Tag: Stream of Consciousnesses

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Chronic Disease Chronicle

Day 34 and Absence of Evidence

I’ve been rising through a noticeable uptick in energy and functionality. If I compare myself to where I was over the summer it’s practically night and day. I credit a small portion of this to moving back to my home state of Colorado. But it’s largely due to turning over my healthcare to some fairly unorthodox health practitioners.

I felt like I wasn’t making any more progress with my traditional doctors. I suffer from an autoimmune condition which is treated by a rheumatologist in New York. He’s world class and took me in as a patient when I could barely walk a few steps without a cane. Thanks to steroids, chemo drugs, and biologic injections I have back basic functionality but I wasn’t living a life free of pain nor did I have the energy to be out of bed more than a few hours a day. So when I arrived in Colorado and was, through pure kismet, referred to what I can really only describe as a healer I said “fuck it why not?”

I’m not fully prepared to go into all the details now but she threw the book at me. Supplements, herbs, weird machines, biofeedback, and other stuff I fear to put into words as it sounds like quackery. But god damn if it isn’t working.

I’m quite tired from a busy day (a nice change from just always being tired for no reason) so I won’t belabor my writing just to pad the word count. But if you feel like you have health issues that aren’t being helped by traditional medicine what have you got to lose by asking around for some alternatives?

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Chronicle

Day 32 and Happiness

While yesterday was the recap of my month of long form writing. I don’t feel entirely done with the experience that is emerging from this practice. The benefits are both much more apparent (and subtle) than simply finishing what I set out to do. So to kick off month 2 and day 32 I want to share a little more about this emerging insight.

I’m just happier than when I started. I feel a sense of joy and playfulness that feels much closer to me than I thought possible. Especially in the shadow of the pandemic and political instability it feels a bit heretical to be rising up. And here I am finding childlike feelings of play in the midst of chaos. But the more I put out these feelings of happiness out into the world the more I get back from friends and family. Writing has turned into a virtuous cycle where I tap into the enchantment and wonder of my own mind. And as I share my feelings and ideas I get back comments, messages, and phone calls with people sharing their own process. It really feels wonderful. We are together making new things from our minds.

Giving each other permission to find joy and excitement in our pursuits seems crucial. If we don’t it’s all too easy to get sucked into the despair of the nothing. You may remember the nothing from childhood. It’s the growing horror that absorbs all creativity and joy in The Neverending Story.

With the narratives of despair (and the terrible realities on which they are based) can consume us like The Nothing. It’s goal was to consume the land of Fantastica. It’s power is disillusionment. And I very much wonder if this constant drumbeat of doom sends us to a similar place. Our very nature as humans who form communities, share insights, be creative, build new things together, all becomes subsumed by consuming horror after horror.

But the nothing was stopped in my life. Even a small gesture like a long form journal brings back the human spirit. We share it and others recognize it in themselves. We connect and share. And in doing so push back the encroachment of the nothing. It’s a battle we can easily win by doing something as simple as being happy sharing our thoughts with each other.

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Chronicle Internet Culture

Day 31 and The Goal

I feel a real sense of accomplishment that I did what I set out to do; write one piece of long form content everyday for a month. Now of course having achieved my goal I would like to do it for two months straight but I’ll give myself a moment to enjoy the happy feelings that come from finishing what you set out to do.

On the first day my writing muscles felt atrophied. It has been sometime since I wrote regularly and here I was committing to do it every single night. But I was able to get into the habit and quickly found myself enjoying the routine.

The biggest change I’m noticing is a smoother less disjointed focus in my mental processes. Rather than needing to work myself up to writing or pick a topic and commit to a narrative, I now ease myself into the threads from the day and see where my imagination takes me. This mental fluidity (which requires non judgement which is a struggle sometimes) is slowly improving the quality of my thoughts. I look forwarded getting ideas on paper and tying together disparate thoughts now each day. To seeing what strange new connection might emerge from the day. Like limbic memory and crisis or the power of loosely organized crowds

I’ve also noticed a distinct uptick in the momentum of life. That a daily exercise of writing could push forward my focus shouldn’t be a surprise but nevertheless I’m seeing progress on ideas that may become a reality. Because I’m using this space to think about my investing, finance, and cultural chaos a daily writing habit means I am makings fast progress on a thesis. Writing is an excellent forcing function for seeing ideas more clearly but also for seeing if you may have the seeds for something bigger.

