I must have taken fairy tales and “just so” stories quite seriously as a small child as I have deep faith in process, repetition, and routine. J
Just keep at it. Practice makes perfect. Chop wood and carry water. To be worthy of the opportunities that might present themselves in your life you must live each day moving forward your intentions with your habits.
Luck is where preparation meets opportunity. If you maintain the course of your life by consistently apply skills and focus, you may find even the most esoteric and specific dreams of your childhood becoming a reality.
Just yesterday I was invited to participate in something that I had dreamed of being worthy of being included in since my teenage years. I kept the interests my whole life and now out of the blue I was being recognized. I could not be happier.
I had aspired to be a certain kind of person as one of my childhood dreams and here I was finding that I had indeed become worthy of my own aspirations. All it took was going in the right direction, keeping a consistent interest in learning more, and being present in public with those skills. I am so happy that years of simple regular action and interest had indeed yielded fruit.
The pace of 2024 hit me like a ton of bricks today. I haven’t fully unpacked my suitcase since September and honestly I couldn’t even really tell you my full schedule without checking my calendar.
I’m pretty sure it was only New York, Miami, Los Angeles and San Francisco but it sure feels like more. It’s been a lot.
I am coming around to enjoying some aspects of travel again but I feel like the only way to get deep thinking done is when you are able to stay put for at least a month.
I’d rather pack in multiple weeks on the road and then hunker down and assimilate. Others seem to do well with breaking travel up more. They do a week on and off.
I find that I don’t adjust in and out of travel quickly enough for that. It feels like state of perma-travel to my mind and body. I like to have a lot of steady continuous routine. My workload is literally chaotic (aka our preseed venture fund) so I don’t actively seek stimulus.
I just have a few more things to get through over the next couple of weeks but I am getting glimmers of stability and quiet. Which I very much want and need. Just need to hold it together a little longer.
I’ve been running around keeping a busy schedule while I’m on the road for a few weeks on the west coast.
I had a number of things I wanted to do today but I’m so tuckered out I have been slowly passing on everything.
My stomach is upset, I’ve got a migraine that isn’t quitting and everything hurts. So pardon me for the interruption in my regularly scheduled posting but I am going to attempt one of those sixteen hours of sleep nights in the hope that any issues can be fixed with rest.
I am usually a very dedicated Black Friday shopper. Once you’ve worked retail it’s hard to shop full price. Black Friday used to offer good value for many categories but now it’s a free for all of inconveniences and debatable deals.
I however grew up into an adult who budgeted carefully and “buy nothing” is a futile gesture when you only buy on sale. If you had any kind of specific taste it usually required some creativity to afford what you wanted even in the pre-inflationary world.
And here I am without my old budget pressures and I find there is just so little I want or need at the moment. I have the luxury of being able to buy nothing.
Classic only on sale Black Friday purchases like Uniqlo puffer coats or cosmetic sets are now no better priced today than any other day. I already purchased my specific serum’s & moisturizers and cashmere in other sales with similar savings.
Maybe I’ve finally become so prepared that moving off my typical re-ordering rhythm is just asking for trouble. I can get away with simplicity and repeat purchases.
Nothing on the market looks all that interesting. And I’m well stocked on underwear and socks. I guess I’m back to buy nothing day.
An offensive “joke” I learned from my favorite trainer when I was a powerlifter contains a simple truth.
You should only ask a former fatty for exercise and nutrition advice.
The reasoning is simple. The naturally slim and athletic never had to work for it and as such don’t understand the struggles of the average person.
As someone who has metabolic challenges I feel reasonably strongly this is correct. Struggle that leads to success has useful lessons that ease and natural talents doesn’t always pass along
It’s with this in mind that I sometimes hesitate to give cosmetic advice despite my professional experience. I had some teenage acne and an enormous struggle with eczema on my body. But everything from the neck up has been a breeze.
My face has been clean, clear and even at 40 largely wrinkle free. My hair grows down my back like a hippie. I can get past an optimal place with relatively little work.
I say this not to gas myself up, just that I don’t fully understand the struggle of problem skin or hair. So if you really struggle I’m not your girl.
