The last few weeks or so of history happening has felt agonizingly long. Almost inescapably so. I first wrote about the concept of the long nowon Day 326 in 2021 after being inspired by Epsilon Theory.
The more we put off investing in a future the more the long now stretches on. We borrow against all the things that could build us a better tomorrow. And we fall back.
Being trapped in the long now never serves your own interests. Your priorities shouldn’t be tangled into the frozen fear of a worse tomorrow. Every day we have the chance to close the loop on something in our lives and bring the future we actually want a little closer to reality.
Having now written for thirteen hundred days in a row I have a sense of both my own progress but also a reminder of how long it takes to build something when the world is dragging at your attention at every turn.
Closing the loop in your life means not letting yourself be dragged from your priorities. Setting those priorities should be in your control no matter how much is happening. It doesn’t have to be bigger than your own life but you have more agency than you think.
The benefit of keeping trace of one’s biometrics that I at least have some visibility into the misery. Of course, the downside is that I have visibility into how much misery. An extremely both sides of the bus meme situation.
I have a lot of reconditioning in front of me. Or at least my health data suggests that. It’s very discouraging to have health apps say you’ve had a 90% decrease in activity.
This week I slowly began the work of going back to life. I attended a policy gathering. I’ve been working on deals. I suppose I was doing that while I had symptoms too. It’s been hard as I want this to be better but I lost a lot of ground and relatively quickly.
I’m now doing all the little things one does help get your body back on track. Simply changed and reminders are most effective if you have injuries or are chronically ill.
I have little routines where I get up and do body weight squats on the hour. I’ll make sure to walk 500 steps each time I get up. I’ll touch my toes and stretch.
All these things feel very hard at the moment and I get blaring warning signals from the trackers suggesting physiological strain when I do. The slog of not giving up is a permanent part of the human condition and I refuse to let entropy win. But I am discouraged by how much work it is to do the basics. You can’t ever escape that life is just chop wood and carry water
There was a Baz Luhrmann song “Everybody’s Free” that became popular at graduations for millennials. It was delivered as advice for the class of 99 and became a cheesy but heartfelt touchstone for many millennials celebrations.
It is a tearjerker and contains some useful insights on nostalgia and advice.
Be careful whose advice you buy but be patient with those who supply it Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past From the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts And recycling it for more than it’s worth
I had sunscreen on my mind when consider its wisdom, I was trying on a new SPF tinted moisturizer as I dragged through my morning routine tired from 3 weeks of Covid. I tweeted a one off idle thought about the nostalgic advice I’d been given about how to live my life.
It’s amusing to me that two of the biggest cultural trends for women in the 2010s, Marie Kondo’s “spark joy cleaning” and Sheryl Sanders’s “Lean In” got immediately tossed the moment their life circumstances changed.
If there is one thing the internet agrees on it’s that life is always more complicated than 140 characters. Coming to terms with we feel about the advice and cultural stories we were told is a touchy subject online. Even more so when it comes to what women should be doing.
We all have ideas about how we should be living that come up hard against the realities. It’s a comfort to think anyone has living figured out. So much has changed and at such a rapid pace that we are looking for new scripts. It can be kind when someone offers you a solution. Let us take what lessons we can from the past as we seek the future.
As I run out the clock on the last vestiges of my Covid infection (two fucking weeks give me a break), I’ve had the pleasure of being extremely online.
There has been a bit of a kerfuffle on the costs of being “a well kept cosmopolitan woman” with varying levels of push back that are functionally regurgitating the plot of The Devil Wears Prada.
Breakdown of the costs of a “well-maintained” attractive woman in a large U.S. city: hair: $400/every 2-3 months at least facials: $200-300/mnth fitness: $200-400/mnth cosmetics: $100-300/mnth nails: $100+/mnth brows: $15-40/mnth waxing/laser: $100-$150/mnth med spas: $1k/every 3 mnths at least And doesn’t even include clothes or shoes!
Expressions of feminine presentation through grooming is what the academics like to call “contested space” but you can probably get the gist of how it through it by skimming Veblen, Baudrillard and old issues of Cosmopolitan.
Needless to say, most women are not $10,000 Instagram models, professional girlfriends, trophy wives or professionals in glamour industries. This spend is extreme and for people who life off their image.
I’ve been a peon in the image business and I’ve been a girlboss and it’s a bit exhausting if you are not young, naturally beautifully or able to afford the upkeep. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it. I’ve watched many rounds of influencer burnout. I am blessed with good skin, good hair, the knowledge of my professional background and cosmetology school, and I have money to spend on myself.
Hair: $80 2x a year Facials: $0 Fitness: $0 on gym or classes but we do have a barn squat rack & a mortgage Cosmetics: $100-200 a month it’s my hobby & former profession Nails: $50 for pedicures 6x Brows: $0 Waxing: $90 4x year Med Spa: Botox $220 every 120 days
I am myself in the middle ground of expensive personal presentation. I like everything about cosmetics from makeup to haircare. I posted my own breakdown above and it’s about $250 a month.
