I’m enjoying a double header of hormones today. I’m in my luteal premenstrual phase which always leaves me tired and emotional. But I am also just letting go of the last bits of adrenaline and cortisol from my travels last week.
As the last bits of stress hormones drain away and my cyclical hormones flow in all I can feel is the weight of the world. I’m sure this dramatic phrasing is merely a function of the pounding hormonal migraine that always accompanies this time of my cycle.
If this all sounds a little foreign to you, Alisa Vitti’s life’s work has been to help women understand their hormonal cycles impact. I’m always looking for ways to hack my physical performance and health so I’ve been especially focused on pesky stress hormones.
Hopefully a little bit of salmon, some greens, and more rest will get me through it. And by next week I’ll be well on my way to peak creativity and energy. The lull will pass soon.
My body gave me a bit of a surprise on the road. I keep a close eye on my inflammation as it’s the first trigger in my autoimmune condition. Generally it manifests internally as swelling in my spine or joints. But it didn’t always. My inflammation used to manifest externally on my skin.
I woke up today in Tallinn without my typical spinal pain but covered in red welts. If I had to guess, some change in climate, pollution, or weather was the culprit. Stress is stress and you can’t always predict how it manifests. I’m so used my body being in pain I’d forgotten that sometimes symptoms can just as easily manifest on the outside as the inside.
It takes an entirely separate set of medications to manage inflammation on my skin as it does to manage inflammation my joints and spinal column which is a bit of a pain in the ass. I am much more eager to treat it. Maybe it’s easier tolerate being in pain than being red and itchy. You’d think it would be the other way around.
Given that my body feels a bit stressed I’ll keep this short today. Hopefully the manifestations of inflammation calm themselves down and I won’t be dealing with either tomorrow.
I’m on my way to the Baltics and Nordic countries for the next few weeks. I’m doing a tour to see what Tallinn and Helsinki have to offer as two of the more interesting and established startup hubs in Europe. If you are based in Northern Europe hit me up!
I’ve come to accept lounger trips and more time on the road as the new “work from home” has become “work from your point of maximum leverage.” I do find that even with the glamor of being on the road, there is something about flying that makes me feel as if my body and soul have briefly stretched their bonds.
Damien’s theory of jet lag is correct: that her mortal soul is leagues behind her, being reeled in on some ghostly umbilical down the vanished wake of the plane that brought her here, hundreds of thousands of feet above the Atlantic. Souls can’t move that quickly, and are left behind, and must be awaited, upon arrival, like lost luggage.
It’s 8am in Zurich and my soul doesn’t feel as if it’s caught up with my body. I’m in an airport lounge drinking my third espresso. Both my Whoop and my Apple Watch are sure I only got three hours of sleep.
I had a regional flight that got me to Chicago from Bozeman first thing Thursday morning. The Polaris lounge was quite good at O’Hare if you were wondering. I had some very decent seafood linguini.
Leaving behind Montana
But my Chicago to Zurich flight was that odd 8 hour “overnight” that goes from 2pm Central to midnight. That translates into 6am landing in Switzerland local. The only way you get any sleep is by forcing the issue with pharmaceuticals.
I guess Ambien and Melatonin can only do so much against a regular circadian rhythm. I’ve had three espressos in the lounge here and I’m really debating an another. I was greeted with a magnificent full moon over the river in Zurich. My phone didn’t do it justice.
A full moon over the water as the lights of the metropolis shine on before sunrise in Zurich
My final legal of the journey doesn’t begin until 10am. So I just just need stay alert enough to make the final flight, keep an eye on my bags, and drag myself to my Airbnb in Tallinn. Adjusting from there will take the time they it taken
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.
Maybe it’s the sheer busyness of day to day life but I didn’t notice it becoming fall. I felt as if I was in the clutches of summer forever. But then the first day past after the autumnal equinox we turned on the heat.
I woke up to the comforting sounds husband building a fire in our wood stove. What a relief to have a chill in the air. You’d think in Montana we’d have scant need for air conditioning but we easily had two straight months of running it daily this summer.
We installed mini-splits this year because we got caught in a heatwave last summer without so much as a window unit. It was brutal. Air conditioning just isn’t a standard feature in Montana because it didn’t have to be. But it sure seems like going forward it will be. Invest in HVAC companies if you are looking for a growth sector.
