Tag: Time

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Emotional Work

Day 806 and Inputs

I’ve had a very intense month. In the past thirty days I feel like I’ve lived an entire lifetime of emotions.

I had some exciting but modestly controversial press in Vanity Fair about how chaotic the future looks in America. That brought a lot of attention and new LPs in chaotic.capital who want to invest in solutions for living in a rapidly changing future shocked world.

Then we were off to Mexico to celebrate my father’s 80th birthday and I had to grapple with complicated emotions on being present for family and the aspirations I have for a life that doesn’t align with disability.

Within a few days of getting back I had my sense making capacity crash override my brain into a snowblind. I thought I was going a little crazy but no it was because a bank collapsed. Then I heard some dog whistles about euthanizing people like me.

And finally I realized there is no point in doing my own writing in the wake of ChatGPT4 and decided that I’d do it anyways because organic human brewed content from Montana is fun to make.

It’s been an astonishing amount of inputs into my system and I am leaving out a lot of personal life details that I’ll leave folks to guess at. As exhausting as all of the above sounds it only represents a fraction of the work and emotional energy I brought to bear on expanding myself to meet this moment.

Categories
Biohacking Chronic Disease

Day 790 and Siesta

I have been crashing out of my day into a sleep cycle after lunch till about 4pm while I’m in Mexico. The stress of the situation along with the heat and humidity have me needing a lot of rest.

Last time I was in a hotter climate I’d find myself crashing out into naps if I did something like eat lunch outside. I think something similar happened here. There are no air conditioned common spaces in this hotel so if I want to spend time with someone I’m outside. Sure there is shade but that doesn’t knock down anything but brightness. The heat and humidity strike anyways.

I hate this phenomenon. I don’t find it helpful to be laid flat and exhausted by two or three hours outdoors, sitting, in the shade; but it’s absolutely draining. Even if I felt like I had a full charge, which I don’t particularly, I’d be down in the red quickly.

I woke up with someone asking about dinner plans which I had offered but in truth the most I want to do is get some dinner and go back to sleep. It’s just much too draining to be outside and there aren’t many restaurants in this town with air conditioning.

Categories
Biohacking Chronic Disease Travel

Day 789 and Types of Poverty

As you’ve probably seen articulated in thought leader tweet streams and thot-leader Medium posts, there are different kinds of millionaires. If you are young you are a time millionaire. If you are able bodied and healthy you are an energy millionaire.

I am in energy poverty. I carefully ration my attention & time and use lots of time-economic craft like asynchronous communication like emails and direct messages. Like a thrifty person with a budget I am always cutting the various coupons of time in my life to cobble together enough time to work full time so that no one can tell I’m energy poor.

It’s pretty common for folks to be in energy poverty. Maybe you are a parent. Maybe you are a care giver for an elderly parent. Maybe both. The most common is of course being disabled and requiring care. I am in that category.

I’ve turned my energy poverty into my super power. I am like Mr World monitoring feeds across the globe laying back and ingesting information & taking small minute actions to adjust my plans. I’ve adjust my career to fit this reality and find it to be an excellent fit for investing as it’s all about finding the alpha and acting on it.

I do telegraph that I’m in this situation. That my mind is sharp but my body is weak. I accept 2-3 events a week at maximum that require me to be up, about, in makeup and battle regalia (business dress) and the rest is dedicated to recovering.

I’ve never had hobbies that couldn’t be done from bed. The last time I participated in a sport was in my twenties before my latest flare. I’ve not had a social life independent from work for decades. It’s isolating and I remain perpetually afraid of losing people who aren’t in the same situation of energy poverty as I am.

Capacity can be drained further by negative conditions like heat, humidity or bright light. I am the type of disabled person that finds showering to be a huge drain so typically include those in my energy budgets as drains. Travel requires 24-48 hours of minimum recovery time which is why I tend only do month long stays places. You may have noticed I go cold places like Prague or Frankfurt and I live in Montana. That’s based on doctor recommendations.

Certain types of travel can’t be done without significant outlays of energy budget that will leave me in deficit for weeks. Beach vacations have long ago been lost but I can manage a tropical location so long as I stay entirely inside in an air conditioned room. Don’t worry laying on the beach isn’t fun for me so I’m not missing anything. Heat & salt water humidity is the fastest way for my body to begin an inflammation cycle.