If you are considering a writing exercise like mine I highly recommend doing a month long commitment. Do it in public. You may be surprised by where you end up. I covered a lot of emotional ground which has been a really boost to my spirits.

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Chronicle Media

Day 29 and Momentum

I haven’t felt so invigorated by the internet in a long time. I’ve had a week of joyful chaotic fun alongside my virtual friends (which during pandemic times includes my IRL friends too). Without the alt right and their mascot President Trump sucking all the air out of the room I’m seeing a lot of relief. The slight diminishing of the existential threat has lead to a lot of what I can only call silly season.

Just about everyone I’ve encountered has been filled with newfound creativity this week. Stonk mania is really only a piece of the goofy energy. To be sure I’ve been riding high on the wave of GameStop and the other meme stocks (though to be clear we actually made money with a well timed bet on volatility and only bought one share of $GME for the fun). But it’s more than that. The giddiness that comes from any kind of upcrash raises spirits in all adjacent fields.

And as I spend a lot of time in financial and social media circles it’s been a hell of a party. Granted most of us are waiting for a hangover to hit but more than a few of us are wondering if we’ve tilted into an entirely new chapter of chaos as the world grapples with the power of loosely organized crowds.

Whatever comes next a momentum is building from the energy. We’ve seen a possibility that chaos can be fun and not destructive. A sorely lacking feeling in the last few years when memetic armies only fought on one side. Now it’s a free for all. And that is potentially a lot more interesting.

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Chronicle Finance Internet Culture Preparedness

Day 28 and Limbic Memory

Today I want to talk about how this past year has set in motion the next hundred years of human imagination. Yes, I think it’s that important.

Mental elasticity is an incredible thing. We humans learn quickly and have a seemingly endless capacity to adapt to impossible things once we’ve wrapped our minds around it. Sadly though, forgetting doesn’t come as naturally to us as learning. Once we’ve seen the impossible happen, we never forget. Instead of storing miracles and crisis in the front of our minds like new knowledge, to be reinterpreted as new and possibly ephemeral, it goes right to our limbic back brain.

The limbic system is set in the deep structure of the brain where it regulates autonomic or endocrine function in response to emotional stimuli. It’s part of our survival response encoding. Which is why trauma is so crucial to evolutionary pressure. Those that survived, generally did because they took an impossible situation seriously. It becomes a part of our reactive unconscious survival instinct. And boy is this going to have consequences for American millennials.

The last year has had its share of impossible things occur. And we’ve gone about our business adapting to things that couldn’t possibly happen before. Early doomers were dismissed on the pandemic, political Cassandras ignored until an insurrection occurred, and now a new kind of financial mania which Stalwart Joe at Bloomberg calls an “upcrash”. He explains the impossible inversion using 1987’s Black Monday 22% drop.

Once people became aware that such a severe crash in so short a time was even possible, the likelihood that it could happen again was never dismissed. The consequences aren’t as big, but in a sense, what we’ve seen in GameStop could be thought of as a Reverse 1987. Upcrash. A gain so fast and rapid, that it might previously have been thought to be impossible.

Why do I include a seemingly jokey memetic internet troll in a list of traumas? Because a positive memory is just as jarring to our limbic memory as a bad thing. We overweight good experiences just as heavily as bad. Once the impossible becomes real our bodies retain the memory.

We’ve now got sense memory for global pandemics, political instability and positive market manias in America. Things we haven’t had for three generations (or more in the case of political instability). And the consequences, most of which remain unknowable, for these visceral impossibilities won’t leave our bodies till we are dead. We are stuck with the paranoia and exuberance of this last year till our grandchildren are in charge.

So we’ve just tossed several intense traumatic evolutionary events onto American millennials that not a single institution can do shit about. And I’ve honestly never been more excited for what our chaotic future might bring.

