Tag: Energy

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Emotional Work

Day 269 and Pacing

I’m very defensive of my time. While I work at curtailing reactivity in my emotional growth, it’s still easy for me to feel invaded by obligations to others. Taking video or meeting in person was among my least favorite activities even before the pandemic. That’s one reason I’ve written extensively on how to communicate with me asynchronously. But another deeper reason is my fear of misusing my time. And tempting as it may be to project it onto others, I know that this fear is entirely about me.

I am very fearful of anyone needing things from me. I don’t mean things like money, favors or advice; though it is harder to say no than you’d think. My fear is deeper. I’m afraid friends and family will start to count on me for their emotional needs when I’m still figuring out how to be present for my own. I’ll deliberately put distance between myself and others to avoid feeling needed.

So what does this have to do with pacing? I’m not very good at giving myself enough space to be challenged and recovery. And when every encounter with another person is an emotional challenge, I need to be careful about pacing myself.

Maybe there is some latent autistic spectrum issues or maybe I have more trauma than I can consciously dig up but it’s a rare human that doesn’t make me anxious about the energy required for maintaining my own boundaries. It’s not about other people to be clear. It’s about me and my fears of being emotionally invaded.

As I build up more systems and accommodations to allow me to work effectively I need to figure out better pacing. How do I connect with others without emotional fear while still respecting my needs for down time and rest? Giving myself enough recovery has been an ongoing challenge that I write about extensively. But putting it into writing also serves as a valuable reminder to course correct before a crisis emerges.

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Chronic Disease Emotional Work

Day 267 and Morally Neutral Accommodations

I resisted the idea of investing in a zero gravity chair. Because of my spinal condition, I find it more comfortable to work for extended periods when laying flat. Working from bed isn’t exactly ideal, emotionally or practically. And yet I wasn’t ready to sink a significant investment into my work station. Thankfully I ended my procrastination this week with the arrival of my new altwork station.

Altwork desk in a zero gravity position

It was a significant expense but I can now comfortably spend a full workday in a chair without any adverse affects. The only downside appears to be good old fashioned tiredness at the end of the day. I’m thrilled with the investment.

I wonder why I resisted the idea of investing in a comfortable desk for as long as I did. Maybe part of it was shame that I needed what felt like such an extravagant accommodation. I didn’t feel like I was worth it. Or perhaps I felt a disability isn’t something I wanted to invest in. It was something I wanted to invest in overcoming. Spending money on making my life more comfortable and functional with my disability was hard for me to swallow.

I felt if I worked hard enough at managing the symptoms of my ankylosis that perhaps eventually I’d be able to manage sitting at a regular desk for a full work day. But what kind of fools errand was I setting myself on that I desired not only discomfort but to work myself up to enduring even more discomfort? My goal was to make myself uncomfortable.

I’ve long frustrated my doctors by resisting pain management medications. I tell myself I should grin and bear it when it comes to pain. I treated pain as if it were a moral good. I suspect I was doing something similar with resisting a comfortable chair. I’ve got a problem with equating suffering with morality.

Thankfully I was able to set that aside and buy the zero gravity chair. Now rather than suffer and tell myself I’m a better person for it, I’ll actually get my work done in comfort. Which should have been the goal all along.

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Chronicle

Day 266 and Out Like A Light

I nearly missed my daily commitment to write (or as it autocorrected “weird) everyday. Yesterday I was overcome by an intense need to sleep. I could barely manage to get a sentence on paper, tag it, and put it out before I passed out completely. It’s the closest I’ve ever come to missing my daily writing exercise in over two hundred days.

A narcoleptic spell would be pretty cool but I think it was a much simpler form of fatigue. I’d been so focused on a number of exciting projects (including a startup with a founder that is the best I’ve seen all year) that I just needed a rest. I couldn’t push it anymore and needed to sleep.

I didn’t feel any of the poisonous desperation from workaholic exhaustion that I’ve felt in the past. This felt like a simple tiredness that was so complete I couldn’t overcome. I fought off closing eyes as I tagged and hit publish.

And I was out. In the past fatigue has been a draining but far too lucid an experience. The kind of tiredness where you wish you could sleep but the combination of worry, focus, and anxiety would keep you awake is more familiar. I much prefer the clean tiredness of being unable to fight off sleep. Though if I need 12 hours of sleep if I work too many hours that might get a little annoying.

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 262 and Patience

I am in a transitional moment in life. I’ve spent the last two years climbing to my own personal mountaintop and studying at the feet of my own body’s masters. Being a student of myself and my limitations has been illuminating.

