Tag: Health

Categories
Aesthetics

Day 1604 and First Weekend of the Season

It is so beautiful today in Bozeman it almost doesn’t feel real. It’s warm but not hot. It’s sunny but we have fluffy clouds breaking up intensity. Cool breezes waft in and out without ever really turning to wind. I hope our entire summer has this weather.

Because of the holiday weekend the town has fully switched into “seasonal” mode from daily New York flights to way more availability at restaurants and service. One of Alex’s friends from college is headed into Yellowstone with his whole family from grandparents to kids.

Mountain towns make as much money in the summer as they do in the winter so you always wish for fluffy snow and cool clear summers.

The snowpack is smelting, the grass is green and the sky is oh so blue

While Yellowstone is worth the travel, I appreciate being able to work and hike all flavors of public trails from city to state in Bozeman.

On days like today I want to fully throw myself into a Bryan Johnson super adherence biohacker as I want to be able to enjoy as much of our summer as I can outside.

Categories
Emotional Work Uncategorized

Day 1603 and Seasonal Ambitions

In a past life I worked in marketing for the luxury gym Equinox I could go on about the fascinating complexities involved in selling a future that actually requires you to do more work than most just buying it. But I digress.

Some businesses are seasonal and fitness an easy example of this phenomena with its January resolution sales.

The lesser appreciated but no less important bump was always May. People believe this is the summer where they really get into their bodies.

You’d think people would join gyms at non prime-times but they don’t. Humans like that change is possible at every seasonal juncture.

And we are not wrong to have those aspirations. It’s beautiful to think this is the time I’ll really do it. This turn of the wheel will be the one.

Categories
Chronic Disease

Day 1599 and Sadly Cold

I would love to have something to say today. I have a migraine. My circulation seems odd. I’ve got on 2 pairs of wool socks on, two layers on top and I’m underneath two down blanks. And I’m still cold.

Complaining about one’s body is such an unappealing habit and yet when the pain comes for your attention it has the gravity of a black hole.

I don’t want to be a bore. I fear every time I am trapped in a bad bodily cycle I am boring myself and others. It’s been six years since I was diagnosed with an autoimmune condition and so much of it has been chronicled here.

And yet no matter how much I throw at health and wellness I still find myself cold, sad, hurting and without any kind of cure.

Categories
Biohacking Chronic Disease

Day 1598 and Routine in Chaos

I have been contemplating “an ideal routine” as soon as I felt the pressure of showing up for first grade. How to manage the energy the outside world requires from you while making sure you have done everything possible to manage your body to produce adequate energy.

Morning routines, what’s in her bag, every day carry, and optimal packing strategies all derive from a need to see how others are coping with the demands of life. You can aspire to various ideals of fitness, nutrition, style and parenting if you could just get the right routine with the right tools. Right?

I’m aspiring to restart learning new toolsets for building …everything. From design to marketing software to muscles to my hormonal profile. Building the life you want is deceptively close if you can manage yourself.

Life feels malleable at the moment. And who is going to stop me? Maybe I accidentally fix a problem for myself and find I’ve got a tool or insight that might benefit you. The chaos of old ways fall apart means new routines and folkways must be built.

I don’t want to betray myself by overreaching and pushing as I am so often finding hard limits the hard way. I like to go hard and rest. But reality has become so much less reliable that I wonder if I must compensate even more for the chaos with steadying flows of my own.

Categories
Chronic Disease

Day 1594 and The Creek Don’t Rise

I’m not sure where my mother picked up the slang “God willing and the creek don’t rise” but I had it regularly to suggest a thing shall come to pass a “if nature and God” are willing.

It’s it’s got a hint of Appalachia in its origin story and then tumbles over into a Johnny Cash cover of a Jerry Reed country tune (probably where my mother learned it as she loves Cash) before settling into a Spike Lee documentary about the water engineering challenges that have brought such misery to New Orleans.

It’s been pouring in Gallatin County all day. Our already high rivers are looking like they may cause troubles. Friends who fish were concerned the muddy headwaters weeks ago when I was caught in other unexpected spring showers in Colorado.

I am afraid the moisture is kicking up mold in our house. We’ve spent months remediating the problem so it weighs on me to consider the possibility. I woke up covered in hives and eczema.

I took antibiotics and Benadryl and it kept getting worse. I showered with nothing but unscented Castile soap hoping to mitigate the outbreak. That did more.

I have an event I’d like to attend this evening along with a houseguest who I very enjoy much enjoy so it frustrates me when the creek sees fit to rise against the banks that contain the river of my life.

Categories
Preparedness

Day 1590 and Hold Up

I don’t think most Americans are quite ready to address the comical peril of some of our logistics issues. I myself am not and I’ve been screaming bloody murder about preparedness for years.

It’s hard to imagine that any of the music is stopping when you live in a very comfortable and functional place as we do in Montana.

But I’m seeing signs of stress in all corners of our world from grid load stress to importing manufacturing equipment to the ongoing crisis in air travel. Higher end industries like luxury education and venture are doing a swift two step to hide stress but it’s there as well.

I am feeling it. My body feels it as I go through a dip of adjusting to new pressures while still existing with the old ones like my autoimmune nonsense. But I think I am holding up as well as one can.

