Since acceleration is within my meme space so heavily I am pushing myself to go faster. Predictably that introduces some instability in my Julie equilibrium. That’s a fancy way of saying I currently feel like shit.
I’ve been a bit immobile for the last couple hours from hitting some type pain wall from overclocking myself. I’d hope it would pass so I could focus and write but it’s getting late on the West Coast and it doesn’t seem likely.
It’s possible this isn’t entirely the fault of excess strain from travel and it is in some manner hormonal. I wonder if at some point an artificial intelligence will be able to deduce my follicular and luteal phases by sentiment analysis on my blog.
Feels like a compelling argument for restricting government power over your bodies doesn’t it? Imagine the unceasing eye of Sauron collecting context clues about your reproductive system and the right to bodily autonomy goes poof.
Anyways I’m out for the night to go do battle with the pain so I can accelerate more tomorrow.
The hardest part of any holiday for me is the socializing. I enjoy spending time with our friends, neighbors and family. It’s just such a high cost activity.
The twinge of jealousy that I feel towards the extroverted and able body is real. I don’t necessarily want to change who I am. I’ve come to terms with my body’s limits and my own preferences. But I sure wish I could turn myself into a high energy extrovert without any health issues when I need it.
I feel drained from the short round of social interactions I had over the past few days even though I enjoyed every minute of it. I just see it in my biometrics.
My heart rate variability dipped into the teens. I got blinking reds on on stress, energy and health on my Welltory monitor. Whoop is recording high strain scores despite me doing little but sitting and talking. I have been sleeping 9 to 10 hours a night for over a week.
I suppose acceleration is tiring. But oh how I long to not have the normal pleasures of life be so damaging. Because I am going to chose my passions over socializing. It’s much easier to justify my work and spending my energy on my portfolio of startups. Advocating for causes close to my heart. If I have a limited budget I rarely chose to spend on the pleasures of company or socializing.
This year has had a number of absolutely crazy weekends where it’s felt as if the entire world was having the rules written overnight. Seemingly unrelated bits of the world will flare into supernova attention grabbers.
The fact that we can participate in the narratives as they emerge on social media means that every type of influence actor does just that. And it’s exhausting even as it’s occasionally a fun interactive game.
Today I found myself with a poor Whoop recovery and more physiological strain that is ideal. You can see it in my awful heart rate variability. Nevertheless I tried to stick to good routines, possibly to my detriment.
My afternoon went from enjoyable walk to migraine to a low stability.
You can see my Welltory data after I went for a forty minute walk. My HRV tanked and I went into a migraine pattern. Thankfully Imitrax, meditation, and a short non sleep deep relaxation exercise got me stabilized in about two hours.
For the last three days I’ve been experiencing a significant dip in energy and function in the later afternoon around 4pm.
Not only am I fatigued, but I seem to have some sort of either allergic response or potentially common cold symptoms. It’s a little unclear as I don’t have consistent symptoms nor do I have a fever.
Some of it is probably jet lag as I returned home to Montana after a month in Europe over the weekend. I haven’t quite recovered my sleep deficit as I am pushing very hard on my workload as well.
I tried doing a bit of polyphasic sleeping today to see if it might help abate the intensity of the dip. The idea behind polyphasic sleep is to get your required 7-8 hours not in one monophasic chunk at night but across your own natural energetic ebbs and flows.
I did a packed morning of work and meetings and then slept between the hours of 3-5pm. I do feel better having been asleep during the dip but I could feel the symptoms rising while in the light sleep mode. I wasn’t able to fall into deep or REM sleep.
Whatever is happening I clearly need more rest. My attempts at diagnosis of any other symptoms and their proximal causes are unlikely to matter if I’m not getting adequate rest. In which case, I’ll try to sleep more at night and add in some naps till it passes.
I’m extremely frustrated right now. I didn’t get much sleep last night. I won’t get into the details, but it’s mostly because I was overstimulated by a very long workday after what was a very productive week.
I didn’t think it would matter if I was a little fucked up today from overexertion yesterday as I didn’t have any major obligations.
