Tag: Rest

Categories
Travel

Day 1002 and Airport Lounges

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.

William Gibson – Pattern Recognition

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

Categories
Medical

Day 983 and Down For The Count

I have been felled by a migraine today. I’ve been unable to tolerate light, noise or food for a little under twenty four hours. Probably one of the worst migraines I’ve ever had but my suspicion is that it’s tied into a few other issues.

My husband was struggling with some type of infection. It never popped at Covid on tests but given the prevalence of various forms of colds, flus and other illnesses popping up in the back to the arena phase of fall I wouldn’t be surprised if we were both fighting something off.

I am hoping that staying in bed and drinking gallons of water and electrolytes will pay off tomorrow. The intensity of the pain has been unpleasant. Add in nausea and I’m mostly staying still and praying for relief. I’ll catch you all tomorrow.

Categories
Homesteading

Day 976 and Chores & Naps

I’ve come to believe a good day off must involve a balance of work and rest. I take a seven day a week approach to my own professional work personally but I love a weekend for doing work of a more personal nature.

My husband loves homestead chores. While we had some nerves about how much work maintaining property would be after years of city renting, it was clearly unwarranted. There are few things more pleasurable than puttering about your own land and making improvements.

Re-mulching our young fruit trees

We’d planted apple, plum and cherry trees over the year but Alex had learned a few things he’d done sub-optimally so he went to the town mulch pile this weekend, loaded up over two trips, and with a friend redid the entire mulch on our young orchard.

Taking a “flamethrower” to weeds

Not all the chores are quite so wholesome as tree planting. The drive away in front of our barn has a lot of weeds growing up after a very wet summer. We’ve got more green growing things than we did last summer by a wide margin. We probably got three hay cuttings this season versus two last year and the final one wasn’t all that green. So Alex took a torch and a fuel and burned down the weeds. Sounds a bit silly but keeping growth under control before it comes a fire hazard is a critical landscaping need in high country mountain terrain.

Our water pump filtration system

A final chore for the day? We have a very advanced filtration system on our water. We have our own well so we don’t rely on the town to do treatment. As you can see the filters need regular changing. Not an activity that’s without its disgust factor. Clean water is good and ours benefits from regular filter rotation.

Water filter and purification system

As you might imagine I’m not the one doing most of the heavy lifting. But I did contribute one crucial thing to moral. Cheerleading and and a reminder to get in a nap. Sunday afternoon naps are a must if you’ve been up since sunrise enjoying choring.

Categories
Community Emotional Work Media

Day 960 and Summer Frailty

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.

I am just trying to get through August. If my standards are simply to plod through then any achievement like throwing a successful policy night or recording a podcast for Wealth Actually on early stage venture capital count for something.

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.

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 891 and All Alright

I am trying to practice detachment and still enjoy the present moment. A set of secondary side effects from an antibiotic are unpleasant in the extreme. But as the theme of throwback 90s hit “That 70’s Show” so effectively proclaims, “we’re all alright, we’re all alright!”

While it is true that what is in our body will show in our emotions, it’s perhaps more accurate to say that our emotions are showing up in body. A bio-emotive framework gives you more freedom to experience the full range of life without judgement.

I have done my nervous system exercises, I have treated the side effects as best I can with pharmaceutical intervention, I’ve rested quietly in a dark room, I’ve been outside to facilitate circadian rhythm return, I’ve eaten protein and I’ve stretched.

I’ve run the processes and routines that set me up for a good day because you don’t let one bad thing turn into a hundred bad things. Even as I’m experiencing unpleasant moments, I know I have to bear these smaller costs as an investment on a better tomorrow. It’s hard to hear that everything has a cost, sometimes too much of a cost, but being detached about the calculations helps. If something must be done it’s all alright. I promise.

Categories
Chronic Disease Travel

Day 889 and Soul Delay

A girlfriend asked me if it felt good to be home in Montana. I said I wasn’t sure as my soul hasn’t landed home yet. I think it might be somewhere over the Arctic at the moment.

She knows, now, absolutely, hearing the white noise that is London, that 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.

William Gibson – Pattern Recognition

I don’t feel like I’ve really landed yet even though I’ve been home for a full day. My body is going through various forms of blowback and regression as I resorted to Prednisone while in Europe.

I’m itchy and in pain and simply going about my routines despite it all. Rhythms and processes run my life because I’m a traditionalist. What you do every day is what you become.

Everything physical I do has a cost and nothing is higher cost than travel. I am bearing those costs at the moment. Blessedly the costs feel removed and remote as I am a perhaps disassociated as my soul may or may not be somewhere over Greenland.

So if you’ve not heard from me it’s because I’ve got a bit of soul delay with my jet lag. Or a bit of jet lag with my soul delay. You can expect reintegration soon.

Categories
Chronic Disease Travel

Day 882 and Disability & Energy Policy

I hate when I am made to feel embarrassed and ashamed by my disability. And the German’s current energy policy has me feeling like my medical needs are something of which I should be ashamed. And that’s bullshit. It’s a policy failure.

I have ankylosing spondylitis (an inflammatory condition in my spine) along with a cluster of other autoimmune issues like allergies, migraines and dermatitis. If my symptoms flare I can’t walk and the treatments are unpleasant. Methotrexate, steroids, specialty biologics injections.

I live in chilly dry Montana as the cold is better for my condition than the heat. But when I travel I am confronted with heat, humidity and pollution which exacerbate my symptoms. Sometimes significantly. It has caused great anguish through its impact on family gatherings.

I find myself in Frankfurt for a mix of personal and professional reasons. The Airbnb I rented for the month was one of only a handful that offered aid conditioning at all. And one of only three that was a personal apartment and not a hotel service using Airbnb.

