I regret to say that after yesterday’s various excitements through my continued ill health; did not leave me with anything for today.
I crawled out of bed for a coffee far too late. Was greeted by marginally better biometrics such I think my Whoop took pity on me by giving me a green.
The trouble with context and personalization? It was only barely better than the reds of the worst that continued into a week of yellows where my resting heart rate and heart rate variability went in the wrong direction.
I largely spent today sleeping because I could t get enough last night. I hope you don’t mind if I go back to my nap as waking up was a challenge.
Quite a weekend for Americans and the wider Persian Gulf. Let us hope it is resolved swiftly and with the least loss of life possible.
It happened quickly. On Friday night policy types were arguing about artificial intelligence with our department of war about use cases and contacts. And then on Saturday we bombed Iran and they bombed pretty much every neighbor they have. No wonder they had a midnight deadline eh?
The original concern being that some fitness trackers break NSA protocols as they have audio recording and other data recording which wouldn’t be appropriate in a dark room type the situation room.
I myself wear both an Apple Watch and a Whoop everywhere but I rarely need to be out of the prying ears of recoding devices but it’s good to know.
Whoop’s CEO joked that given the success of the mission Susie Wiles must have had a green recovery score (quality sleep, low resting heart rate and high HRV) though I imagine she must be feeling the stress now that it’s over.
I wonder if her score worse than mine. I needed steroids and antibiotics to manage the flare post dental work and my body is under more strain than you’d imagine.
It’s somehow nice to know that the most powerful people on the planet use the same tools as I do to track their biometrics. From billionaire founders like Bryan Johnson to the Chief of Staff of the President to little old me. We all wear the same track. If you want a referral code here you go.
When you travel as much as I do, you get pretty good at managing the logistics of it. It’s a common theme on the blog as I relish being competent at travel but I also have complicated emotional baggage about its necessity.
Still I would relish a competitive packing game. I think a game show akin to Supermarket Sweeps but with managing a multi-leg transcontinental commercial flight would be great television.
Alas the fun and games stop where your body begins. And your body is never quite as capable as you might wish. Being evolved for living by circadian rhythms means jet lag is just a gnarly feeling no matter the tactics you use to combat it.
Yesterday was taken up by a work victory lap which kept my cortisol pumping and my energy up. Today however I can feel the jet lag hitting like a brick. I’ve been trying all day to work up the energy for basic tasks and losing. Tomorrow is another day.
Good thing private taxis for burritos exist as I might have simply chosen to fast for lack of energy to make or even acquire food. Though fasting wouldn’t have been a bad way to spend this clustering of holidays. It’s Shrove Tuesday, Lunar New Year and Ramadan. Much of humanity will be in joy and prayer today so that out to help lift anyone’s spirits.
Yesterday I wrote that I had no gas in the tank. Today is not much better. I am barely keeping my head above the proverbial water line. I finished a major purchase which I thought would give me respite for a few days.
Alas changes in destination, an emergency dental appointment for a family member, and the promise of rest was more like a promise of fretful semi-consciousness.
After days of rushing around seem to have swept me off my feet and into bed I still am not quite rested.
I thought I was mended yesterday but it seems as if I’m on the second day of exaggerated sleeping patterns with long arcs of sleep in the wrong places and times. Add in a bit of overheating on top of it and something feels off.
It’s not unusual for me to absorb major changes and shifts throughout their unfolding via some migraine induced osmotic pressure. I feel the animal spirits and global vibes push in past my physical limits and I shut down. I hope I’ll reboot soon.
I am very fatigued today so I’ll excuse myself to get on with it. I have had a few eccentric missions and side quests keeping me quick as we all adjust to whatever this strange moment in the world might be.
I haven’t had too steady a course of sleep thanks to some of the overflow on this terse intersections with reality. A few of them are fun but we’d probably all agree it’s weird out there.
So I found myself taking a nap as I had a bit of a sleep deficit. Now I realize I could do well with a lot more sleep. So I’ll see myself out. The the lights off if you are the last one out.
I feel a ray of optimism emerging like a bulb who mistimes a false spring in late winter. I am in the dead of winter and I have the first glimmers of light.
“How you do one thing is how you do everything” is an aphorism about character that would take a natural born contrarian to engage.
I made a series of small decisions to keep myself still and make use of resources and skill clusters so I didn’t have to stress myself for a timeline that I didn’t make.
I took a few days to back off into medical tourism and longevity experiments. Nothing fancy or even novel. I wanted good sleep and a classic NAD+, Myers Cocktail, essential trace minerala, glutathione, Alpha-lipoic acid. Just good clean anti-inflammatory fun.
I want the good decisions about sleep habits and nutritional choices (sea bass, shaved vegetable salad, prawns and artichokes), the good exercise decisions (mobility and V02 max if I can’t push muscle too hard without impacting my my nervous system’s vagal tone).
