Tag: Food

Categories
Chronic Disease

Day 591 and Normal Sunday

Having a modest disability like chronic pain (I have a form of arthritis in my spine) means I can’t always be physically active for an entire day. I need to lay down flat sometimes to relieve pressure on my spine and I can be fatigued from the persistent pain. It’s something I have to work around even if it’s not completely debilitating.

I’ve worked hard to control the disease. But it has meant a lot of days where normal activity had a poor return on the energy invested. If had a day where I was on my feet for hours at a time I’d probably pay for it the next day with extra time laying down. So I try to limit unnecessary activities.

I’m giving a lot of context that might not be necessary for regular readers of this daily chronicle that know me. But it’s not always easy for me to do what normal people take for granted. Imagine a day where you wake up, shower, cook and clean up after yourself, you go to work, you run some errands, you exercise, you come home to cook and clean some more, you care for your family and maybe you enjoy a hobby. A regular day.

I named ten activities you do without thinking. If I want to avoid hurting myself or using too much energy in one day, I have to pick two or three of those things. You might not be surprised to learn I pick showering, work and my health routines.

If I’m having a good day, I can add on additional activity or two. But it’s probably something I can do laying flat on my back. That’s how Twitter became a central nexus for socializing if you are curious.

So having given paragraphs of context I hope it allows you to understand my excitement about having an absolutely normal Sunday. This morning got up. I made food for myself. I went for a forty minute walk. I did my entire biohacking routine. I went to a nursery to see about some options for the orchard. Then I went to the grocery store with my husband and we did the shopping for the week. Then we did some chores on the new homestead. A truly astonishing about of activities for someone like me.

And even after all activity that I felt well enough for a long shower (often a painful activity as hot water swells my joints). It’s 5pm and I’ve been up and about since 8am and only laid down just now to write this post. And someone I feel totally fine.

Shortly I’ll be cooking mushroom risotto for Sunday dinner. My husband is the cook of the family but for some reason Arborio rice is his nemesis. He’s never made a decent risotto in all the time I’ve known him. Typically after a day with this much activity I’d never even consider cooking. But I’m having a normal Sunday and doesn’t it sound nice to make something a little more involved to eat?

Categories
Finance

Day 590 and Demography

User acquisition is my little niche in the startup world. While all founders are generalists my super power has always been getting the attention of customers. So I often enjoy little illustrative moments where basic principles of finding and speaking to your audience go awry.

I have tweeted extensively about my concern in the rising cost of core agriculture commodities in the face of shitstorm in the fertilizer markets. This isn’t that novel if you work in finance but it’s probably not a large group of people that are actively discussing fertilizer costs. I do not however buy fertilizer personally. I don’t finance it.

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I was served a tweet for Nutrien Financial. They would like me to consider financing my crop inputs. In fairness to this promoted tweet the final demographic detail Twitter may know about me is that I live on rural land with agricultural use zoning. I see how I got targeted. And I am delighted to be served this piece of thought leadership from them. But I’m not in anyway their customers base even though I mimic a lot that matches them.

Let’s compare this to another group of advertisements that targeted me this week. I got several pieces of direct mail in my physical USPS post. These folks knew that I had recently purchased a forwarding service from the USPS to make sure old post from my former Colorado address would reach my new one in Montana. Let’s take a look at what they advertised to me based on that piece of information.

A spread of several catalogs and promotional mailers for home furniture, blinds and window treatments and rural road paving services.

It looks likes advertisers who want to reach married couples that have recently forwarded their mail to a new address might be in the market for furniture, window treatments and also I guess rural road paving services. That one might be a rural Montana thing so slightly more niche.

Advertisers argue a lot about high intent audiences. That basically means someone who is likely to buy your product or service. Lots of people can fall into the typical demographic of what you sell but judging if if they are likely to be persuaded to make a purchase can save you a lot of money. Don’t sell to someone who isn’t buying.

Sure you can convince someone they want something with aspirations and glamour but you have to be able to be convinced. It’s a lot easier to do that for a lipstick than a couch. Significantly harder to do for rural road paving I imagine (though I’ve never done it so I can’t be sure). The hardest has got to be financial products for large scale industrial agriculture purchases. Finding people with high intent to buy fertilizer seems pretty specific.

Marketers can and do try to gussy up these facts with fancy languages but getting attention and selling to people that want to pay attention are basic. I’m not the tactics aren’t complex and the work can’t get extremely technical but at least we know we are working with human desires. And I think it’s important to think through that when planning a campaign. Don’t want to overspend on convincing someone who isn’t even in the market to be convinced.

