I’m looking for my next step in my medical care. If you’ve been watching the blog over the last few years you’ve seen my struggles with chronic health issues and the work I do to be well enough to pursue my work.
But I’m at an impasse and I know we must have more solutions than what I’ve got. Looking for a doctor or research group that may have protocols or care capacity for the autoimmune buffet of nonsense that plagues so many. I have ankylosis & psoriatic arthritis, joint pain & anaphylactic allergy issues along with migraines.
I’ve worked with woo, lifestyle and nutrition changes, supplements, osteopathy, injections and IVs, longevity science & expensive biologics to pursue the functionality I have now to work. But I long to work the hours of my youth and I don’t believe science has progressed so little that arthritis and migraines should be so painful and exhausting. So please feel free to DM on Twitter with recommendations for clinics and physicians.
“We aren’t quitters” could be a tagline from a sports movie, a speech about the American people or your parent’s family philosophy.
Fortune favors those with fortitude. Gritsums up entire pedagogies of successful education and institutional cultures.
And here I am, one day at a time, continuing to log my thoughts for anyone who might care to read them on this public journal.
When I first began I thought the experiment to write every single day I thought would last a month. Then I thought maybe I could make it to a full year. Now I’m unsure if I will ever want to stop. I’m not even sure I know how to stop?
I’m less sure the narrative aspects of this log are as crucial to me as when I first started . I wanted to improve my capacity to write regularly so I set out to practice that creative process.
Having achieved my goal to write and publish each day, it may be time to evolve this narrative into a more traditional blog format from the past.
We used to include links, asides, and unrelated tidbits alongside narratives and storytelling in old school weblogs. I may try to try to include tidbits of what I am seeing each day as a way of sharing my context and inference process.
If the mood stokes for essays (as is my usual habit) that’s fine and if the mood strikes for a log of influences that is fine too. Year five has permission to be whatever it likes.
Hannu Rajaniemi an entrepreneur and science fiction author has a new book Darkome about a world where with a corporate giant who invented a mRNA vaccine wearable and an underground of biohackers working to keep those vaccines and edits available online not available in America but thankfully I got a copy in Europe.
Why do we know so little history? Bogus airport bestsellers are one culprit. Or a bestseller anyone who took an AP history course “A World Lit Only By Fire” is mostly bunk. Turns out that’s common.
“Style is a magic wand; everything it touches turns to gold.”
I began my review of my “round up” for the year post today. I was going post by post dredging memories and taking notes by hand. I’m embarrassed to say it took me almost 7 weeks of post scrolling to realize I was going through 2023 and not 2024.
Now you might argue that I’m tired as it’s been a long year, but just how crazy do things got to be when time is so punctuated with “happenings” that it’s genuinely hard to remember even the most shocking of events?
How is it that wars, elections, and major technological breakthroughs are just the daily happenings? Can it be that this much travel is required to do business? How long have we been living through this acceleration in politics and technology?
I want the narrative through lines of life to be more comprehensible. It is however clear that we are in a roiling period of chaos and even as I may remain ahead of some aspects I’ll always experience a trend multiple times.
Things that were huge this year were trends last year and were mere subcultures the year before that. Such is how information propagates in a networked world. I’m not even fully saturated on my own thesis.
I am hoping to achieve some variation or flavor of relaxation before the new year comes in with 2025 and it’s back to full speed chaos.
Convincing my body that relaxation is possible, dare I say even preferable, apparently requires a complex blend of sleep, vitamins, nutrition and the occasional trip to a professional.
I don’t find some of the necessities of feminine grooming terribly relaxing but even a wax and an aggressive pedicure have its capacity to relax.
Having hairs ripped out of delicate follicles isn’t exactly relaxing but it’s much chiller than the torture tools they use to get your toes appropriately trimmed back.
Winter legs and medieval torture tools
I feel like a Clydesdale with a patient farrier if I don’t get them trimmed every two months or so.
Watch out for the collegen and biotin supplements. They make everything grow faster apparently. I do feel like it was nice to do a little maintenance in the mania. It makes you feel so lucky to be able to have the torture of beauty be a luxury.
I used to have a habit of extended fasting during the Holy Nights. I would fast for ten days between Christmas and New Years though never all the way through to Epiphany.
I have no special Christmas traditions beyond worship as my own family does not do gifts or gatherings. I prefer it this way. Quiet suits me now.
Advent is a season for reflection on the cycles of life. For me the time between Christmas and Epiphany is a rare season. Some consider it a liminal time or still point where the veil between physical and other realities are thin.
Holy Nights can be thought of as a still-point in earthly rhythms as we transition from Christ’s Birth to Epiphany. Northern European cultures call it this time the Raunächte or “rough nights” similarly it represents the thin point between worlds.
There are many traditions associated with this time. Cleaning and cleansing and warding off bad or unwanted energy, the paying off of debts and reconciliation as well as rituals of burning, cleansing and smudging. It’s a time for introspection and reflection.
I’ll likely meditate and journal as normal perhaps with some divination exercises. I enjoy any excuse to pull tarot cards and toss a Nordic rune.
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.