Categories
Chronic Disease Emotional Work

Day 1589 and Disagreeable

I am in a lot of physical pain and I have been cranky about it all day. I just did not have the energy to self censor my discomfort either. I spent a lot of the day in bed popping off.

Because people are polite I only ever get rewarded for being spicy. I’m sure people harbor all kinds of uncharitable opinions about people who are mouthy, especially women. But I mostly find you can say quite a lot. Especially with your ingroup.

In fact being disagreeable is tolerated, and even celebrated, in almost all public forums. Hard truths, straight acts, unpleasant realities tend to be celebrated. Truth telling can become someone’s persona even when nothing is wrong.

But watch out for that dark path. If you care too much about broader opinions of yourself you can easily become what is called audience captured in which your persona gets adapted to what gets a response. Modeling your life as get it can go very wrong for people.

I felt for comedian John Mulaney who got typecast as the affable guy and absolutely hated being the bad guy for his various addictions and personal life complications.

In his special “Baby J,” Mulaney reflects on the burden of his public persona: “Likeability is jaaaaaaaail,” summary via Perplexity of a much better substack piece

In some ways, playing to type is just cognitively easier for everyone. A social contract if you will. Being able to show more than one side of yourself shouldn’t be shrugged off as people pleasing nor is being disagreeable always a sign of bad temperament. Humans contain multitudes even if everyone plays to type.

Categories
Biohacking Travel

Day 1587 and Wellderly

My husband’s expert testimony before Congress yesterday was a particularly exciting day even by my standards. I felt so drained today.

My bar for excitement was set pretty high this spring. It has so far included impromptu drives to Istanbul, seeing our right to compute bill get signed into law, watching a founder we backed unveil a nuclear reactor design and discussing futurism at my hometown’s university.

When I list it out I almost forget how much during this time I was battling side effects from a mold infestation and working through changing my medication for my autoimmune condition. I got my right eyelid slit open twice!

When Alex made it home to Montana after midnight I felt like I could finally sleep. I never sleep well alone and much as I tried to sleep as he was flying back I could not. I’m exhausted today and needed a nap to stave off a migraine.

As we get older I am sure we will continue to be called upon to show up. So much of my energy is drawn into improving my health so I can participate in civic and economic life.

I want to improve my health so I can continue to discuss, learn, advocate and invest for this very confusing transition to our future.

I can scoff at catchy neologisms like “wellderly” as marketing campaigns for famous doctors in an especially challenging era for medical trust. But I am also concerned about sleeping better, gaining muscle mass, and improving my meager health. A man has many concerns but a sick man has only one remains true.

Categories
Chronicle Preparedness Travel

Day 1584 and Sunday Chores

I missed spring cleaning due to some unexpected travels. Part of that was by design, as a gnarly mold issue required mediation that we decided was best missed by my annoyingly fragile immune system.

You wouldn’t think galavanting across Alexander’s Empire by car would be a reasonable way to avoid mycotoxins and you’d be right but I also like to learn what’s happening in the markets in a visceral manner.

No finer way to come to grips with the breakdown of trade and empire than racing across a continent to understand a supply chain amirite?

In January we began the process of acquiring a hyperbaric chamber for personal use and a medical spa. We figured we were well ahead of the process and like many folks who buy products made in other countries we figured better to get it done before another trade was kicks off.

And then the tariffs came. Whenever you were ordering or transiting goods you were scrambling. I’m scrambling now at home to make sure the household is set up for whatever empty shelves and shortages are ahead but it’s hard to predict.

And so I spend my day planning and cleaning and running errands and generally cleaning up. I hope the mold issue managed as I’m certainly being exposed now. As you might imagine I’m trying to keep windows open and as dry as possible.

Categories
Aesthetics

Day 1580 and Learn By Doing

Techne and episteme are foundational concepts in Greek philosophy. Practical knowledge and theoretical understanding are interwoven for humans.

Aristotle distinguished between five virtues of thought: technê, epistêmê, phronêsis, sophia, and nous, with techne translating as “craft” or “art” and episteme as “knowledge”

Via Wikipedia

As I enjoyed a brief trip to the academy last week I am myself considering how much meaning I derive from knowledge or episteme comes from my enjoyment of applying and experimenting with techne in my daily life.

As I’ve been pondering my own thought and it how it will change in this new era of artificial intelligence I find a calling to practice the virtues of thought in all its forms.

I have a love of chemistry and its applications in beauty. I find virtue in aesthetics and I enjoy many practices within it. Beauty is virtue with a long cultural history. Feminine cultural traditions of potions, cosmetics, and ablutions are an intertwining of disciplines that reflect our embodied humanity within our natural world.

And so in considering how I like to solve for my own pursuit of personal beauty I engaged with a friends interest in pursuing a personal routine that matched her needs, her heritage, her time and her resources. I wrote her an issue and packaged together a set of samples across all those variables with my own library of cosmetics.

A routine of cosmetics based on a set of inputs for a particular girlfriend

I’d love to formalize a way of sharing my knowledge and the flavors of personalization as it’s an enjoyable process of inputs with clear joyful outputs that I hope makes the daily life of someone better. And that might be how I teach myself the use of some new tools.

A Pareto optimal skincare test for under $100 a year