I’m in Puerto Vallarta for my father’s birthday and the best I can manage is stay in my room all day and a dinner every other night. It’s a little confusing for folks who aren’t in energy poverty to fully grasp the concept but I feel no more frustrated with my situation than I would if I had financial poverty. Sometimes it’s just the situation and your budgets have hard limits. I’ll make an effort and spend 2 weeks of an energy on a long weekend for someone I love but it does cost me. Everything costs something.

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 781 and Accelerating

I am accelerating into the turn that is my extremely busy life. The global weirding is upon us, as I’ve been predicting for more than two years publicly on this blog and even further back in the press and on Twitter.

I was initially afraid that I wouldn’t be able to keep up with a faster life. One reason we moved to Montana was to keep the pace of our personal lives calm and level so professional obligations wouldn’t overwhelm us. And yet as more and more obligations and responsibilities became part of my daily reality, I wanted to shrink under the weight.

But I am not shrinking. I am standing tall. Sure I feel like I’m failing every day and I hate the feeling that I could disappoint folks who have placed capital and trust with me.

I am however sure that over the time horizon I have set I am doing things the right way. Everything else is luck and repeating the positive daily habits that have produced results in the past.

I feel happy with the acceleration if I stop giving the fear any oxygen. I’m starting to remember how I used to wield my talents. But this time I’ve got the benefits of five years of emotional maturing from intensive family systems therapy. I see my old coping mechanisms and bad habits withering as I bring the full maturity of my emotional journey to bear.

If life is going to keep getting faster and faster then I suppose my only choice is to enjoy the thrill of acceleration and trust that I’ve done the work to stay on the ride.

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 775 and In and Out

I am a bit overclocked. I’ve written about it before and the language is useful so I am quoting myself to remind myself what needs to be done.

It will just take some time to let all the cortisol spikes drain out and the other sundry overstimulation issues to get back to baseline.

I am thankfully not experiencing any of the typical anxiety I have felt in the past when overclocked. I just feel tired and shitty and like I need to had off some of inputs to my team.

I’m noting this all here and keeping it short as I need to get in and out so I can get back to the business of recovery as I have so much to take advantage of in my life right now. And the only way I can do that is continuing to maintain the routines and rhythms that got me to this good spot in the first place.

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 770 and Worst Month

I beginning understand why February is considered the worst month. I don’t want to be misconstrued here as I love winter. I’ve been absolutely loving my snowy, sunny Montana winter. But a bunch of shit is going absolutely tits up wrong for people I love.

But like the viral video says, February is an honest month. Grandmothers end up in the hospital every day. Dogs get old and get put dow. The the circle of life happens every day. Jobs are lost and bills go unpaid every day. If they happen in July or over Christmas, we bemoan the bad timing. Layoffs at Christmas we say with horror! I guess February is better in some minds for bad news.

Maybe we need to come to terms with the fact that bad shit happens all the time. When it overlaps with something happy, like a holiday, we’d be upset that our holidays are ruined. And yet if they don’t overlap with anything nice we are sad that life is too bleak. What moments of cheer have we to enjoy in February but candy hearts and the Super Bowl?

The part of me in therapy is reminded that it’s me who decides when I’m a victim of a circumstance. Bad things are as common as good. It’s cold truth of life has always been that it’s filled with the greatest joy and love and the price for those things is the deepest pain. Nothing in this life is free.

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 769 and Behind

I feel behind on everything. It’s a source of anxiety that I cannot seem to shake. If you’ve been following along you’ve seen some interesting and intense types of emotions play out.

I want to beat myself for being behind. The need for guilt and flagellation is ever present. Then I remind myself that the pressure is self inflicted and my time horizons are long. If something was due this week or next, the relevant parties either got their deliverables from me or can wait.

I will allow myself the space to be scared to be behind. I’ll allow myself the space to be ashamed I am behind. And then I’m going to allow myself the space to just be behind. Sometimes we cannot see the bumps in the road till we’ve come upon the pothole. And I feel like I found a couple expectedly deep divots in the road of my life.

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 766 and Friends

The worst part of getting back on Instagram has been the number of people who said welcome back. Now you might say that sounds kinda nice. And for the extended universe of people with whom I casually socialize, yes it was nice. But for the people I considered to be friends it was fucking insulting.

