Categories
Aesthetics Startups

Day 714 and Cosmetic Organization

I used to be the CEO of a cosmetics company called Stowaway. We were a direct to consumer brand that manufactured and retailed our own line of travel sized makeup. Alas I got too sick to work and we sold the company to a private equity holding firm who shuttered it during the pandemic. I’m “shocked” that travel sized red lipstick wasn’t popular during two years of masking and lockdown.

I don’t particularly want to work in cosmetics again, even though I have arguably priceless experience that could be put to good use helping other brands. Startups are are traumatic and it’s not unusual for founders to find it challenging to work in spaces they know well. You don’t want to undermine the enthusiasm of founders. Also you’ve probably taken enough risks for a lifetime in a given space to never want to touch it again even if you made money.

But I do still enjoy being a consumer of cosmetics. I’ve got what might be the most comprehensive library of travel sized makeup in existence. I moved all of it up to Montana this year where it lives in a modestly organized vanity. For some reason I decided do a little reorganization of it today.

A very messy cosmetics vanity littered with makeup bags, travel sized packaging and a Sephora advent calendar.

Instead of finding a new schema for where I plan to keep all my products, I made it much worse. I let myself get a little bit of tunnel vision and instead of playing around for half an hour I spent an ungodly amount of time making it much worse. I’ve got drawers that are bursting with tiny mascaras, tiny lipsticks, tiny eye shadow palettes and thousands of other items.

I was surprised to find myself enjoying it. I did some comparisons of packaging and formulations and found that I was still quite pleased with what we had built. Many new brands have emerged since then but the promise of a minimalist purse friendly brand remains elusive. I see all the ways I failed but I also saw all the ways in which our team succeeded. And it was nice to feel like perhaps I’d learned something. But now I’ve got to clean it all up before my husband steps on an eyeliner.

Categories
Medical Startups

Day 696 and Edge

I’m enjoying a migraine this weekend that was both strong and as of yet unbeaten. Perhaps I overdid things on Thanksgiving and Black Friday. But I’ve been stuck in bed in a dark room for the last 48 hours or so.

While this sounds a bit miserable, I can assure you it is also part of my edge. When my physical works shrinks my cognitive capacity unfurls. I very much liken it to the traditional super hero dilemma of being gifted with something that makes living a normal life a challenge.

I may be stuck inside struggling with light, noise and smell but I can still do most of my core deep work. I can’t take calls or go to meetings but I can be on my phone and my Kindle. I can intake information and I can synthesize that information when I’m in darkness.

And that is 90% of my job. Be informed and make the best decision you can. Those decisions are generally done when you are calm and fast. And I get the benefit of being in rest and digest as often as possible as it’s what keeps me alive.

I’ve got a generalized theory related to finding one’s edge. It’s pretty simple. If other people perceive it as a weakness but you understand how to wield it as a strength then your got an edge. People dismiss you sure. But being underestimated is one hell of a way to get on the better end of a trade.

And so while I’m here looking like I might not be worthy because of some set of heuristics that’s have typically worked well for you I’m actually the one that has a leg up on you. You would do well to think about all the ways in which you can leverage talent and insights that trade below their value. You can make a lot of money betting off of truly underestimated viewpoints.

Categories
Aesthetics Politics Preparedness

Day 679 and That Escalated Quickly

My week started out great. I was focused, energetic and on my game. And well, I think we all know how the last 72 hours have played out. Chaotic as hell.

Twitter is having a meltdown. Crypto keeps discovering how badly centralized over levered balance sheets can go. Fuck you very much Sam Bankman Fried for setting back the cause. Really the only bright spot is America’s swift decline into a regressive reactionary right wing state is in its entropy and reversion to the mean phase. Guess no one felt like rewarding Republicans even though we all kind of hate Joe Biden.

And lest you think I’m happily sitting pretty having mostly predicted we’d be entering a newly chaotic age, I woke up this morning covered in hives. That haircut I was so excited about yesterday? Turns out I was allergic to all the styling products.

