Tag: Stream of Consciousnesses

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Emotional Work

Day 585 and Rip Off the Trauma Bandaid

I hope I can capture even a fragment of my emotions as I am on the other side of several hours of post-moving therapy. And I am drained but also armed with more wisdom than when I started the effort.

Moving is obviously a traumatic experience for most people. Anyone who moved as a child has some memories of how the change revealed new aspects of who they are and what makes them feel safe. Parents worry about it a lot about moving and for good reason. I know my mother certainly did and she did her best to protect me.

But we know that life is chaotic. Any type of change is already in a dance with accelerating entropy. Expect your unfinished shit to get drawn into the accretion belt surrounding the event horizon of your fears. Black holes are scary because we know they will kill us unless we commit enough energy to the fight to escape.

Sometimes some parts of us don’t make it. They become lost to the nothing. The dark impenetrable inversion point where we are forced to face the powers of destruction within us. Of course, it’s natural to sacrifice some part of yourself to banish the demon we know to be who we are.

It’s actually shocking to realize that inside of you might be some kind of personal Kali ready to rend the apocalypse at your weak side. But then you try not to think of it too much right? You’d rather ignore your demons right. Don’t feed the wolf right? Feed the good they say.

I am here to tell you that the shadow exist even if it scares you. It’s pulling you in just like that black whole. You can fight it your whole life. And maybe you win. Maybe you have that kind of fuel.

But if you ignore that shadow you will be pulled in it no matter what. Wouldn’t you rather run the calculation on how to achieve escape velocity? It’s going to be expensive. But it’s better to know the costs of living.

Categories
Biohacking

Day 583 and Inflammatory

Remember how I said I was overclocked yesterday? I felt like my entire central nervous system was on overdrive. Well I am a little less anxious today, but no less unfocused. It has been suggested to me that this may be a function of inflammatory stress.

I have in general followed a strict biohacking routine. But moving meant many of the nutritional supports and routines that keep inflammatory stress at bay were not possible. Sometimes your only option is picking up takeout. While I appreciate seed oil disrespecters as the natural intersection of left coded hippies and right coded bro-scientists sometimes the best you can do is chow down on fast food. And boy am I feeling the negative effects of that necessity.

I used all of my focus today to do my various biohacking routines to try to mop up the inflammatory mess that I think might be contributing to this overclocked emotional state. I have a spreadsheet of supplements that has stuff for me to take basically every hour (here are the highlights of my 8am hour which is normie friendly). I went hard on making sure I didn’t miss a single dose.

I also took the time to reboot other activities that should be calming. I went for a leisurely walk. I meditated. Our new power cage arrived so I will hopefully be back squatting and deadlifting soon. We’ve got plans for an infrared sauna. Our pond is fed by a mountain stream and I’d love to dredge it deep enough to enjoy it as a cold therapy dunk. Alex installed a new shower head until then so I can get a more intense cold shower.

All of this is mostly just a mental overview of where I am at and my plans to get my body stabilized over the next couple of weeks so I am at my most focused and capable once summer is over and my fall work season kicks in.

Categories
Biohacking

Day 580 and Feeling Normal

I had quite a case of insomnia last night. Eventually around 1am I caved and took a sleeping pill. I am so glad I did as I slept straight through till noon today. And I woke up feeling, dare I say it, almost normal. I felt better than normal. I actually felt good. Clearly I needed a long, comfortable, and uninterrupted night of sleep.

My Whoop has logged a lot of sleep disturbances since we arrived in Montana which has dragged down my recovery score. It always takes a few nights before I acclimate to a place’s natural sounds. The creaky stairs or the shifting of a building becomes something your unconscious mind recognizes over time. I think I’m finally starting to adjust and feel safe in our new house.

I’d been struggling to keep my routines and rhythms through the moving and unpacking. I had horrible digestive struggles from the excess amounts of processed we ate on the road. Then I found myself overheated and itchy as a heatwave smacked into a lack of air conditioning with a side of dusty boxes. I was physically a bit of a wreck.

Naturally I am relieved to feel like my body is adjusting positively. One of the many reasons we were excited to move to Montana is the cooler weather and ample space to be outdoors. My body is in less pain when I keep it cool and active. The optimism that wilted under the heatwave is now back.

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 579 and Restart

Starting over a routine is a harder than I remembered. I did my very best to be on my rhythms yesterday on the first Monday after our move to the new homestead in Montana. Which turned out to be a modestly stupid idea when we still haven’t unpacked fully.

