Fifteen hours of sleep and a spa day does fix a week of disrupted sleep. I may need some more downtime of resting and recovery and maybe more water drinking before I have a cogent thought.
I’ve had several day’s worth of poor sleep. My sleep debt had reached a good full night’s of rest at over 9 hours. And boy did I make it up and then some last night.
I wasn’t asleep all of those 15 hours according to both Whoop and Apple but it sure felt like I was in deep slumber.
With earplugs and an eye mask in, I felt dead to the world. And what’s worse is I’ve had an entire month of pooor recovery and sleep
Now on July 4th I have been liberated from a long month of poor biometrics and awful recovery scores. And it only took 15 hours of being in a dark cold hotel room and a build up stress, exhaustion, mistreatment and other sundry social frustrations.
Today really does feel like Independence Day for me. I’ve been freed from a body weighed down by physical realities and I am now free from it.
There is a poem that comes to mind anytime freedom and sleep arise to my conscience thought. A Sleep of Prisoners is a 1951 verse play by Christopher Fry
A SLEEP OF PRISONERS
Dark and cold we may be, but this
Is no winter now. The frozen misery
Of centuries breaks, cracks, begins to move;
The thunder is the thunder of the floes,
The thaw, the flood, the upstart Spring.
Thank God our time is now when wrong
Comes up to face us everywhere,
Never to leave us till we take
The longest stride of soul we ever took.
Affairs are now soul size.
The enterprise
Is exploration into God.
Where are you making for? It takes
So many thousand years to wake,
But will you wake for pity’s sake!
His writing captures something in my imagination with turns of phrase like “the longest stride of soul we ever took” evoking a crossing to the harsh wakefulness of reality. And as he says “it takes so many years to wake, but will you wake for pity’s sake?”
I have been slumbering in both reality and in the metaphorical ties that bound me to others. And today is the day where all Americans ponder how our founding fathers contemplated the reality of waking to the dawn of a new experiment. The American experiment continues and we must remain awake to our role within it. I have many thoughts on this which may now soon flow having awoken from quite a sleep indeed.
I’ve got a comically large sleep debt to work off. My Whoop is screaming at me as it’s been 3 days of not quite getting in an adequate of sleep.
And it’s not as if I was enjoying great sleep for June. It’s possible my new Whoop hardware just has bee algorithm and set of standards as June was mostly dead.
First it was emotional “really in it feelings” that gave me a half night as I woke early as the upset remained.
Then the anxiety of preparing for a long trip while the aforementioned emotional impact hung unresolved (though I had cried it out) which made deep rest out of reach. Four hours is half of my usual needs.
The middle night between issues and my packing day didn’t get me much better sleep. It was a long day of logistics and I never quite came down.
And then I was on an airplane and trying to catch some Zzzzzs but barely managed under three hours. I feel great as I’ve just kept on swimming great white shark style, but I know I’ve got almost a full night of sleep dent built up.
Still it’s hard to feel too badly about things when you look down on the beauty of the world below.
I went to bed yesterday around 3:30 or so. Oops. I could barely write a post as I was struggling to stay awake at all. I did three short paragraphs and tagged it and said good enough.
My sleep was not peaceful or restorative but at least it was long. The night before I was up late (ok 10:30pm or so) and I struggled to fall asleep.
Alex’s birthday party on Saturday was enough to wipe me out so badly that on Sunday I couldn’t stay up past mid-afternoon. Pathetic yes but not surprising.
I recently did a big round of bloodwork and was thrilled to see my inflammation is down significantly but I have something called inflammatory anemia. So maybe a contributing factor to my exhaustion. There are a number of odd areas that need some attention especially in my endocrine system.
The Bimzelx switch is in its 4th month so almost through the loading dosing. I have had awful side effects but the code biomarkers of CRP and Erythrocyte Sedimentation Rate (ESR) are significantly improved.