Except I got invited to mid-morning to something tonight. I wasn’t obligated to go but really wanted to do so as the guest of honor may end up having a significant impact on my life. And I’ve had an interest in it which I’d expressed months ago.
Now I had strong interest in attending as it won’t be a repeatable opportunity. So I wanted to push myself to go. I did my best through the afternoon to rest and prepare myself. But ultimately my body just couldn’t do it.
I cascaded into a migraine from the smell of my husband’s cologne. All my efforts to try to be restorative with the few hours of my afternoon were gone through a single small instance of environmental stressor. An obvious sign that I shouldn’t be going anywhere if something small could set off symptoms.
Now I’d like to say that I could have made it if I’d slept more. Maybe if I’d not worked so many hours yesterday. But I feel good about the things I prioritized yesterday.
But I am so fucking angry that I couldn’t have been given a little bit more notice as I would have found a way to make it. Literally even one day would have been enough so I could prioritize sleep.
It’s obviously no one’s fault. I’m simply furious that in an effort to budget my energy and physical capacity for what was my priority yesterday, I couldn’t find any remaining capacity today.
I guess the lesson is that if you want me to show up please let me know at least twenty four hours in advance. Or even just the night before.
The real challenge wasn’t in my sights yet. I did a layover in Dulles before heading to Chicago O’Hare for a final direct to Bozeman Montana. When I got to O’Hare, I had all the bags for a five week trip in Europe on my person.
I attempted to walk to the airport shuttle area only to get lost inside a parking garage. Finally I made it into what looked like a side alley for the shuttles and busses. And proceeded to wait for an hour for the Hyatt bus. Sunk cost fallacy caught up with me fast as I didn’t want you to lug my bags back to find a taxi half a mile away. I was already at 11000 steps, exhausted and half mad from 15 hours of transit.
I was in my own 9th circle. Middle management road warriors of a certain age fighting for an airport shuttle to a Hyatt Regency 30 minutes late. One lady blamed the extra traffic on “the immigrants” while a regional sales director discussed selling mortgage products to Wells Fargo wealth managers during the run up to the global financial crisis.
Big hair don’t care energy from a woman who sold mortgage products to GFC era Wells Fargo wealth managers. Now she sells pharmaceuticals
The woman who sold mortgage products to wealth manager began discussing her “hot mess labradoodle named Karma” and I swear this is not a joke.
She told her companion you can tell things are bad as her trip to Big Sky is too expensive this year. That I don’t lose it on her in that moment is an act of self control.
The delay at the shuttle was so long the line ended up being 50 deep to actually check in at the vast conference hotel.
And what a display of American exceptionalism. Not only was there a pharma conference (that’s where the mortgage product woman was headed as sales is sales) but there was also a regional dance cheer competition for tween girls and a field hockey & lacrosse competition for boys.
The demographics of this odd mix did explain why there are dozens of “not yet rich enough for ozempic but rich enough for Little Miss Subshine’s glitter and a stay at the Hyatt.” White obese stage mothers who spend too much at Ulta were heavily represented. Blessedly the lacrosse and field hockey boys were just noisy.
My flight touched down at 7pm. It’s now 9pm and I am finally checked into my room. I pulled the disability card with my ankylosis & begged a guy to get me a keycard. Tried to tip him $40. He wouldn’t take it. Compromised as I insisted on $20.
We discussed the mortgage products sales lady & how he didnt think his generation would ever own a home. He was a zoomer. He’s probably right.
As I finally gave up on the day, laying in bed I can hear two kids kid above me practicing catching and tossing with their lacrosse sticks Thwack and release. Over & over. Thankfully I had ear plugs. Only one three hour flight left to get me home to Montana.
I had the good fortune of attending a dinner last night with a group of very interesting people. I particularly enjoy dinner parties as a cultural gathering as I enjoy conversation.
It was a misty atmospheric evening with on-and-off rain in Amsterdam so I decided to take a long walk before the dinner to work up an appetite.
Normally I’d dress for a dinner party with heels and a cocktail dress but wet cobblestone streets made required boots with traction. Styling clunky flat walking boots with a flowing long black witchy dress felt right for Halloween. I had a piece of art deco costume jewelry to add a bit more formality to the whole affair.