And because we had some as yet unresolved issue with our well pump, I couldn’t even shower it off immediately. I woke up to the water being out. Neat. Thankfully a hacky solution got me a hot shower before noon to rinse off all the itch inducing salon products. I might still be a little high from all the Benadryl

The funniest part is I knew I might have some trouble with products at the hair salon. I just didn’t want to be that white lady that comes in with all her own products and a sob story about allergens.

I thought how bad can it be if I just let the stylist use the salon products? And boy do I regret that. Let that be a lesson to everyone to always take up the space and resources you need to stay healthy. It may be cringe as fuck to explain an allergy but you know what is even more cringe? Giving yourself hives and Benadryl brain because you didn’t have the energy to be a little bit of an asshole and insist on protecting yourself.

Categories
Biohacking Chronic Disease

Day 668 and Health Multitasking

I didn’t take my own advice recently. When folks ask me how to begin biohacking I tell them to take it slow. You should change only one variable at a time.

Biohacking requires that you don’t change up your variables too often or too quickly. You need to establish trend lines. The biggest mistake you can make is being “noisy” as you will never isolate the meaningful variables. And you won’t stick to it. So it’s a double fuck up. Clean reliable data matters. Don’t change too much too fast.

Day 91 and A Beginner’s Guide to Biohacking

My biohacking has been focused on improving my core inflammatory markers for several years. Secondary metrics like pain and energy got better as my erythrocyte sedimentation rate and C-reactive protein went down.

What I did to improve those metrics was complex, time intensive and expensive but it was pretty clear what outcome I was pursuing. My broad goals were simple. The tactics merely a function of one overarching strategy to lower inflammation.

Recently I’ve been a bit sloppy about my goals as my SED rate and CRP approach normal. I got excited that I might be stable enough to pursue some new goals. I am always looking to lower my doses of pain management medications. But the real shiny object for me has been fat loss.

I’ve struggled to stay lean as several medications that improve inflammatory markers have weight gain as a side effect. I struggle with shame about my weight. So much of popular culture portrays weight gain as a function of poor impulse control. It embarrasses me on some deep core level that others might think I’m lazy. If immediately trigger’s defensiveness for me.

I can rationally know I was pursuing a responsible health by taking prednisone during acute phases of my illness, but a part of me is still so embarrassed by the side effects. What must people think of me? Even if I explain that it’s a side effect of medication I fear that it’s still perceived as been slovenly.

So I decided to go back on metabolic drug called ozempic because I just hate carrying excess fat. I thought I could add it into my routine. But I am not doing as well as I’d like with the side effects of the injection. I’ve now vomited two Sundays in a row and been unable to eat. That is destabilizing enough that it is impacting my other goals like a slow dose down of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs.

Maintaining low inflammation rates with lower pharmaceutical intervention is obviously a huge goal of mine and far more crucial than dropping a few pounds of fat. Especially because my metabolic markers are all in the clear.

I just so badly want to put behind some of the visible markers of my disease. It was hubris to pursue ozempic when I know I have other metrics that are more important than my shame about having steroid fat. So next time you see someone who is overweight I encourage some empathy. You never know the whole story of someone’s health.

Categories
Politics

Day 664 and Political Disabilty

I did not watch the Pennsylvania senatorial candidate debate between Democratic Lt. Governor John Fetterman and Republican tv personality Dr. Mehmet Oz because I live in Montana. Why the fuck would I do that? But I have caught the discourse surrounding it and I do not like it.

If you are not following this saga, Fetterman had a stroke a few days before the primary in May. He is recovering but but is still having trouble with speech. People who are not familiar with neurological recovery processes (otherwise known as 99% of normal humans including me) are freaking the fuck out about what it means that his speech is impaired. It looks particularly egregious when compared to Dr Oz who is professionally competent at communicating clearly on television because that is his job.

Naturally we are seeing the absolute worst possible response to Fetterman’s current disability from just about everyone. Supporters of Fetterman are insisting that there is no evidence of mental degeneration or acuity issues. Which might be true but I don’t know. But the general sense I get from supporters is one cannot even suggest that there might be processing issues because doing so would you an awful ableist human being. Neat!