I still have all kinds of weird pains and compensatory biomechanical problems but I’m feeling moderately optimistic. The next steps are around the corner. And hopefully I get more deep sleep and REM sleep before I tackle it.
Not so long ago the idea of dopamine fasts became quite the topic of discussion. A Twitter mutual of mine first brought it to my attention and it seems it is his coinage.
The concept originated with California psychologist Dr. Cameron Sepah as a cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) tool to help people cope with behavioral addictions and reset their relationship with instant gratification. Via perplexity
I won’t get into the details but the premise is to reduce stimulus so as to calm your dopaminergic responses.
As social media hyperstimulation rears its ugly head, I don’t think you need theory and angst or full cut off from stimulus. You ideally change a little at a time and sustain a practice.
Sure we are working against automated algorithms designed for maximum impact but we all still know how to be human. Breathe, feel your body, and relax into focus on whatever you see first.
I have a mix of high tech and simple body routines I rely on. I put on over the ear noise canceling headphones like Bose and I turn on my Endel app to play Solfreggio tones or let an autogenerated audio soundscape play. I dim the lights if it’s daytime. I love my ApolloNeuro for its vagus nerve tuning vibes as a supplement here.
I have also carried forward a nervous system regulation practice from Jonny Miller. Breathing techniques (especially box breathing), somatic feeling or interoception exercises, and non sleep deep relaxation all make up a part of my mindfulness practice.
At night I follow as best I can Bryan Johnson’s red lighting routine for circadian rhythm support though I remain a highly variable sleeper. I wear re-usable earplugs and an no pressure bubble eye mask.
If I need to come down from the day I’ll do a 3 in-5 out breath and settle into some fiction. I like to read on e-ink at night with either my Kindle or sometimes my Daylight though that is generally my reading instrument for the research. Once I start nodding off I’ll pull down my eye mask.
I had a preventative care appointment at the doctor today and I came away from the experience wondering why I bothered.
I felt like a fool for checking on something before it had become a problem. It was merely a concern and no answers could be found without a substantial escalation in investment and time. Which I chose not to dod.
I will still get a bill whether it’s 90 seconds or 90 minutes which I do understand. But does it have to be so “escalate to maximum” or “just ignore it” as the poles of preventative care? Can’t it be more of a spectrum of options? And because “fuck you that’s why” I have no more certainty on the problem than when I started.
And that’s not how I want to experience the care and maintenance of anything under my care in my life let alone my body. Our house, our relationships, our business, our car, heck our chickens deserve better than “don’t know why you bother” care. I bother because I care.
We have a home maintenance sheet excel, a seasonal rotation system for disaster supplies, and an inventory management system for key household goods.
Yeah, we are that kind of family. My husband has opinions on label makers. I have strong opinions on sweater brushes and leather are.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Sure that’s a very Mary Poppins kind of approach to life but I think it’s a worthy one. I want to live a life where I am responsible to my own life.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I’ve never been much for listening to music while I do work. I’ve always found it distracting if not downright annoying. I don’t really believe I’m capable of multitasking. If a task requires my focus and coordination it will get the sum of it.
I’m not convinced anyone is particularly good at it if the studies on focus and multitasking are to be believed. Task switching costs, reduced cognitive efficiency and mental fatigue are typical indicators of the distraction of multitasking.
I was given a reminder of the strain of complex coordination as I was relaxing last night. I enjoy Star Trek: The Next Generation and found myself rewatching Data’s Day,” Season 4, Episode 11 in which Dr Crusher teaches Commander Data how to dance before a wedding.
Being an android, Data is able to easily mimic the doctor’s movement after being shown them. But as he learns to the nuances involved in waltzing with the partner he tells doctor (paraphrasing)
As Data tries to integrate the dance moves, their joint body language, the changing direction, and variable speeds you get a visceral sense of why embodied compute requires more processing than intelligence tasks. The final challenge? Smiling while coordinating it all.