I don’t dye or heat style my hair, I am not heathy enough to be a gym rat (I wish I was), I get pedicures because it’s hard to do my own with my spinal problems but don’t get my nails done, I wax downstairs for personal preferences, I love skincare and at 40 it seemed time to get a light dose of Botox seasonally.
Which is in my book quite a bit of money to spend on appearances. It’s the opulence I allow myself on the other side of some financial success and I justify it by saying it’s worthwhile to keep up on my old industry.
My husband says it’s mostly an excuse to buy makeup I’ll never wear and he is naturally quite right. It’s a hobby like any other. I’m glad I can justify it for work though.
Social media comparisons for lifestyles that are simply beyond most people’s reach shouldn’t be considered aspirational. My spending should level not considered aspirational on this either if I’m candid. I could easily get away with less and look good.
The good news is that for bargain hunters who want to combat hoe-flation costs in their life is that we’ve never had better access to quality grooming. We have cheap actives brands like the Inky List and the Ordinary, access to the best Korean biochemists, and excellent buyers clubs.
I don’t go in much for shorter style week long travel, rather I tend to stay places for a month or more. I’ve done this in Germany, the Baltics and the Balkans with a lot of success.
I find a lot of the active ways people do things like corporate retreats and vacations to be too much. A week of intensity is just too much for me.
I’d rather keep a nice routine and work my way through a place at the pace of living. I love a rhythm. My health is always better when I give myself plenty of time to sleep.
But occasionally when the clock is ticking I’ll leap into a speedrun. Two or three days of intensity lets me go as hard as I can and then sleep it off for a few days. If I went that hard for longer I’d probably need way more downtime.
It’s nice to go hard. It is ironically the best way I’ve found to otherwise go very slowly and deliberately in my life. The marathon of life takes stamina but the occasional accelerated speedrun is fun too.
I was pleased to wake up to a near perfect recovery score on my Whoop today. Because I manage a few chronic healthissues I am a bit of a stereotypical biohacker type.
I happen to be rounding the corner into my best two weeks of the month and am seeing my biometrics improve.
While it’s fun to joke about moody women, I sometimes wonder if we’ve done ourselves a disservice by insisting that our hormonal rhythms be kept outside of polite conversation.
It’s not any fairer to men to keep discussions hormonal health quiet. Culture war nonsense aside, one of our major health systems surely deserves more public discussion and advancement.
As if the bounds of social propriety simply cannot accommodate anyone discussing say the follicular phase for women or what men can do to increase testosterone. Our fucked fertility deserves better than polite Victorian euphemisms.
If you aren’t sure about the state of your hormones and feel as if you could be in better health consider this permission to learn more about yourself. Your body deserves your self knowledge.
When you have to “make the most of something” you’ve already done some calculus of personal expectations. I know I will have try to pack as much into a trip to balance out the various costs of travel. It’s not always financial as time, emotions, and focus all have value in your life.
If you have too much variability across these costs or can be hard to justify against your personal expectations. I’ve been known to run as fast as I can once I’m in motion because I believe acceleration is more expensive than stasis. That’s not always true obviously as staying in the same place can be very expensive.
So when I stop-start through life I hope I’m not making the ride more uncomfortable simply because I can’t manage the fuel calculations. Being fueled to make the best of a situation means being prepared.
In other news, I didn’t eat lunch before I ran some errands and I regret it because everything always takes longer than you expect.
I don’t recall exactly when I first began using WordPress. If memory serves, it was a friend James in the philosophy department at my university who set up and hosted my first blog sometime around 2003. Eventually I went out on my own.
While I’ve only been writing on JFredrickson.com for 1208 days (ha only) the current account I’ve been using since 2008 has an anniversary today.
Happy Anniversary with WordPress.com! You registered on WordPress.com 16 years ago. Thanks for flying with us. Keep up the good blogging.
I’m delighted to be a long time user of the service. I believe in the value of open source software and the stewardship of Matt Mullenweg. While there are plenty of other social media platforms where I can reach an audience no one has earned my trust like WordPress. II use many other content management systems, social media accounts and the like but for my own identity under my own control nothing else compares.
I don’t quite know how I managed to settle into a flow state but I’ve been listening to American classic rock from sixties & seventies and just being in my body today.
The excuse for focusing on chores and what is in front of me preparing for a spring print. I’m packing for some travel and doing spring cleaning.
What I’m really doing is as a form of physical somatic integration as I’ve been throwing back more information than I thought I could handle. Or to put it simply, I’m noodling on shit. My mind is compiling.
I do prioritize nervous system regulation but even with a full toolkit of techniques I could feel the strain before I hit this flow state. It was time to breakthrough or breakdown.
I feel as if I’ve broken through to flow. There was no breakdown. I leaned into the turn. And it feels great.
I am intaking as much information as I ever have in my professional adult life. Maybe university study is a close second but I have a foundation of knowledge now that obviously I didn’t have twenty years ago. That foundation has given me more mental agility that I expected to have in middle age candidly.
I expect whatever the end process of this synthesis will show itself when it’s ready and I shall cultivate this playful ease. I trust myself to find the way through.