On the flip side, Republicans and other opponents are insisting Fetterman isn’t fit to hold office as he is not capable of speaking clearly. The Republican position seems to be that a speech impediment is a clear sign of mental decay and electing him is maybe a diverity and inclusion policy so wrong it should insult us all. Also extremely neat!

I’d say naturally both positions are ridiculous but I’m not sure this is natural to anyone. Ableism, or discrimination against the disabled, is an exciting new front in the culture wars. Being being disabled is a hot new identity marker despite the fact that a quarter of Americans have some form of disability. It’s not that unique or cool to be disabled. But modern medicine is a miracle so we can’t rely on Darwin anymore to keep us damned cripples out of sight anymore making light eugenics kind of a popular position. I don’t love it.

I am someone with a modest disability. I have a spinal condition called ankylosing spondylitis which is basically arthritis in my spine. So I don’t find any of the commentary surrounding Fetterman’s disability status encouraging. I don’t love that the basic assumption is being less than abled bodied is disqualifying for work. It depends! This shouldn’t be a whole fucking thing.

A disability doesn’t mean you can’t work like a “normal” person but it does mean you have some limitations to work around. This doesn’t make you better or worse as a person. Being disabled has no moral valence. Alas we tend to valorize suffering and demonize perceived weakness. Neat!

My position is most disabilities are sort of a modest inconvenience that on balance forces you to hone other abilities to be competitive. This is my super hero theory of disability and might be a contributing factor to the side that valorizes disability. How cool is it to be an X-Men? Extremely! But I don’t overweight this position as I largely think a market economy fixes by forcing us to all to compete and find our niche.

If this is scandalous to you, I’d say everyone has something that is a struggle to overcome even if most people’s thing is just being kind of an idiot. Half of us are by definition below average. But imagine if I thought you being stupider than me was disqualifying for holding political office.

My whole point in this long ramble is that the Democrats are being ridiculous in insisting we cannot look at the strengths and weaknesses that come with bodies being sick. We are on year three of the pandemic so that ship has sailed. The Republicans are being ridiculous insisting that speech impediments are disqualifying. Tump didn’t even have the benefit of a stroke to blame for his speech patterns.

It isn’t ridiculous to ask someone to be transparent about recovery and abilities. I’ve got no idea if Fetterman has slower thinking after the strike or if it’s just slower speaking. I don’t really care to be honest. Not my senator.

But if we all keep insisting on physical and mental perfection from our elected officials we might not have any politicians left. Which actually on second thought might be ok.

Categories
Chronic Disease Politics

Day 658 and Time Perception

I don’t know about you, but my sense of time has never really recovered from the pandemic. Time got distended and warped in ways that were hard to appreciate at the time. I struggle to tell if I’m making progress or if I’m standing still.

If I’m really honest with myself, I started losing the thread on time when Trump got elected. I was one of those people for whom that fractured my reality a little. Not because I couldn’t conceive of him winning but because I could. That was my first moment where I felt like I was beginning to split from shared reality as I was so sure he would win and so desperately wanted him to lose.

Somewhere midway through Trump’s term, my health got fucked up. My sense of reality fracturing combined with my first taste of time being distended was when my health went sideways. As I stopped working somewhere in 2018 but it’s hazy. As I spent more and more time in hospitals, doctors offices and in bed, and less time at the office, the usual ways I used to tell time degraded further. Reality had already shattered so no reason not to let time shard too.

So I can’t entirely blame my sense of displacement from time on the pandemic. My sense of instability absolutely predates it by several years. By now much I couldn’t exactly tell you. Between my health and Trump I ended up a step or two off of consensus reality.

This did end up being lucky. As the pandemic was inbound I was prepared before it hit. I had tied myself so effectively into the immune system of the information environment I knew it was coming in December.

But I wasn’t entirely prepared for how much I’d up end my life as the second order effects of the pandemic kicked in. We did the first few months in an apartment, the first summer in a vacation house on the Hudson River and then decamped for my home state of Colorado.

It’s only just as we’ve decided to commit to Montana that my sense of unreality is easing a bit. We’ve got a home that we own and a set of preparations that makes it stable through some gnarly potential futures. So why isn’t the time dilation is easing? Why does it always feel like there is never enough time and also far too much time all at once? If anyone has the answer I am listening.