So I booked it even though I noticed it was on a main road in the neighborhood of Sachsenhausen. The host assured me it was quiet and most of the apartments looked out on a garden in the back.

Alas the bedroom was on the main road so I was unable to ventilate the apartment by keeping the bedroom windows open as the exhaust and debris from the roadway left my eyes red, itchy and I woke up with hives several times.

I bought a small fan at the local store and kept the bedroom door open and had the fan blow cooler air from the back windows overlooking the garden. I was still struggling with ventilation as the car exhaust and fumes meant the bedroom had to be sealed. Even then I paid $50 for a cleaner weekly to clean up the pollen, debris and dust that would get in from leaving open the window

I’d leave all the windows open on the good side, keep the apartment sealed and dark during the day, and have three weeks of extremely shitty sleep on my Whoop to prove it. But overall this worked well until it got hot enough to warrant air conditioning usage.

Sadly summer is rounding the corner and a few days in the low 80s (or 27-28 C for you Europeans) was too hot for my spine to tolerate comfortably. I was struggling enough with keeping the bedroom cool with the fan and back open window so I decided to run the air conditioner. It was old, noisy and hadn’t had its filters changed in a while. I made do.

The neighbors complained. Twice. Once through the Airbnb owner and the second time by knocking multiple times on my door. I had to explain to them embarrassing levels of medical detail to assure them this wasn’t preferred temperature or taste but a medical necessity. I hadn’t expected to show off my vials of injectables to be taken seriously but thanks guys. They wouldn’t back off till I showed my records and medications insinuating I was both a bad person and that authorities could be involved.

This weekend it is expected to be in the mid eighties so I thought rather than fight off my neighbors and get another bad night of sleep with a dirty air conditioner and noisy roadway I’d check myself into a hotel. I’d been having a significant flare of all my symptoms which had required emergency doses of steroids, two unexpected infections (I take immunosuppressants) with two different antibiotics, and quite a bit of other remedies.

I woke up with strain and in a sweat. Antibiotics & steroids are fun

Well I guess the final boss of Europe’s poor energy policy was about to land it’s final blow on me. The hotel I checked into for some relief won’t turn its air conditioning below 72 or 22 C. It has to be much warmer to get it to my preferred temperature of 17 while I was experiencing this flared fever state. That apparently wasn’t an option.

So I guess I’m going to check one more hotel to see if they will allow me to cool my prior to my preferred temperature or I’ll prepare for another fight with my neighbors over running the air conditioning overnight again. Wish me luck. Build more nuclear power. Install solar arrays.

Categories
Travel

Day 875 and Spring Fever

I had a flu this time last year. I was in process of closing on our home in Montana. What a week that was for me. The first piece of real land I ever owned. Better late than never.

This May I think I just have plain old hay fever. Blooming trees on Frankfurt city streets combined with a roadside bedroom has me sniffling and itching. I broke out the prednisone. 5mg at first. Then upped to 10mg the next day. I treat prednisone like most people treat opioids. “In case of emergency” would be preferable.

Maybe I simply get spring fever of some sort and I can romanticize it like some British Regency period piece as interpreted by Shonda Rhimes. Ah she had the rheumatic touch when she bought her ancestral home. But then had the vapors when she came to the Hapsburg Court. The deadly poisons of springs first flower has felled her bloom. Spring fever indeed, my pretties.

I didn’t even use ChatGPT for that. My brain can spit back up sick tropes. Nevertheless I do feel a bit felled by this inflammatory cycle that has required a little more attention than preferred.

Categories
Biohacking Emotional Work

Day 873 and Commitments

I have two conflicting commitments at the moment. Both are with people who I’d consider intimate relationships with as much access to my inner life as my closest confidants.

I made the decision to show up for both parties last week and this week. And while I don’t regret my decision at all, the choice has had consequences. I am accepting them right now. I’m in bed and in a fun spiral of inflammation. I’m in pain, and even more annoying, I’m fucking itchy as hell. My biometrics are screaming red across every dashboard from Whoop to Welltory.

The irony, of course, is that in being so committed to showing up for others I failed to show up for myself. I didn’t know what I wanted so I did everything I’d obligated myself to do.

I can’t blame it on anyone even though it’s so easy to consider the ways I can rationalize my choices. I’m committed to good and useful things that improve my emotional fluidity and contribute to my personal growth.

Being committed to others means being committed to yourself first. The better I maintain my boundaries, the more I can show up for someone else. Knowing what we want, asking for it clearly, and being accountable for the actions you took is the whole ball game. Everything else is details. And I bet you can manage that.

I am committed to myself as I’ve got to rest and get myself under control or else I’m not being accountable. And I’m not a victim to my circumstances. I chose this.

Categories
Biohacking Travel

Day 867 and Sleep

I didn’t get a good night sleep last night. Or the night before. Or the night before. I guess I must be jet lagged.

I am always convinced I’ve managed to avoid jet lag and it’s never actually true. I love to lie to myself about my capacity for recovery in the face of travel but I know deep down that once the adrenaline wears off, it’s all about establishing a consistent sleep routine.

I’d rather maintain East Coast Time while I’m in Europe but my body has a tendency to sync to the circadian rhythms of the sun rise and sun set even when I do my best to stay awake till midnight I’ll rise with the sun. I was awake at 6am in Frankfurt as even with an eye mask on I knew it was finally morning.

I wanted to be settled and in a good routine as tomorrow afternoon it will have been a full week since I arrived in Germany. But it’s always harder than you expect to transplant your rhythms and routines. It’s boring to write about and I’m sure boring to read but not all posts can be about corporate cosmopolitanism and the abstraction layer of task applications as anonymous servant class rootless yuppies. That’s a fun read.