Tag: Routine

Categories
Aesthetics

Day 1604 and First Weekend of the Season

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.

The snowpack is smelting, the grass is green and the sky is oh so blue

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.

Categories
Biohacking Chronic Disease

Day 1598 and Routine in Chaos

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.

Categories
Chronicle Preparedness Travel

Day 1584 and Sunday Chores

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.

Categories
Aesthetics Culture

Day 1554 and Complex Coordination

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)

“This is complex set of variables to coordinate”

“Try to act like you are enjoying it!”

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.

Resting Android face? Data tries to smile while waltzing via Memory Alpha
Categories
Emotional Work Medical

Day 1528 and The Days Go By

My family has had a really difficult winter. In November I felt so much optimism heading into the darker months. As we spring ahead for Daylight Savings I honestly have no idea how we survived.

My husband and I have both had a run of awful luck with our health. Somehow we both got pneumonia in the last year. I hesitate to blame Covid but neither one of us have ever had pneumonia in our lives and now random respiratory illnesses seem to balloon into significant problems.

Now this could have been exacerbated by discovering we have a mold problem in our bedroom. We are so lucky we have another floor in the house to move into but we are looking at the type of mitigation work that evokes “eh fuck it full remodel” in the hearts of men.

Bright side by 2026 we may have a bathtub in the house. Oddly despite living in 4 bedroom 3 bath house we only have showers. Renovated farmhouses have their quirks.

The only thing keeping me from giving into the constant parade of maladies is working with my portfolio companies. Not having been blessed with children I pour my nurturing into my founders. Investing into the future comes in many forms and I try to trust that this is where I’m meant to be.

Categories
Medical

Day 1524 and in the Red

The MilFred family household is not at its finest. My husband Alex seems to be in the throes of pneumonia while my body is doing its best to manage a host of medication changes.

We have all the typical work while this goes on along with a few other crisis management projects (mold). All dashboards flashing red.

I keep toying with posts saying I’ll have to consider if this is where the habit goes away or that I need some do not disturb time. This is certainly a big part of why.

Categories
Culture Startups

Day 1522 and Rollercoasters

Startups are such rollercoasters. It’s always been cliche but starting something from nothing really is a wild ride. You can experience the lowest of lows and the highest of highs in the space of a day.

If you enjoy adrenaline being a part of a startup is fun as it is equal parts terror and exhilaration. There are presumably other careers where this is also true. I imagine mothers and marines can tell you a lot about dealing with intensity.

I have had to remind myself quite a bit lately that nothing is permanent. As we push against a higher and higher variance future I feel equal parts exhilaration and dread. I don’t feel as safe as I’d like. But I doubt I could be more prepared.

The stress of a startup can kill you if you let the stress of the wider world weigh too heavily on you. We can enjoy the fun of the ride. The safety is an illusion anyway. Well maybe not on the rollercoaster. Those have seatbelts.

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 1513 and Forcing Function

I’ve not in one thousand five hundred and thirteen days of writing in a row set forth a m standard for how I might quit. Four years (or 216 weeks) is plenty of time to come up with a criteria for making a decision.

I have in that time embraced the haziness inherent in self trust. I’ll just know when it’s time. That’s obviously a rationalization. I assumed that circumstances would decide for me which meant I’d never need firm criteria for stopping. It would just happen.

Given my health and the general state of the world surely in this long timeframe some calamity, crisis or mishap would keep me from writing one day and that would simply be that. The chain would be broken.

It has not yet happened. No forcing function has stopped me from my writing practice. And I’ve not yet set worth anything firm about how I’ll know.

So far 2025 has tested me. There are many short posts. I have been hampered by health and home issues which sorely make me want to give up some days.

I’ve tried to included more sporadic “linking and thinking” to make my writing space more blog-like and less essay oriented. Backing away from narrative forms is a fine way of introducing flexibility into one’s writing.

I can’t help wondering if I should introduce a forcing function and create a set of criteria for when I’ll stop. But the truth is I’m scared to give myself a clear way out when I’m struggling. Perhaps it’s better to keep that trust that I’ll know.

Categories
Chronic Disease Emotional Work

Day 1506 and Breaking With Convention

I am in a challenging spot at the moment with our household mold issue and my attempts to accelerate changes in my care protocol for my autoimmune condition.

When things are challenging physically I find myself in tension. I want to share and be open in my experiment to write every single day. I am afraid that I’m doing nothing but share weakness by doing so.

I don’t want to telegraph only strain, illness, and struggle. Sure things are hard at the moment, but I am more than my current local minima conditions. Things are quite good.

Just because I feel too weak to articulate all the areas of strength doesn’t mean they don’t exist. I just can’t put them front and center right now.

This frustrates and even angers me. Large long term projects and investments are thriving and rather than focus on those I am curling into the fetal position and wishing I could disappear until I’m able to advocate loudly and proudly for my wins.

Categories
Aesthetics Emotional Work

Day 1500 and Counting The Days

Somewhere in this blog there is a date error. It’s probably easy to find. I noticed the day I did it (I believe I was ill and got confused) and then time streamed on and now it barely matters.

Oddly I only care to mention it because I notice more when things are done in day by day format. We have 10 day retreats, month long sprints, quarterly focuses, if you are large enough to have yearly plans good luck to you.

We asked for acceleration and we got it. Timelines are so preposterously fast we can count them in shorter bursts. The Wall Street Journal has an administration day count for Trump. Today is day 21. Which is a light day involving golf with Tiger Woods and going to the Super Bowl.

I’m not inclined to dramatic pronouncements about the future (ok maybe a little). Humans don’t change too quickly their hard learned ways. But we are getting so much more information at such rapid pace right now that if you are inclined to count the days maybe set some goals for them.