Categories
Medical Preparedness

Day 630 and Sympathetic Nervous Response

One of the downsides of having any kind of medical bullshit is having to keep an eye on yourself. If you over do shit you’ve got no one to blame but yourself.

I’ve been doing a wilderness medical incident first responder course this week. I initially went into it slightly concerned with my ability to physically keep up given my ankylosis. I was easily the odd duck out in a group of former military folks, paramedics and wild land firefighters. If I’m honest I didn’t want to embarrass myself by showing too much frailty. I was already the only woman in the class. I didn’t need to be the cripple on top of that.

But over four days I’ve managed just fine. I did wound packing and splints. I did a number of incident scenario responses ranging from anaphylactic shock to heart attacks. I even did multiple mass casualty response drills. Today I managed one as a triage incident deputy and comported myself quite well.

I was feeling pretty cocky about how well I’d managed through the week. I was enjoying that sense of accomplishment right up until 5pm or so today when we had our last assignment of the day. We’d just finished up a drill with five patients who had been caught in a tornado. It was an hour of field work and triage outside. I was thinking alright maybe I’m getting the hang of thing. But no I was about to embarrass myself on one of the easiest tasks in the course.

It was time to pack up our own medical kits. We got a big baggie with all the supplies we could possibly need for our our first aid kits and dumped it out on the desk. Our instructor began going over all the items and how to pack them up into the bright orange brick that serves as your kit bag. I was doing my best to follow along but my brain was just not having it. I kept trying to figure out what items went where and how it was meant to go. And I was not remotely keeping up with the class or the instructions.

I’m starting to feel overheated and I’m struggling to concentrate. And it’s then I realize “oh shit I’m in a bunch of pain” and I realize I haven’t taken my pain medication for hours and it is starting to show. I just ran around in a big field doing triage for an hour. So I think to myself well I’m having a sympathetic nervous system spazz out. The pain and fatigue is sending me into fight or flight and I’m losing decent coordination and fine motor skills. I am becoming one of my own patients.

I didn’t finish packing out my kit. I had to excuse myself. I briefly considered if it would be funny to have a medical incident in a first responder course. But I was fully capable of treating my own acute stress response. I was getting worked up by an inflammatory response from my ankylosis and low and behold the pain in my spine was going to spike.

The end of the story is that I’m in bed and the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs have kicked in. My pulse and respiration are fine. I’m no longer in fight or flight. And yes I’m a little embarrassed that packing a bag is what did me in. But on the other hand, that’s a very “Julie” way to learn a lesson.

Categories
Emotional Work Uncategorized

Day 623 and Pausing

I am feeling a bit anxious about back to work season. I’ve traditionally had a terrible relationship with work. I’m a workaholic and struggle to pace myself effectively. I particularly love riding on the zeitgeist of a season like the fall as “everyone” is back at the grind and I like to ride the energy of the moment.

But I also need more frequent and shorter pauses than the American work week or season has ever allowed. I’ve always been afraid to take them because I fear being seen as lazy. “Only the morally weak rest” is a truism of English and Germanic lineage well prior to the Reformation. Though that’s kind of an aristocracy needs the serfs working thing.

But Protestant Work Ethic aside, I’m not really cut out for hustle culture. Being disabled, even modestly with something my spondylitis, is like the double whammy of being weak and lazy. I need to maintain a different schedule because I cannot overcome the foibles of my own body? That’s an affront! I’ve got a lot of self talk that basically goes like this

You soft feminine pathetic weak bitch get your ass back to work.

Me to myself. Sadly.

Does someone have internalized issues with feminine cycles? Oh yes she does! I guess it’s not just being lazy but it’s being female and a waste of productive worker all in one body. Super fun! And yet here I am a libertarian and I work in finance. Square that circle my friends.

Capitalism has enjoyed patriarchal structuring because it allows us to categorize the inconveniences of bodies that are harder to regulate. Women in the workforce was a pain in the ass until we figured out chemical birth control I’ve got to assume.

But all these legacies of who is worthy and who is strong and who is valued are kind of bullshit constructs. I can take what serves me. I don’t need to get all up in my head about having a less productive body because who even set the damn standard right?