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Chronicle Internet Culture

Day 27 and The Short Squeeze

The speed at which we’ve transited from insurrectionist attack on the heart of democracy to every man strikes at the heart of corrupt Wall Start has captured my attention. The GameStop squeeze may possibly be the most interesting story of the modern social age. The first wisdom of crowds moment striking at an institution and doing enough damage to get the beast’s attention.

We’ve careened from institutional faith crisis to the next in the long trudge out of the 2010s. And doubled down in 2021. Because it’s fundamentally the same energy. Tearing down the capital to stop the deep state to rallying around GameStop against the man is a straight line. The age of the extremely online is here

Both events have strong kek energy to it. It starts as a joke. Some sophomoric humor on the message boards. It is hilarious and fun how we all cosplay hax0rs blowing up Big Hedge Fund. But it will not be funny joke when a pension fund implodes. Just as it wasn’t funny when we had a kek coup on January 6th. One sounds like a stretch. We could never find ourselves in a place where trolls blow up an essential financial instrument on which millions rely for their futures. But then no one thought a D list celerity pretending to be a businessman could ride a gold escalator into the White House either.

The GameStop happening is just the first instance of memetic market manipulation. Institutionals will get caught without realizing it. Because mimicry online lets idea evolution happen swiftly. The base reference materials quickly get widely diffused and most folks aren’t even aware of the source. Ideas get separated from the original context, for good or ill. Hence Trump and sedition being both serious and a joke. It’s funny till it’s a federal crime. You may not realize you are perpetuating something with source material that is meant to either redpill or push a grift or policy position. Which probably explains why there were so many confused Boomers who couldn’t figure out how they had accidentally committed treason.

I’d be surprised if we bring any politicians to justice in the capital attacks. But I don’t doubt the SEC finds a way to make internet mob pump and dumps illegal. Sure that would require that literally anyone in regulatory oversight roles understood how meme cults perpetuate. We can barely wrap our head around memes electing politicians. Moving markets is too much for the imagination. Except that it’s happening right now it just may threaten the powers that be. Fuck with democracy fine. Fuck with the capital markets. Now you’ve got our attention.

What worries me the most is despite seeing the straight line from danger to democracy to internet mobs throwing themselves at the markets, I am having so much fun watching it all unfold.

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Chronicle

Day 26 and The Newsletter

I’ve been writing one piece of longer form content on JFredrickson.com every day since January 1st. It’s been a wonderful habit and I suspect I’ll maintain it for a long time to come. I asked what my next step should be and the majority suggested I cross post on both Substack and my personal domain. So I’ve gone ahead and done it. You can expect identical content but now in easy newsletter form if that is your user preference.

What can you expect? I talk about semiotics, startups, venture capital, finance, emotional growth, retail, libertarian nonsense and shit posting. I only occasionally write researched work (once a week would be a goal I haven’t yet reached) but do post extensively about the zeitgeist. I’m extremely online and am happy to share directionally where I see things headed and the bets I take with my time, energy and finances (both angel investing and public markets). If you like culture that’s of particular interest to me and you can expect a kind of moderate skepticism. I am also a prepper as a hobbiest as well as interested in back to the land work and homesteads.

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Chronicle Internet Culture

Day 25 and Ease

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to my self limiting beliefs lately. The ideas I hold about myself and the world that get in the way of me changing. And one I seem most attached to is the myth of hardship.

I’ve fetishized the idea that life should be hard. Working through tough problems is good. Sticking it out through bitter failure is worthy. That goodness, attention, wealth and status are achieved through a moral pain.

I’m fairly sure I got this ridiculous idea as some type of parasitic add-on from Calvinist thought. It’s also preposterously, comically untrue. Like objectively the wealth, status and power in human society do not come from anything even resembling moral good. It’s this annoying fact that gives socialists succor in an otherwise unforgiving climate of capitalism (an objectively true statement that equally frustrates adherents of communitarian philosophies.)

So somehow I’ve equated hard work with good. So instead of pursuing talents in life where I enjoy ease and facility I force myself into difficult pursuits. I rationalize this as noble. But my core self knows that it’s bullshit to keep me stuck in the mud

So I am trying to resolve to not poo-poo that in my life that flows smoothly. I can do well at life by being at ease. I can lean into my talents and enjoy where they go without judgment.