I’m happy for the reprieve. I don’t intend to be anywhere hot anytime in the near future. My travel for the remainder of the fall will involve colder climates. The seasons will favor me till April. That old aphorism “make hay while the sun shines” doesn’t apply well to me. I’m more of a “do business when it’s dark and cold” type.
I’ve got some travel coming up that I’m excited about. I’ll be headed to Europe and more specifically the Baltics. I’ve got plans for both Tallinn and Helsinki. If you are based there and want to hang out drop me a line and let’s get together.
It’s funny how longer trips act as a focus on what’s really crucial to get done. The care that goes into making sure your life (and the items in it) functional is constant.
I often put off errands and services with a “maybe next week” mentality. One week becomes one month and then suddenly I haven’t had my haircut since May and it’s October. So I’m packing a bunch of “to do” appointments to make care the care and maintenance of myself, my body and my belongings.
Even as I place orders for vitamins and find myself reorganizing the toiletries cabinet, I am reminded that the list of care and maintenance never gets any shorter.
There is always a dentist appointment or a salon visit. I’ve got a pile of clothes that need mending and tailoring that hasn’t been addressed since before the pandemic. Yes, I’m one of those types that thinks a tailor and a cobbler are crucial services for civilized living. I like to take care of what I own. That includes everything from my body to my boots.
Humans are horny for hierarchy. We are eager to give our power away as a species. Please will someone else just be responsible for making our decisions for us? Can someone point me to the person in charge? “Take me to your leader!”
If someone seems smarter, richer, more capable, more aggressive, heck even if they have better taste than us, they become an instant candidate for us delegating our authority over to them. My most popular blog post ever was about dickriding. Yes it was about Elon Musk’s fans.
I’ll be the first to say that people who court you to gain power should be viewed as suspect. But someone who has power is not themselves always suspect by default. I know it’s a fine distinction. But people fall into positions of authority simply by going out and being competent. Competence is a fast route to power.
Sure being competent has a lot of downsides. Suddenly you’ve got power you maybe didn’t want. We have an incentive shunt power off to someone else as it generally sucks to be in charge. It’s energetically expensive to be responsible. Just ask one of your friends with a toddler.
Sometimes we have to wield power because it’s our job to take care of our corner of the universe. Again ask someone with a toddler. We are in charge of sustaining some portion of the grand experiment called life. Even if it’s just our own families. Even if it’s just yourself.
So why am I titling this post “I am Beff Jezos?” Right now online there is a movement gaining recognition for encouraging people to have agency and build for the future. It’s a movement that wants you to own your own power. And to help others get more power of their own.
One of the anonymous posters associated with it calls himself Based Beff Jezos as a play on Jeff Bezos the founder of Amazon and the meme “based” as in Lil B’s “based means being yourself.” It’s a silly joke.
It’s principles are simple. The future will arrive and we should build like it’s coming. Slowing things down, or even worse, going backwards, is not a solution to our problems. We can only go forward. If you’d prefer a driving metaphor, we should accelerate into the curve. Slowing down just spins out the car. Civilization is the car.
So what, you want to just uplift humanity, build AI and populate the universe with the maximum diversity and quantity of life?
The movement is more of a meme space than anything else. It is decentralized. I’ve not met anyone that runs it though I’ve spoken to many vocal supporters. And I’ve chatted with folks that are at the nexus of of its online presence. Everyone is positive and friendly. Most of them are anonymous. I’m not even of sure if some of the accounts are singular or plural. Which is pretty cool. It doesn’t have a president or a CEO or even a founder who owns anything with any amount of authority. It could be one dude or multiple dudes gender non specific.
It’s just a bunch of people who make stuff. It’s popular amongst engineers but it’s an ethos that to anyone who can make something. Even this blog post counts. I am e/acc as much as anyone.
Naturally if no one is in charge it’s a bit threatening. If there is no hierarchy how do we control it? If no one is in charge then what will we do if someone under their banner does something bad?
Such is the beauty of an idea. A meme can’t really be owned. A decentralized group of goofballs on the internet can’t really be snuffed out for bad think. Maybe a few nodes go down. They literally cannot kill all of us.
I Am Spartacus
The messages does seem to be resonating. I know being hopeful has improved my mood. A decent number of people who make shit want the future to come a little faster. They want more people with more ownership of the building process.
More complexity and more abundance is appealing even if it seems impossible to achieve. Don’t worry, just build for your corner of the world. Put power and responsibility in as many hands as possible. We can build it together.