So I am reminded I can pause without crashing. I choose to pause at my own leisure. I can choose to self nurture so I operate from my own point of maximum strength. I have to chose to pause. A pause is not is weakness.

A pause is like the ocean cresting before the wave breaks. And I can choose to ride that momentum. This is all a part of my own work on not just surviving the current moment but thriving with optimism. It’s peace from strength. While I recognize and even ride the chaos outside, I do not feel chaotic inside.

Categories
Preparedness

Day 620 and AQI

I am in the throes of a horrifying migraine. The take two Imitrax and pray type. It’s also the nausea inducing type so I’ve not eaten all day. I feel awful. And it’s mostly not my own fault even though I often like to blame flares in symptoms on my own lack of discipline or purity in maintaining some Platonic ideal of lifestyle or wellness regimen.

It is fire season in the west and I’m sure some, if not most, of my migraine is tied to the horrifying air quality that is choking out thousands of miles of California, Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana.

An AQI reading of western America on September 12th at 3:48pm Mountain Time from PurpleAir

The AQI or air quality index in my neck of the woods is 160. Unhealthy for sensitive individuals is the coy and somewhat misleading phrase used. It means in practical terms visibility is so bad I can’t see the mountains a few miles away.

Montana is at the moment free of any major fires. Our colder temperatures, lack of pervasive fire beetle blight, and reduced density makes it statistically safer than the Colorado front range when it comes to total fire danger. But it’s no safer from prevailing winds and the pollution from fire in other states. In order to escape from it entirely I’d probably have to leave the continent.

I’ve obviously opted not to leave my home region of the mountain west even if I have accepted moving to a more northern and protected corner of it. But there is a certain existential “No Exit” sense I have with AQI and fire season in general. It may just be my lot in life. Maybe it’s everyone’s lot. To give up your homeland is a complicated fight. I expect for some of humanity it must involve either certain death or the prospect of great riches

Categories
Chronic Disease Community

Day 571 and Isolation

The move to Montana is mere days away. Alex has started to feel a sense of loss. He’s been able to build a nice community here in Boulder in just two years thanks to his deeply weird (joking) habit of having hobbies. I on the other hand, have never felt more isolated from my hometown. I cannot wait to leave.

Some of this feeling of alienation is simply transient. It is my natural dislike of summer coming to a head because of the physical toll extreme heat takes on my spinal inflammation. I can’t be outside much during these new extended heatwaves, which defeats the purpose of living in Colorado almost entirely. Who wants to live somewhere you can’t go outside for 3-4 months of the year. Let it snow!

But some of it is that I can’t have physical hobbies that are too energetically expensive like like Alex enjoys. I spend my summer weekends alone in bed reading and shitposting, while Alex has a fairly vibrant in person social life year round. My lower key physical hobbies like gardening also aren’t particularly social even though they could be if folks wanted to join me.

Part of the issue is that we have a rented townhouse n Boulder that is too small to allow for any socializing. You can’t really come visit us. There is no open space for welcoming friends, neighbors or family members. While people have come to visit us in Colorado, virtually none of them have set foot inside the house. Some of that was Covid but it was mostly not having any space for anyone to sit and relax for extended periods. And because we knew it was transient we never bothered to fix it.

And when you can’t guarantee your physical health, it mostly looked like people coming to visit Alex and me staying home. I couldn’t afford to use my energy budget outside the home a lot during Covid. I assume folks think I hate them, when in reality I just can’t guarantee I’ll be well enough to be out and about for three hours.

It’s much easier for me to commit to socializing if I am home in a safe place where I can lay down or access my medications. I’d like to play host as it’s just easier to accommodate my own limitations. It feels selfish but I think most people wouldn’t mind working around a minor disability like spinal pain.

I hope that people will take this as an open invitation to come visit us in Montana. We will be investing heavily in our guest rooms and eventually a full guest house in the barn. We want people to come up to take advantage of our access to a more remote and laid back form of living. You can go shoot with Alex or you can kick back on the porch and stare at the mountains with me. It’s up to you. But we’d both love to see you.