Categories
Preparedness

Day 569 and Scarcity

There are a number of memes that have taken off in the last few years related to food scarcity as a mechanism for elite control Coverage of climate change and the need for change in agribusiness has been covered extensively in mainstream media so it’s no surprise there is backlash.

I Will Not Eat The Bugs is one of the originating memes in the wider World Economic Forum conspiracy universe along with “You Will Own Nothing” Great Reset discourse. It’s a rich memespace and one that every doomer should be watching closely. Twitter went nuts when a cultural review of cannibalism in literature and tv got posted by the New York Times.

Unfortunately the memes were a harbinger of the fundamental challenges of moving towards greener policies through dictate. Especially when you do poor planning that doesn’t account for transition times and significantly lower yields. Sri Lanka’s attempt to go cold turkey on industrial fertilizer turned disastrous.

With the war in Ukraine grinding on, the world is slowly realizing that chemical fertilizers and cheap grain are in danger of being in short supply. Commodity watchers reminded us that China stopped exporting key fertilizer components last year.

It’s not that Americans haven’t noticed the higher costs of food before. The inflation issues plaguing the country are often framed in terms of simple costs like eggs, milk and chicken. Doomberg sounded the alarm in January that we would see a significant food crisis. But there is a new urgency around scarcity that is exploding into the spotlight. My favorite preparedness website Unprepared published a whole guide to dealing with the coming food crisis.

I personally don’t know what will convince people that we are in for much higher prices and harder times. A lot of cascading factors are converging. But I think it’s wise to keep a close eye on scarcity discourse. If you want to keep ahead read things like AgriNews and Bloomberg’s commodity and supply chain newsletters. It’s better to go in with eyes open.

Categories
Travel

Day 554 and Creature Comforts

You’d be surprised at what you can tolerate so long as you’ve got the little luxuries in life. I think I stole that quote from a Vin Diesel movie Pitch Black. And I’ve found it to be quite accurate. Travel is the sort of experience where misery can be overcome by a decent pillow and room service.

I am emerging from some time on the Ionian Sea that happens to be on the wrong side of some of modernity. And let me tell you my appreciation for capitalism has been rekindled a thousand fold.

I did a layover in Heathrow overnight and I’ve simply never been more relieved to be in a decent business hotel. I must have looked a wreck as I got upgraded into a king suite with a soaking tub. And I just say I feel much more human after an hour in the bathtub, a night of sleep with multiple decent pillows and room service.

A good long soak and a full English breakfast has done much to improve my overall spirits. And my general condition of itchiness has gone by the wayside. The blue bags under my eyes are merely visible as opposed to horrifying.

I’ve got another leg of the journey ahead of me but I’ll be in business class and that’s a luxury of the sort that I very much crave at the moment. A flat lay, endless hydration and a bunch of saved Netflix shows is a creature comfort of the highest order. If the empire is going to decay I’ve got to savor every last moment of little luxuries before they are gone.

Categories
Medical

Day 545 and Stretched Time

Time has never acted like it is linear in my observation. It extends and stretches when you wish it could speed by. And it slows and circles back when you would most prefer it go quickly. Time is relative is a good joke, but also might be more related to a curse.

As I was waiting for a food delivery order today I could feel time unspooling. It stretched on into two episodes of some engaging but fundamentally disinteresting Netflix show. My head began to hurt. I remember taking an aspirin and getting a snack. I recall a phone call made to the delivery service order. And then my sense of linearity starts to fray. I’m not sure what happened next or in what order.

I think it was clear a migraine was coming on in the middle of this first act of swollen stretching time. But I couldn’t tell you for sure. Once pain hooks up with time it requires a Buddha or someone enlightened on the ways of Jhana. Still I tried to push myself out of the path of this time. Why not ordered a pizza as a replacement meal. That might be quick? I blamed the blooming migraine and it’s sister nausea on a lack of food. But in reality I was past the point of being helped. I was simply trying to avoid the oncoming path of the migraine.

I recall a pizza arriving but not the original delivery order. I made an attempt to eat. But I was in the grips of the time expanding migraine now. I took an Imitrax. I had some CBD. Perhaps terrapins and triptans could convince my mind that the moments of pain were short and fleeting. That was my best hope for experiencing the migraine in a positive way.

I put on a face mask. I sunk into a mindfulness practice. I noticed and turned over the kinds of discomforts I found myself in one by one. The emotional fears that I wanted distance rose up. The pain that bubbled around my body tightened, giving me a rationale for not wanting to being touched. A mind that wanted to drift far from others overlapped with my normal mind, this mind wasn’t forced to endure the noisy input from the world. All those experiences rose and burst forth and dissipated. Pain, distance, and fear came and went.