You too can have a toddler and own the joy of being responsible for your corner of the universe. It’s dangerous for sure. Folks will tell you for your own good you need to have a hierarchy and someone responsible for the power.
But guess what? It can be you. And sure heads will get bonked. Crying will ensue. Remember I said ask someone with a toddler? What if you are the competent and in charge parent? Shit right?
We’ve got to go forward. I am Beff Jezos. You too are Beff Jezos. And they can’t stop us all from arriving at the future. Go ahead and accelerate into the curve.
Rounding the bend into a thousand posts is teaching me some lessons in humility and frailty. I am reaching to get words word as my mind is slow.
I am not reacting to something in an average way and it’s been a struggle to keep going over the laser week or two. I’ve put one foot in front of the other but I can see that I only slept for a couple hours last night. Ironic to be considering averages when one’s own responses are so slowed.
Much of my struggle is probably just some better living through chemistry problems. A new addition to the biohacking routine went awry. I’m struggling with the heat wave and the air quality of summer in the mountain west. The long days of bright lights slowly unspooling my sanity as I wait for cooler less cruel months to come. Just breathe in and out and try to eat and sleep.
It’s clearly the deep dog days of summer as I’m in a bit of a mood. I’ve got all kinds of things on my mind and yet it’s slow going executing on anything. The doldrums has certainly gripped me. And yet I take hope.
This corner of Twitter is going through a paroxysmal fit of whether it’s rational to be embracing pro-social behavior. Without having to cite all my sources we had Jane Goodall being packaged into a deceleration meme about removing a billion or so people.
So I think my entire mood when staring down the barrel of the future is “what’s it going to cost me in my soul?”
At this stage of the simulation I have to ask What color are the pills, and how many people are dying?
The cost of knowing it’s not just about us is slamming into the hard reality that you can’t do a damn thing about other people. And so we have to ask if we preserve what we have or do we leap into the great unknown. I don’t know anyone who is in the mood for much safety at the moment. There doesn’t seem like much to be had.
Now thanks to the wonders of modern biologic injectables like interleukin inhibitors (my lucky number is IL-17h), non steroidal anti-inflammatories, the occasional round of chemotherapy workhorse methotrexate, and the ultimate big boss inflammation killer known as prednisone I lead a pretty normal life.
I am however always looking for new ways to improve my situation. You name a modality of healing and I’ve surely done it.
I’m regularly throwing myself at new pharmaceuticals, new workouts, new devices, and new routines. I track it all obsessively. If you want a 10 day water fast buddy call me.
This kind of thinking means I am prone to optimism and the occasional “one weird cure” line of thinking. The hope that springs eternal is the fantasy what ails can fixed with a gluten free diet (nope) or the du nude Goop wellmania cure which costs $500.
One of my biggest “I’ll be cured” fantasies is that the extra body fat I gained from multiple rounds of steroids and hormone treatments is actually the cause of my health problems and not one of its symptoms.
Notice they I don’t say biggest fears. My biometrics don’t really suggest that adipose tissue is my root issue. Being fat is a core problem for many people but for me it’s a symptom. I don’t want to disclose said biometrics as I fear insurance companies and pharmacies might decide to dig.
In pursuit of a cure for this symptom, I’ve been way ahead of the GLP-1 agonists like semaglutide. My Novo Nordisk and Eli Lily stockholdings are up 100%. I had success on Ozempic but went off it as the side effects got to be too much for me after nine months when I reached a healthy body weight.
But I recently I paid out of pocket to try Mounjaro as I’ve not happy with where I am currently at for excess adipose tissue. It’s supposed to be less brutal on the stomach. It’s got a duel mechanism as a GLP-1 and GIP receptor have lead to excellent clinical trial results.
I’d say about three weeks in those results for me are not forthcoming. I’ve been in a perpetual state of low grade anxiety that seems to be from hypoglycemia. I’ve been sluggish, cranky, moody and my mind unfocused and hazy.
As it turns out the glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide receptor (GIP receptor) primarily affects the body’s physiological response to food intake and blood sugar regulation. So I’ve got low blood sugar.
Luckily throwing fruit at the problem helps the symptoms. I have not lost so much as an ounce though. I think I’d rather go back to Ozempic which at least took weight off. I’d rather have a fucked up stomach than a fucked up mind. Maybe other people need to eat less sugar. I guess I don’t have that problem.