I’ve got no idea if I pulled off the styling of challenge of an outfit for a Lindy walk and a dinner party but I enjoyed the challenge. There is a satisfaction in combining utility and social decorum in styling.
I wasn’t entirely prepared for the dinner to go till almost midnight or I might have passed on a long meandering walk beforehand. The conversation flowed until the restaurant begged us to let them close.
I gather most of the group continued on into the wee hours afterwards but my energy was flagging so I said my goodbyes and walked back to my hotel. It was long past my bedtime.
I rarely let myself get too tired from excessive physical exertion. It’s a lingering fear with my ankylosis is that if I overdo it with fun activities like exercise, travel, or even too much time socializing upright that I’ll end up trapped in bed from inflammation and pain.
I pushed myself to my limits in the last forty eight hours by deciding to make a quick trip to Helsinki from Tallinn that I’d wanted to take over my birthday two weeks ago. I changed my schedule to head to Amsterdam next week for a work conference (hit me up if you are in Amsterdam) so I was running out of time to see more of the eastern Nordic and Baltics.
I packed it into a tight trip as I can more easily run on an adrenaline and cortisol hormonal spike if I know I have a day to sleep it off. Which is largely what I did today. I did laundry, tidied up my Airbnb, and began a repacking process to make sure I could handle multiple airports. I find packing and travel stressful so I fit in a nap in the afternoon.
Blissfully it’s snowing in Tallinn so it was a nice day to be inside preoccupied with chores and resting. I’ll be sad to leave the town. I didn’t accomplish all I set out to do but I enjoyed it immensely.
I felt like I was on fire. Itchy skin, weeping eyes, coughing and wheezing, a sympathetic nervous system run amok. I was on my second histamine reaction in less than two weeks.
I have had two days of intense emotional work. One tragic aspect of a daily chronicle that’s public is dancing around some of the more private aspects of one’s life while still managing to write. I’ve been doing “a look ahead” exercise for the next decade with my family. Our goals and our challenges and our structures were all on the table. What do we want and how will we pursue it and what stands in our way?
So I found myself needed to sooth the systems. Reactivity is a choice. I wanted to feel my emotions but I’m less convinced I need to feel my hives.
So I downed 50mg of Benadryl, a couple other generic anti-histamines, a white girl downer, and I plugged myself into noise canceling headphones and a face mask. I did a few rounds of Non Sleep Deep Relaxation nervous system exercises. And slowly I was able to subdue reactions. I slipped into real sleep.
I feel better for it. But I also know I need more restorative time. Remaining subdued would be valuable.
It’s been a terrible week. I feel stupid even typing it. How many times can I state the obvious? It’s as if the repetition of stating that I’m in a hard place physically, and emotionally, somehow shames me. Can’t I say or feel something new?
But I don’t have any desire to dig any deeper into the wounds of the present. I am in too much pain. I am deeply emotionally affected by the situation in Israel. In ways I frankly didn’t anticipate. Those horrors overlapping with being sick, being far from home, and having a significant personal milestone, have collectively laid me flat.
I’d prefer to remain silent but the exercise of daily writing pulls at my habits no matter the extent of the misery. And maybe that’s the point. No microcosm of personal suffering or global macro view of atrocity changes the reality. Pain is an equally shared human condition. And we walk through it no matter our circumstances.
I have to assume I am not alone. The ambient misery is both personal and collective. The human experience is terrifyingly universal. I am fearful of my own physical fragility when abroad certainly but it’s bigger than being away from home. I’m afraid of being fragile in a cruel world that is getting crueler.
I’ve struggled to maintain a level head and a healthy routine this week as the whiplash of a hostile immune reaction and steroids took me from one misery to another. Prednisone is a cruel drug. It tamps down any reaction from your immune system. It’s a hard reboot for a physical system gone haywire. How appropriate given the circumstances.
It wasn’t quite how I envisioned turning over from one decade to another. And while I appreciated the stormy Baltic solitude to savor the weight and significance of my personal milestone, I can’t help but also notice that carrying on feels like a heavy burden.