Routines rely on being settled and we are not yet settled. Which to be fair is normal when we only arrived 72 hours ago. I still haven’t located basic items like the Dr Bromners or the box with all my tee-shirts and tank tops.

I could barely rouse myself today to eat and groom and attempt to say goodbye to my family this morning as everyone headed out. I absolutely ate some crappy processed food English Muffins for breakfast and then promptly threw it up as my body was like bitch eat a real meal. I don’t know how the average American eats a steady diet of hyper processed foods as I can barely tolerate something with dough softener after five days.

It’s early evening and I just showered. The lack of climate control is a subtle reminder that sweat stinks but showering feels pointless if you are just going to be getting gross again within the hour. Taking care of yourself is a fight against entropy. And I don’t like being reminded that it’s a losing battle some days. But I’m alive and my brain is only parboiled which is a victory.

Categories
Preparedness

Day 578 and Tactical Errors

I’ve moved somewhere in the area of forty times over my life. And you’d think this would make me excellent at it. But no matter how careful your planning, the execution will be filled with tactical errors. It’s the nature of the beast and you’ve just got to roll with it.

The first and most crucial tactical error we made was not buying backup air conditioning and fans. We’ve never lived in a house that was entirely without air conditioning. Apartments have been either small enough for a window unit or had central air. The town house has installed mini splits. But Montana has not traditionally required central air or mini-splits.

We arrived on the hottest day of the year. The upright air conditioner we bought simply died within five minutes of unboxing. We had multiple fans but those 2 fans are only enough to help with one room if it’s large. And of course, buying fans or air conditioning in a heatwave in a smaller town is impossible. So we are a bit stuck with it until they can arrive on Wednesday from Amazon.

Most of the other tactical errors are similarly environmental. Moving boxes are dusty. There is dust everywhere from everything including books, outerwear, crap you didn’t realize you were lax on cleaning regularly. We’ve got two air filters running full steam and my eyes are red and puffy despite that. I’ve got hives on my eyelids. Finding the appropriate antihistamines and attempting to fight the dust is a losing battle that nevertheless must be fought.

I am confident we will find plenty of other ways in which we’ve fucked up the basic tactics of the move. That it’s mostly dust and heat is a bit of a blessing in some ways. Murphy’s Law is strongly enforced during times of routine disruption.

What can go wrong will go wrong.

Moving is inherently a process of fighting entropy. A new place and a new house are ways humans fight against the decay of our lives. It is a losing battle. Physics is pretty clear on that one. But we fight on as overcoming tactical errors is just part of living.

Categories
Community

Day 577 and Whirlwind

The last few days have been a whirlwind. I probably owe at least a dozen “thank yous” to friends and family and neighbors. I hope my brain catches up to my body soon so I can appropriately express my gratitude to everyone that has come together to get Alex and I moved to Montana.

I woke up in my own bed in my own home today. We did laundry at 10pm last night so we could put sheets on a mattress and sleep at home instead of the Airbnb we had rented. Alex and I both had a moment where we just wanted to be home. And kindly my mother and her husband as well as our friend Austin took the Airbnb so we could enjoy our first night in our new forever home. Even if we hadn’t unpacked much more than a mattress and sheets after the long drive it was worth it.

At around 7am today folks showed up to help unload and unpack. Friends from Twitter arrived. I may have jumped onto a few folks in my enthusiasm to deliver hugs in gratitude. People’s teenagers came over (including the son of the previous owners). I am still somewhat astonished so many folks pitched in.

Everyone was good sports (somewhat less so me) about the heat wave hitting Montana and simply hauled ass to get everything out of the moving truck before noon. My mother and I were on errand duty as we ran across town to acquire food and sundries. And now as the temperature rises we are slowly coming down.

It is siesta time for the afternoon. It will be too hot to do much more and the single air conditioner we brought imploded on us. On its first use. You wouldn’t think you’d need air conditioning up in Montana but such is global warming. The stores here are all out of air conditioners as it’s such an intense heatwave. But that is a problem for another day.

Categories
Emotional Work Travel

Day 576 and A New Chapter

I don’t live in Colorado anymore. I’m not really sure I felt like I lived there at all right now. I feel as if the last two years were just a Covid blip attempting to do the impossible; to go home.

By home I mean I left Manhattan for Colorado. Back to the city where I was raised. Boulder was a city where most of my childhood and firsts happened. My first dog. My first period. Where I met my first love. And where then I had my first heartbreak. Where I had so many silly little personal accomplishments that make up a childhood. All of those life milestones happened in Colorado.