And yet I get asked a lot about cosmetics as people presume I got my results from hard work. Thats only partly true. Some of it is just good genetics. I’ve got plenty of other genetic dings so I’ll take the good luck.
I do however maintain a very consistent routine and understand the inputs that lead to my desired outputs.
Getting yourself to a Pareto optimal place doesn’t require anything terribly elaborate or even expensive. Women’s magazines and Sephora may make it look impossible but heed the words of Elle Woods in Legally Blonde.
The rules of haircare are simple and finite. Any Cosmo girl would have known
There are basic rules for skin and haircare that you can follow diligently and at relatively low cost. If you give some basic inputs about your skin (is it dry or oily) and give me a budget I can get you 80% of the way there if you simply follow some basic steps everyday.
Marcia Kilgore of Bliss and Beautypie fame has a terrific memetic device I repeat to everyone.
ABC + SPF.
Vitamin A (retinol) plus Niacinamide (Vitamin B) and Vitamin C is all you need along with a sunscreen. The optimal order is a retinol moisturizer at night with a day moisturizer that contains B & C vitamins along with a SPF.
Now you can gussy that up a lot with dosing, adding in more acids if you have oily skin or ceramides and peptides (which I do as I have dry skin). I myself take a collagen and biotin supplement for some additional help. My expensive piss post offers some additional supplement options that are worth it if your nutrition isn’t perfect. Obviously you need to sleep and drink water.
Beyond a night cream with retinol and a day cream with SPF you can get more elaborate. There are manual processes for microdermabrasion, red light devices, Botox (I just started at 40 with about 15 units while the average is more like 70) as well massaging techniques and needling techniques. I think it’s overkill mostly especially if you don’t have good habits in the first place. Check your foundation before doing renovations.
If you just do the basics morning and night consistently (which can be fit in one or two products) you don’t shouldn’t to go hard until nailing the basics.
Unless looking good is a professional obligation it’s wasted time and money. Just do the basics. If you need product recommendations I can do that at any price point from drugstore to the luxury houses. It’s obviously a lot of fun if you are into it and I am so just hit me up.
Running red light for 2-3 hours before bedtime may help lower cortisol levels and increase melatonin production. Plus it gives your bedroom a fun boudoir vibe so we thought why not try it?
Philips Hue 60W Bulbs
We bought a set of Philip Hue bulbs for the three lamps in our bedroom. They sell their own automation systems to manage your thoughts but we already use Home Assistant from the Open Home Foundation for automation because it allows us to run basically everything entirely locally with no cloud dependence or internet access.
For our existing lighting we use a combo of Lutron Caseta (for built in lighting) and Philips Hue bulbs (for plug in lamps). For the purposes of the red light experiment in the bedroom, we are using all plug in lamps.
For the Hue bulbs, instead of using the Hue Bridge and the Hue App, we use the built in Zigbee radios to pair directly to Home Assistant.
Phillips should be commended for using open protocols and enabling users to use these non-proprietary standards. Interoperability is good.
To achieve the light color changes we wanted, there is a plugin called “adaptive lighting” that automatically color and brightness shifts the bulbs through the day (subject to plenty of configuration options).
In our case, Alex set them to go very red (1000K) while also limiting the sunrise to no later than 6am and the sunset locked to 630p in order to fit into our routine and preferred bed timings.
iPhones have an automatic white balance on their cameras but it is actually quite red at night
The lights mostly work automatically but for when manually control is wanted, there are Zigbee remotes on each side of the bed as well as Home Assistant bridged to Apple HomeKit so everything can be controlled via the Apple Home app or through Siri.
It may sound complicated but there are plenty of tutorials in the open source community to help guide you. As we get more data from our own biometric tracking I’ll be sure to discuss it here and on Twitter.
I’m so happy to be home in Montana. While winter is my favorite season here, the Rockies have such beautiful sun filled falls.
Being a bit further north means we have such long days in the summer that our sunny summers can actually be a little too much. I
Perhaps ’m in the minority in this view but daylight till 11pm does make for a bit of midsommer madness.
But in October we are past the fall equinox. Our days are getting shorter. You appreciate sunrises more when sunsets are early enough for you to get a full night of sleep. Night having an edge on day means you appreciate the beauty of the light when you have it.
