point changing how I write would be an adjustment. I often wonder if I could manage being more polished or more researched or more focused. But I suspect that those types of documents come on their own timelines and I’d simply write more to accommodate them. I wouldn’t necessarily want to lose this daily journaling habit. Something about keeping it simple and consistent appeals to me. So I’ll round the turn and see if I make it to the finish line. And then I’ll see if I keep going.