When the world turned inside out during Covid, I wanted some sense of safety and certainty and recognition. You can’t really go home though. Being back felt like an interlude. Like a break where I was vacationing from real life. Convalescent after one too many curveballs. Which is a surreal way to feel about a town that raised you. But it just never quite stuck.

I’m driving through Montana as I write this. My mother and her husband are helping Alex and I move up to Bozeman. I’ve got about a hundred miles till we hit town. We are driving alongside the Yellowstone River on I-90. And I suddenly feel like I am home.

Categories
Politics

Day 575 and Harm’s Way

I got put in a hotel room for the final days of packing up our Colorado townhouse. I’m useless at lifting heavy things right now. I find this to be vaguely insulting as I used to be an avid power lifter.

But I can’t dispute that the high cost of my energy makes it uneconomic to involve me in physical labor. My family and friends reasonably want to keep me out of harm’s way. My role in our groups is to be Tom Sawyer not the paint brush brigade. Or if you prefer a story with less moral grey area, I am the mouse Frederick from Leo Leoni’s classic tale about story tellers and community. I scan the horizon and organize people. It’s probably the original professional path for the disabled. We’d have gone instinct in a Darwinian view of simple capacity and yet here we remain.

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to mitigation of tail risks recently as the person tasked with keeping our group out of harm’s way. The average prepper isn’t much more convinced that the world is ending than your average person. We simply think that probability being what it is, it is worth doing some work to stay out of harm’s way if you can. Complicated worlds have complicated risk profiles. Buying insurance is just doing the math.

Not everyone is convinced that moving to Montana is staying out of harm’s way. A marketing executive and Vice contributor recently wrote a viral essay about how people like him (and me) are walking into some kind of a Trumpian civil war. I am skeptical of this position having been raised in the mountain west that things are quite so dire in Montana. It’s not Idaho.

But I agree with the basic gist that culture wars are getting hot. But I’m also a native of the West and deserve to be there as much as anyone. I code just as much right wing as I do left wing. My plans are to integrate back into country living. I am all for good neighbors and church and building sustainable communities. But I am also virulently anti-MAGA as populism tends to go badly for diverse populations. And I believe the only way we keep anyone out of harm’s way is by simply resisting simple narratives and taking sides.

Categories
Chronicle

Day 574 and Brain Fog

My mind is in such a haze today. We are in the middle of the final packing job for our move to Montana and I’ve been removed from the house as I’m just getting in the way at this point.

I am surprised at how mentally tired I am from the move. I assumed it would be physically and emotionally draining. But why would my mind not be sharp? I’m just bumbling though basic communication. I cannot even finish a Duolingo lesson. I am struggling to form sentences in any language.

It is days like this that I am grateful my rhythms hold together my life as even though I’m teetering on the edge of complete incompetence I am still here writing. It’s a forgettable three paragraph kind of day and that is alright.

Categories
Travel

Day 573 and Great American Road Trip

I am about to set off on one of the great American pastimes. The drive from Boulder to Bozeman is not very long, only about 9 and a half hours, but it is a majestic drive that covers badlands and soaring mountains all along the Eisenhower interstate system.

The I-25 to I-80 route is one of the gems of the mountain west. It has corporate industrial hellholes, the haunting poverty of our reservations, and the entrance to Yellowstone Park. It’s as good a route as any to explore where we are as a country. Even when gas prices are high. Actually scratch that. Especially when gas prices are high.

We’ve done this drive a few times in both directions. We’ve got a routine for it. Heck we even have a specific McDonalds we stop at on the route. But we’ve never done it with friends and family. It’s generally been a simple married couple drive. There is less drama when it’s a duo and much more time for introspection. It’s either you driving or you recovering from the drive.

When we embark on this road trip this weekend, it’s going to involve a truck, several internet friends and my mother. It’s going to be a bit of a larger cast. In my fantasy version of events, it has all of the makings of a modern day Chevy Chase vehicle.

The kind of comedy that all Americans appreciate as a part of their birthright is the indignity and joy of the open road. When you add in vacations it’s a hoot. But a move? It’s a bit more pioneering in your mind. You see yourself in the fabric of life, narrative manifesting itself as intimate drama. Right before you step in piss at a gas station bathroom.

I frankly cannot wait for this glorious adventure. I am confident we will have pratfalls. I hope we do not have any actual calamity. At least not one that cannot be solved with a bit of wit, a truck and one’s parents. But expectations are just premeditated disappointment, so who knows where the road will take us. That is the magic of the great American road trip.