Consciousness seemed possible again. I had the sense that I could articulate some of what happened to me over the past three hours. That perhaps I could codify it in writing. It wouldn’t be as vivid but it would be there. The fear and failure and disprovals still existed but less acutely. The pressure on my mind had become less swollen. Time wasn’t threatening to extend out any other direction but forward. And maybe I could finally enjoy a bite to eat again. It has been five hours total since the migraine began.

Categories
Travel

Day 539 and Hurry Up and Wait

As summer travel is turning into a source of horror stories and tears, I decided the best way to handle transiting across various borders is to pad every flight with extra time. To hurry up and wait as a strategy.

This has naturally lead to some significant mind numbing waiting issues. Two hours in an airport lounge isn’t as fun as I imagined or even remember. Lounges seemed nicer in the past. Sitting in the liminal with lots of other bored, stressed, and otherwise disengaged humans gives you plenty to watch but little of interest.

My lounge experience went as you’d expect. People giving each other a wide berth while they sip mediocre white wine. Teenagers trying to not to look at their parents in case someone cool passes by. All forms of athleisure and sweat pants swaddling the asses of women just hoping for a comfortable flight. The occasional child demanding a cookie from the two poorly stocked snack sections

When it’s time to board everyone simply mobs the doors. No one care about any system. It’s just a throng of desperation yearning to get on and claim overhead baggage space. I’d like to be irritated as I paid for business class but status is funny that way.

I can’t even find anyone to Karen at to say I’m supposed to be up front. So I wait at the back of the line. No one is following orders because no one is giving them. I packed compact & sensibly but everyone else is testing the limits. No wonder everyone wants to get on as fast as they can. Overpacking must be a stress response.

The entire experience is a war of all against all. If everyone is priority boarding than no one is a priority. It’s just pushing and shoving and giving no fucks. Sadly I give fucks about decorum and politeness so I didn’t have the balls to try to make a run around. I just said and wait and wait. Hurry up and wait.

Categories
Emotional Work Travel

Day 533 and On My Own

It’s funny how marriage shapes your routines. Before the pandemic, and before my health struggles, my husband and I were apart regularly. We traveled and socialized on our own often.

Now it’s quite rare for us to be apart. With work from home and our new adventures awaiting us in Montana, our lives will remain close. We even tend to speak at the same conferences. Our work travel since the pandemic has coincided almost entirely. It’s a good thing we really like each other’s company as we’ve very much opted into a life together. It’s good advice to marry your best friend.

We have to deliberately take time apart. I even took a trip to Europe in March so we could remember what it was like to have a bit more space. We can’t let ourselves give in to little habits that encourage codependency. A little independence goes a long way. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Whatever aphorism you prefer really.

The only downside the our attempts to regain a little space is that it’s easy to forget how much the other person does in your life. I will neglect entirely to to eat lunch without Alex. I have been known to mix a bunch of protein powder and supplements into a glass of water. By the time dinner rolls in I’ll be starving and not entirely lucid. It turns out it takes a bit of remembering to bring back ones old skills and capacity. Marriage allows you find new independence and competence together. But it’s nice to remember you were whole and capable on your own before as well.

Categories
Biohacking Medical

Day 522 and Tracker Jacker

I started an experiment with one of my tracking apps called Gyroscope at the beginning of the year. I took pictures of every single meal. For $150 they analyzed all of my meals assigned me a virtual coach to help me improve my total health scores across all categories including food, exercise, sleep and mood. A few days ago my husband physically took my phone away from me and canceled it. The experiment was a failure and it was it Gyroscope’s fault.

Personalized healthcare is a bit of a noble lie. They do give you advice that is somewhat personalized to you as long as your body is within the baseline of what we recognize as healthy. If you are within one standard deviation of the mean then it works great. These tools improve your health. Just remember most of our baseline data is from healthy, young, white, men. This isn’t a woke thing. That’s just the population with the most data.

It’s hard to give someone like me health advice. The basics are designed for otherwise healthy people that need to improve their activity, weight, sleep, and basic nutrition so they don’t become sick in the future. Maybe their biggest issue is being a bit overweight and sedentary. Most people do in fact need to move more and eat less and go to sleep on time. Chronically ill people, or those coping with an acute viral infection, still need to eat good nutrition but beyond the basics it gets more complex what we should recommend.

The coaches at any health app I’ve ever used have kept trying to give perfectly sensible guidance about activity and nutrition quality and lowering stress levels. I am sadly an extremely weird edge case so shit like walk more can actually be bad for me sometimes. Sometimes doing absolutely nothing is actually what someone with my medical history needs. And tracker apps have a tendency to go berserk when I need two or three weeks of bed rest. They go full red alert trying to make me get some exercise when my doctors are tell me any exertion is bad.