The montage scene of growing and becoming stronger in the monastery turns out to take a lot longer in real time than it does in the movies. Probably why they only show you the super cut. I did get to do most of it in isolation though so I guess that’s suitably cinematic. Most people probably imagine vows of silence not Tweeting alone from your bedroom during a pandemic but the effect is basically the same.

I can sense that I’m coming to the other side of some things. That my time becoming myself on the proverbial mountaintop is almost over. It is time to come down from my personal monastery and rejoin humanity with my learnings. I am an expanded soul from the experience of this hardship. But I’m also not quite finished with my journey back yet either.

Maybe in this metaphor I’m looking down on the city I am meant to rejoin. Or maybe I’m in a camp on my way down. Either way I feel eager to get back to the business of living in civilization. But I’m not there yet. Something is whispering patience to me. But I’m so close. I’m like an animal that knows it’s close to home and speeds up their pace. I’m anxious for the journey to conclude. But I’m not quite there yet. If you are waiting for me I’ll be there soon. What’s a couple more weeks after a couple of years after all?

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 259 and Easing into Habits

Considering I’ve been writing every single day for two hundred and fifty nine straight days you’d think I’d have encountered more writer’s block. But I generally find myself capable of putting the proverbial pen to paper. Well in this case it is thumbs to mobile application layer but that doesn’t sound as evocative.

Even today when I had no discernible topic at the ready I am finding that words will spill out so long as I make the effort to form a thought and codify it to written form. While I had the notion that I had little to say today I am still able to say something. I am saying something about having nothing to say but it’s the act that counts.

It’s not that it’s necessarily a worthy entry, but rather a reminder to myself that the act of doing forces it’s own discipline. It’s practice. I am learning that doing something can be easy as long as I let myself relax into the momentum of doing it without expectations or pressure. This must be what all those sports speeches about practice are on about.

Seeing writing as a habit rather than an inspiration or performance likely helps. I’ve come to view the activity as similar to exercise, taking vitamins or brushing my teeth. Perhaps it’s more cognitively demanding but it’s no less part of the daily rhythm.

I’d like that to be true of more of the activities in my life. Being able to view professional necessities as habits is a sure way to see them not as exhausting “to do” lists but rather enjoyable easy daily practices. Sure it will start out harder but eventually it will become easier.

Categories
Chronicle

Day 257 and Back to School

Today felt like the first day back to school. Everyone has finally returned from their various summer vacations and I mean that mostly mentally. People are back and focused. The whole damn day was nonstop for me. Like a shift happened overnight.

It’s not that everyone I know actually went anywhere this summer, quite the opposite, most people seemed to have stayed home. But there was a kind of mental “out of office” that pervaded. Maybe it was a bit despondency in certain parts of my network that “hot vax summer” never came to pass. August was a frenzy of people canceling shit.

I kept hearing stories of people that were living normally but I honestly didn’t know anyone that didn’t cope with the Delta surge in some capacity (even if it was simply to say fuck it). Everyone I encountered of all persuasions just seemed to be struggling to live through the summer.

And then today all that lethargy felt lifted. None of the basic on the ground aspects had changed. And yet a levity was in every conversation today. People were planning again. Projects were moving forward. Plans were being made. Big school is back in session energy was there.

Categories
Chronic Disease Emotional Work

Day 248 and Trusting Nothing

I am learning to appreciate the value of doing nothing. I have always struggled with the human “being” part of the equation. I would prefer if we had been called human doings. But I’m slowly being convinced that’s just ego talking.

I feel terrific if I do nothing. I don’t even mean doing things you might consider recreation. I mean I don’t do a damn thing but still in bed flat on my back. I let my mind wander. I’ve learned that leisure isn’t my style. I can’t do something and experience it as nothing.

Maybe I’ve got some kind of struggle with getting and staying in a parasympathetic state. Maybe I prefer the fight or flight. But it is in the rest and digest state of laying down that I finally feel at ease. It’s from where I bring myself back. It would be nice if I fully relaxed when doing my nails or hanging out with other people.

But as the only thing that truly gets me into parasympathetic is stillness I will trust that nothing. I’ll remind myself I need to do it. Maybe I’ll even be on of those people that calendar it. Sorry I’m out of office as I need to lay flat for the day. Come back tomorrow!