I feel so lucky that this is a choice I can make. I need to be in fighting shape or the compounding choices of my health will have the wrong trend line. I want to see our future.
I am breathing slowly and watching a kind of lake effect whip up the water in the pool outside giving a fluid dynamics show to anyone who loves the movement of water and wind. That makes me want to live in our present.
I didn’t feel like writing yesterday. That’s a weird way to start a commitment to a sixth year of writing every single day in public on this blog. I do intend to keep writing daily.
Maybe I should restart. My life was so full on the last day of the year, that the writing I had intended on doing on the last day of year five I simply couldn’t do. I fell asleep. It’s alright I had a beautiful synopsis of the emotions of the experience even if the links didn’t get passed may.
I felt the urge to sleep come on so strongly I wrapped up with a few “oh that happened too” sentences and I was out. Poof! Exhausted. Thankfully fireworks woke me up at midnight so I could ring in the new year.
I was midway into May doing a “best of” round up review by hand when that sudden “consciousness loss is imminent” feeling hit me. I’ve been driving the Dinaric Alps on an adventure that ended up in Sarajevo. I am sure I’ll write about the experience soon.
But now I have a meal and some unpacking to do. My 2026 is off to an interesting start. I’ve crossed three borders today. You can see how I might be tired.
I don’t know how much to trust my Whoop or Apple Watch at the moment but they agree that I’ve not had very good restorative sleep for a week or more.
I’ve never been the best sleeper and I sleep poorly when I’m on the road. I’m in the single digits for both REM and deep sleep percentages at the moment. And I seem to be spending a bit more time than I recall being awake at night.
There is something strange about being told by some electronic device monitoring your every move that you were wide awake when you don’t remember even a little bit of it.
I’ve been changing hotels and Airbnbs regularly as I make a pilgrimage across a strong mountain towns, so it’s possible I am unable to feel safe and secure enough to sleep deeply. But I’m suspicious that I’m awake as much as either device claims.
These are some bleak sleep times and I swear I wasn’t awake for 30% of my night. If I was awake you’d have seen me futzing about on Twitter. Well, at least I’d have read a book till I feel back asleep.
There is something up with my rest that makes me feel like I need to stay put for a litttle bit and get in a proper night of rest. My Whoop is showing me going from a more typical 4 hour range of rest down into the “wide awake” range of the Apple Watch over the course of the week.
And the Whoop seems to think I was awake as much as the Apple Watch did last night so I might need to accept that my brain is stewing in some toxic mix it’s not flushing through the sleep process. It also thinks I was in bed for over 10:30 hours but got barely a wink of proper sleep. My wake time was 30%
I’m going to take a break from the road trip and stay in place till I get my sleep repaired a bit. Hopefully it won’t be too hard to manage.
I feel as if I somewhere between time and place as my present requires so much focus. My body and my mind are some distance from my soul though and I cannot seem sync up the sum of myself.
I spent much of yesterday at maximum attention as driving along mountain roads of variable quality requires focus. My body needed my mind on the job. My soul may have hidden itself away inside as I silently prayed the road would deliver me safely.
I’m a little lost and potentially overwhelmed in my adventure as the logistics of making it from one city to the next becomes bogged down in challenging weather and road conditions.
Hotels aren’t quite as readily available as I’d hoped, nor are they priced for adventure. Between Christmas and New Year, it would seem everyone books ahead of time.
It’s one thing to toss a few Euro or dollars on a Best Western, but quite another to find yourself scouring Airbnbs on the mobile app as sundown nears and all you can see are $600 a night rundown flats. Inflation they say. Opportunistic nonsense perhaps.
Because really who wants to pay that much for a middling apartment in a small city just because you happen to be driving through on New Year’s Eve?
From the Alps the Rockies, variable pricing pops up at the worst times. And in principle I’d rather not book it. Maybe frozen mountain time should be enjoyed with a nap in the car instead.
I prefer Christmas Eve to Christmas Day. What traditions my family had were mostly oriented around the night before Christmas and not Christmas Day itself.
We’d have a Christmas Eve dinner, our one item per person gift exchange, and most excitingly staying up for midnight mass with my mother
Christmas Day meant Christmas stockings and a jumble of different half heartedly attempted Christmas wishes and lots of long distance calls. Much less fun from a child’s perspective than gifts and late night ceremony.
So here I am on Christmas Eve all prepared for tomorrow’s day of stillness and rest. And I am exhausted. My body has sensed it’s safe to collapse into the kind of sickness that only comes after cortisol washes away on the tides of adrenaline going out to sea.
I’ve got not plans. My worship has never required a church. My prayers are between myself and my maker. I’ll be sick and happily collapsed into my own quiet reflection. May peace be with you.