The straw that broke the camels back on the $150 a month experiment was getting influenza in May. It completely imploded all of my metrics. As a serious viral infection tends to do. I couldn’t get in any steps as I was basically bedridden. My food intake got weird as I was in Montana with friends and house hunting when I got sick. I had one perfect week of high protein and vegetables and then as I got sicker and sicker it was anything I could be coaxed into eating. There were two meals of milkshakes from Five Guys and that was considered a lucky break. Coughing and exhaustion sometimes means sipping a high calorie frozen dairy product through a straw is as good as it’s going to get.

As my metrics got worse from the flu and tracking food become a pointless exercise, I gave up on even trying to walk my very nice coach through it. There was nothing to be done on assigning me any health activities for weeks. I couldn’t exercise. Meditation did nothing to improve core metrics because I was fighting a massive infection. My sleep was shit because again fighting an infection. My nutrition was hit or miss as my throat hurt and my stomach struggled with new medications.

The renewal snuck up on me. I had wanted to say good bye to the coach. To let her know she tried. To reassure the Gyroscope teammates that my failures didn’t say much about them and how they coached people into healthier behaviors.

I’m a woman with overlapping chronic conditions that got an acute infection and there was no real way to come back from it in a short period of time. But I was still so exhausted and couldn’t bring asking Gyroscope for a pause (a sick break for fitness apps would be a killer functionality though). But my husband remembered the auto-renew date. So he just canceled the entire thing. Boom gone. Fuck off.

I opened the app for the first time in weeks today to at least turn back on the basic tracking so I didn’t lose any data history.

I like how the app does data visualization. I have no clue if I can track nutrition on the base level of product on Gyroscope. Whoever does their pricing tiers has changed it so much I’ve lost track. In the past I found it impossible to input nutrition into their tracker. It was amazing to have the app do it automatically. I relied on their team doing the macros not because I can’t do it myself but because I couldn’t figure out how to physically input it into the app. So I’m a little sad about that. But not sad enough to pay $150.

Categories
Preparedness

Day 498 and Safety

The reality is sinking in that my husband and I are actually moving to Montana. And it’s unleashing all kinds of powerful emotions and realizations.

Alex told me he’s much more willing to honestly look at unpleasant political realities in America. He’d been ignoring the news for fear it would distract him. But even if Trump wins another term, the populist wing of the GOP sweeps and Roe is overturned, at least we are safely in the demilitarized zone of the inter-mountain west. Want to fuck with us? You are armed. We are armed. Let’s keep it polite. Our libertarian preferences might still have a chance out here and if not it’s awfully hard to subdue gun toting mountain people.

That libertarian zone means business gets done. The important work of capitalism doesn’t stop because of conflict or silly culture wars. The companies that will do the best will be the ones that can get away with ignoring culture wars and focus on making stuff people need to keep their lives afloat.

We also feel safer about our personal resilience. We will be less reliant on failing electrical grids with backup power from both solar and fuel generators. Considering the warnings being issued for this summer’s black outs and I suspect we will be glad to be less dependent on the grid. I’ll be glad to be somewhere cool where my air conditioner won’t be going out. And in the winter I’ll have a wood burning stove. I’m excited for having a stream on the property along with a pond and a well that does 25 gallons a minute. I look forward to making it a home that has backups for any emergency.

I’m also a big believer in traditional skills. Having a close relationship to the land benefits our bodies and souls. Putting time into the natural rhythms of the planet keeps us healthier. I want my circadian cycle to be nurtured. And if I am ever so lucky to grow some of my own food not only is that good preparedness but it’s certainly next level wellness shit. I want that kind of power for me.

The kind of safety and sense of security we are accessing with a homestead will help us access our deep talents. There are no excuses anymore to ignore the instabilities in our dusky lives. The crumbles have arrived. And I’m so deeply relieved we are finally taking the right steps to live with them.

Categories
Preparedness

Day 492 and Good on Paper

We saw a property today that was basically perfect. It’s a bit expensive but otherwise has everything we’ve said we’ve wanted. But somehow we weren’t in love with it. I found myself thinking of Sex and the City episode where “good on paper” just didn’t translate into a spark.

The property had a number of productive acres, running water that fed a pond, a layout that can accommodate an orchard, raised beds and a chicken coop, a two story workshop garage and a newly renovated farmhouse. It was a lovely home that is ideal for any discerning wealthy family looking to invest in Bozeman.

Of course, seeing what you think you want and not being immediately enthralled gives you a really opportunity for clarity. You have to assess what you are really prioritizing and why your mind isn’t aligning with your heart.