The temporal pressures aren’t all gratitude journal bliss. There are a host of chores to be done before the first snowfall. We’ve been lucky this year it’s so late but temperatures should be below freezing soon. Alex and a few buddies redid the chicken coop’s roofing this morning. Keeping the hens warm and dry.
It’s lovely to have the occasional day where you are running on adrenaline. I myself am not a big fan of stress as I don’t see it as a “good” in and of itself so much as a tool to be used to accomplish certain ends.
To that end, I live a mostly quiet life. I love being far off the map in Montana precisely because a routine with its habits allows me to take certain kinds of risks (particularly as an investor) in the wider world. A calm life lets me find early stage investing to be exciting rather than anxiety inducing.
It’s no coincidence that while I called my fund chaotic I prioritized calm in my own life. Why go looking for trouble when your professional life is all about the edge?
But sometimes it’s nice to experience the visceral risks of life. I’m in New York City and running from event to event and meeting to meeting. It’s all smiles and adrenaline and enjoyment for me. I’ll go home to Montana soon enough to my calm life. A little bit of chaos is a treat.
I haven’t been back to my old neighborhood in lower Manhattan since we left in 2020 early in the pandemic. After three months of literally not leaving the apartment even once, I was happy to escape for more nature.
Moving back home to the Rockies was quite a change after almost fifteen years in the city. I didn’t miss New York in any of the ways I expected to do so. I was happy to be back in the mountains of my childhood.
Every subsequent return trip I’ve taken since moving had landed me in various flavors of midtown Manhattan. Those trips were all uncomfortable in ways that are somewhat distasteful to articulate and did not make me yearn to come back.
But I am in New York City this week (if you are here hit me up on DM) and finally I’m staying in my old neighborhood mere blocks from our old apartment.
And it feels fantastic. It’s alive and changing as a neighborhood should. A favorite bagel spot moved into a bigger space. The WTC Oculus was packed with Sunday shoppers including me. I had a Sephora Birthday gift I was not going to miss picking up.
From there we walked through City Hall to see a newly opened dispensary that carries a brand of THC and CBD one of our investors backs. It’s the best I’ve ever used for pain management as I look to avoid head highs.
We walked on to Chinatown for soup dumplings. There were lines at all the tourist spots but our regular spot 456 Shanghai was merely busy. The same could not be said of Chinatown Ice Cream Company which is good for them. The park was packed with teenagers and their parents for a community basketball tournament.
Walking back down through the Financial District everything downtown felt right. There are far too many empty store fronts but the businesses that survived the pandemic seem to be thriving along with many new restaurants and stores.
Downtown felt like it was doing just fine. Maybe I was never going to be a Midtown type. But I felt at home. It felt like being home. Though I can’t say I missed the construction noises.
On Friday the allergic and autoimmune symptoms were so bad I took 5mg prednisone. On Saturday they were no better and I upped the dose by 2.5mg to 7.5mg. I moved forward my absurdly expensive biologic injection by a day. I haven’t been able to convince my health insurance to get them more frequently so it’s a risk.
I’m doing better today. My pain is abated to an almost unnoticeable level at a 2. That’s rare for me. And it makes me want to rush into as much work, chores and activity as possible just to enjoy it.
I’m typically working with a 5-6 level of pain on any given day but I can work (with medication) up to a 7 within reason. Past 8 I’m in bed and struggling.
The downside is of course that prednisone just sucks. It messes up your appetite. You balloon up almost instantly with side effects like moon face. And your body develops a dependency quite rapidly.
Titration off of steroids like prednisone require a steady and slow discipline so you don’t get “blow back” as it can make your symptoms even worse.
I’ll have titration for a few days ahead of me. But maybe I’ll get to enjoy the lack of pain. Already I’ve cleaned for an hour, done laundry, checked off a number of small “to do” list items and I am blessedly free of the exhaustion that comes from working with moderate to severe pain that is my normal daily experience.
One woman and two men with severe autoimmune conditions have gone into remission after being treated with bioengineered and CRISPR-modified immune cells1. The three individuals from China are the first people with autoimmune disorders to be treated with engineered immune cells created from donor cells, rather than ones collected from their own bodies. Nature