Categories
Chronic Disease

Day 240 and Working for The Weekend

I forgot how great it feels to be so enthusiastic about work that it absorbs every viable hour of your weekend. I used to feel this way about work all the time, but as I’ve struggled to adapt to working with a chronic illness some of the joy got stripped away. It became all about juggling self care, rest and moderation. And I hadn’t found my balance yet.

It isn’t so much that work didn’t hold my attention, on the contrary, rather I became afraid of letting myself get too absorbed. If I overdid it and missed a medication or a meal or even a sign that I needed a break I’d find myself in pain. I’d crash if I wasn’t careful to watch my time and energy.

I would get into awful start stop cycles that gave me the worst of both worlds. I struggled to sustain a flow state because I was constantly vigilant for needing to take care of myself. And I’d beat myself up when I needed the rest which made it even more challenging to sustain the health I felt guilty for not having.

“ I feel bad. I’m going to take today off. Ok but make sure you feel so guilty about it you don’t get any real rest.” Dino Comics

But something has shifted for me recently. The fear and doubt that has hung over my attention is lifting. I am beginning to trust that I can work and break without hurting myself. I can accept breaks more readily than I used to. I don’t feel as if I need to be as vigilant to watch for signs of hurting my body.

Today I was able to enjoy multiple flow states. I worked with a founder on their fundraise. I worked on some writing for my fund Chaotic. I briefly felt overwhelmed, and while I did panic for a moment I stopped and rested. I asked for some help. The problem got solved. And now I feel satisfaction at a good work say. No pain. No crash. No exhaustion. No guilt for taking breaks. Just the quiet joy of having achieved my goals for the day.

Categories
Chronic Disease

Day 221 and Somnambulance

Around 1pm today I was overcome by a kind of drowsiness. I couldn’t seem to shake the feeling so I lay down. For the past 5 hours or so I’ve been in a not quite waking not quite sleeping state. I wasn’t dreaming but I couldn’t force wakefulness on myself either.

I had to crawl my way into just enough consciousness to call and text my therapist to let her know I wouldn’t make my session or group therapy. Had I not seen proof I left a message when I woke up I would not have been surprised to learn that I had been somnambulant texting. I barely recall managing the effort.

I had a medical procedure a few days ago so I am likely still recovering from the stress my body endured. But I’ve felt reasonably energetic. I was entirely unprepared to fall into a liminal state between consciousness and sleeping for most of my day. I could tell I wasn’t fully awake but I couldn’t quite tell if I was asleep.

I kept trying to force wakefulness upon myself only to find my mind falling further away from the effort. It felt like some horror movie effort where a character has been put under but is still aware of what is happening to them. I didn’t love it. But clearly I needed the sleep. I was just barely able to get myself up to take my evening medications. Certainly wasn’t what I was expecting out of my Monday but so it goes.

Categories
Biohacking Emotional Work

Day 211 and Laughter

I miss being able to enjoy time out in the world. You know that feeling when you’ve spent the last two hours at your favorite bar with your friends just talking about nothing? The ease that you feel being with your community and enjoying being together? The casual camaraderie and easy laughter that comes from no expectations time together has been lost to many of us. I miss it.

It doesn’t seem like those days are coming back for some of us in the near future. If I give too much thought to the impact of things like the pandemic I think I just spike my cortisol. That’s a stress hormone. The stress of reactivity is killing all of us. Constant panic over floods, heatwaves, outbreaks and all their downstream effects is overwhelming our capacity to live. And yes, granted a more globalized war with a changing climate is capable of killing us. But we don’t have to let futility do us in early. We can find our way into solutions. But only if we stay alive to do it.

I’ve been coping with apocalyptic nihilism by shitposting on Twitter. Yes I realize this is a popular upper class pundit class past time. I’ve got some self awareness. But it’s also the only thing that mimics being out socializing with your friends. And I think that’s worth a lot. Shitposting is good for the soul.

You don’t have to shitpost, but if you cannot find a way to lower your stress response, as we say in crypto, ngmi. Everything may be going to hell but you aren’t there yet. You’ve got a life to live, people to love and who love you, and a chance to be happy.

Fuck cortisol. It’s not good for you. That’s some metabolic poisoning eating away at you and you chose to let it kill you. There is no reason to give yourself unnecessary stress. Some stress is good. It makes you resilient. But stuff you opt into? Fuck that noise it’s only going to make you sick.

And despite whatever family trauma circuit you may be playing out in your head, YOU DO NOT DESERVE THAT SHIT. No I’m seriously disease and suffering aren’t a moral good. Everything might be rough but you need to find a laugh. It might just save your life.