But in the immortal words of every thirst trap: feel cute…might delete later.

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Chronicle Preparedness

Day 23 and Learning Anxiety

It all started with basil. Buying those plastic clamshells filled with herbs felt like insult on every grocery bill. You pay a couple dollars for wilting produce to complete some elaborate recipe you got from the New York Times (because Bon Appetit would never do you wrong that way) and are subsequently bathed in a broth of guilt and regret over your ambitions and poor budgeting.

Now a normal person would probably start an herb garden and enjoy its seasonal bounty. No winter herbs for you but plenty of summertime basil. But I am a yuppie. A full David Brook’s hippie turned bohemian consumption machine.

So on Black Friday I bought an Aerogarden. It’s a good Boulder company so that felt nice. Until I learned that it’s owned by Scott Corporation otherwise known as the purveyors of Miracle-Gro. But because I’m a yuppie I can let that one go even if I’ll cry indignation in public. I want my easy year round herbs.

So fast forward a few months and this is the best consumer product I’ve purchased all year. Up there with the $14 stovetop espresso maker. So I’ve got stars in my eyes about how in our townhouse we can do more than herbs. We can grow tomatoes! We could get two Aerogarden and grow lettuce too. Imagine if we could stack them. And so my husband and I start a familiar cycle of manifestation wherein he and I churn our cycles on making something we want a reality. He handles the logistics. I handle the the desires outcome. Together we have both decent ideas and follow through. The trouble is when we try to switch rolls.

“Oh honey there are Aerogarden subreddits. Check it out before you decide what we should do.”

That sounds innocent enough. I click in on the link. Cue instant panic. Post after post after post about optimizations. “I bought a pollinator” and “I pulled out seeds to improve lower light filtration” and honestly I can’t even type out anymore it’s giving me hives.

Why? I don’t learn this way. But my husband does. My husband learns by seeing. A bunch of questions, and a lot of show and tell, gives him the confidence to dive into a project. He is the master of the Subreddit. A king of the DIY Youtube tutorial. I on the other hand can only learn by doing. I take one step. I don’t milk myself. I gain confidence and then I take another step. I have done a lot in my life with this “one foot in front of the other” method. And I know it works for me. Because if I start seeing too many complex steps and tools or gadgets I immediately undercut myself. I assume it’s too complex for me. A hobbies forum assumes a degree of detail and devotion I believe I can’t ever muster. I’m too much of a dabbler for that.

So I panicked. I kept reading the threads and slowly convincing myself I could never handle this hydroponics shit. Look at how complex all these set ups were. Look at all these questions I never thought to ask before I just started doing it. This panic surfaced despite the fact I was reading posts by people about the identical device I have. Which all evidence suggests I have been using correctly for months without even once looking at a subreddit or forum for hacks.

A hydroponic garden made by Aerogarden with six different herbs growing

I very nearly talked myself out of getting an additional Aerogarden at all by attempting to learn the way my husband does.

And he didn’t mean to spook me. He got excited on the forums and wanted to share it with me. I thankfully caught myself in the emotion before I let it run away from me too much. But it was a valuable lesson in not judging yourself for not having the same style. My method of learning is more any better or worse than any other. It just happens to be the one that keeps me excited to keep going. And that’s half the battle with learning something new. If you get bummed out the fire dims and you won’t continue learning. And that’s really where you fail.

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Chronicle

Day 22 and The Lull

I have two more parts to write in my public relations for normies series and I have a bunch of thoughts percolating through my mind from my first day of dopamine fasting. But nothing has coalesced into something worth writing about for the day.

I kept myself from intaking over saturated news. I had a couple fun social media interactions but otherwise have largely kept myself to topics and people that don’t make me feel reactive. This has has a bit of a creative dampening effect for the day. I don’t feel terribly inspired to say much as so much of my day was focused on internal priorities. Several of which don’t seem like topics for sharing, even if I have generally used the “write longer form every day” prompt to mine the personal. I’ve quite literally shared my regrets on fertility which is as personal as it gets.

But today was a day where I hiked, checked on loved ones, made yogurt, played some mobile games and had several doctors appointments. But I have little that seems cohesive to put on the page. So I’ll stay the course and see what tomorrow brings.