I left Instagram before my health troubles but the overlap on the timing on the two isn’t wide. Its mostly concurrent. It’s hard to post the kind of aspirational lifestyle bullshit that the algorithm prioritizes from bed rest. There is a reason Twitter and long form blogging on WordPress are where I spend my social media time.

A significant portion of people in my bucket of friends simply disappeared from my life when I disappeared from their lives. When I stopped reaching out they stopped reaching out. My timing certainly wasn’t great as my health imploded around the time a lot of my peers got married and had children. Totally acceptable reasons to be busy.

But I also I learned the hard lesson that most people are so busy keeping themselves afloat they don’t give a fuck if you are dying. Because they are struggling too. Yet it’s hard not to have a sense of abandonment when people don’t reach out across any medium except what’s proximate and convenient for them.

I went to so much trouble putting myself and my entire journey online. I knew I was harder to reach as I couldn’t leave the glide let alone my own bed. So I reached out from the pit of my own despair and hoped someone would see my hands reaching. And a whole world of people did. I made a lot of new friends that way.

I’ve literally written hundreds of thousands of words about my journey. And all of it is conveniently tagged and linked and is searchable. If you wanted to read about pain management or biohacking or my medicine regiment it’s all here. I’ve even written an FAQ on how to reach me. I am one of the most accessible people you will ever reach. I made this this space because I knew I had to reach out lest I be abandoned.

So when a bunch of socially networked acquaintances said “welcome back” on Instagram, what I really heard was you were never my friends in the first place. And that felt sad in a way I wasn’t expecting. I’m sure was true that most people were not my friends. I always knew was true for the vast majority of people. But it was sad to learn it was true for people I’d felt close to in the past.

For the handful that were actually friends, it was a bit disappointing to see what distance, time and sickness has yielded for my expectations. I hadn’t heard from them in years but they still think we are friends. And I don’t know how to break to them that no actually we aren’t. I have come to expect more from people.

Categories
Homesteading

Day 763 and Winter

When we first decided to move to Montana basically half of the questions people asked us were about the weather. “How are you going to survive the winter?“

I would kind of humor people with stories about how I grew up in the Colorado Rockies and I’ve got Swedish heritage. I had a whole bit about how I was suited to this by nature and nurture. I meant it to be a bit funny but also reassuring. I really am suited to be happy here.

But these days Colorado winters are milder than Montana ones. Global warming trends when combined with a sunny high altitude meant sometimes you can ski in a tee shirt. You’d be surprised at how warm it feels when it’s 40 and sunny.

So I really hadn’t experienced a good cold in a while. And even as a kid, Colorado cold was honestly a lot warmer than an Illinois winter and certainly warmer than a New York one. It’s one of the more pleasant winters you can experience and still have seasons.

And yet here I am in February in Montana and I honestly love it. I love the cold. I love the snow. I even love days with cloud cover. I take great pleasure at looking out over the snow in our pasture to the frosted pines on the mountains barely more than a mile away. The air is always crisp and you can really breathe here.

Montana summers might be some of the best weather this good earth has to offer. Between the cool evenings that stretch the day towards 10pm and the absolutely majestic views, it’s no surprise someone called it Paradise Valley. But I honestly couldn’t love the winters more.

Categories
Startups

Day 761 and Calls

Yesterday ended up being a big day for me. A couple projects that have been in the works for months for final confirmations. That meant I spent a lot of time on phone calls yesterday.

I hadn’t planned for Monday to be so busy. I have therapy in the late afternoons so I tend to back my mornings but I still leave enough breaks to come down from the energy and excitement of a big call. I find synchronized communications to be a little overstimulating so I like to meditate and do Wim Hoff breathing to break down my cortisol levels.

But I couldn’t make it happen yesterday. It was too much back to back. I went from an hour long fact checking media call right into my two hour group therapy session. I’d had a few other smaller calls before it as well.

My earbuds were the first to note the issue. With about fifteen minutes left in my two hour Zoom I got the 10% battery left warning from my AirPods. My technology realized it was time to recharge before I did.

And boy was the decay quick. The AirPods went bwoooop and went dead. I could feel myself getting a little dazed myself. As soon as I was off the call I checked my HRV using Welltory and found all my systems were drained. Too many calls has called on too few resources.