Tag: Travel

Categories
Travel

Day 843 and Panic Procrastination

I have to pack for a trip to Texas and I’ve spent my entire day panicking about it and not doing it. Mind you I’ve done nothing else of particular value while panicking. Except I suppose my daily health routines. The rest of the day has been me feeling ashamed and massively over texting in group chats to avoid packing. I just don’t want to do it.

I hate packing. I hate travel. None of it appeals to me. If you’d like to know why I’ve written about my most common recurring nightmare.

I never leave on the trip. The dream never lets me finish packing. I guess my unconscious hasn’t figured out how to proceed that it wasn’t the packing that scared me, it was leaving behind the life that I thought was safe. Maybe I’ll get there eventually. I don’t want to be stuck in a nightmare, packing up my life, being afraid of being dragged someplace I don’t want to go.

I’ve moved thirty eight times in my life and traveled constantly as a child (and still do as an adult) and I’ve never quite shaken how traumatic it still feels to my inner child who just wanted to stay in one place for more than a year or two. If I never had to travel again in my entire life I would honestly be happy.

With that thought I am going to go take some drugs, remind myself I am able to pause between my reaction and my action, and stop procrastinating on this packing. Maybe I’ll cry a little first.

Categories
Medical

Day 836 and Medical Care & AI

I had a little bit of excitement in New York City when I encountered some type of gastrointestinal issue. We’d speculated it was food poisoning or norovirus with our doctor.

After getting it out of my system and speeding back to Montana; we’ve been pouring over the symptoms, timing, biometrics and medicines to see if we missed anything. It felt like an opportunity.

We had three doctors retire on us this year and after two years of rising premiums, we are naturally skittish about health care. Pandemic telehealth reimbursement being sunset is a hit to rural care as is the other policy roll backs as the of emergency winds down. Reciprocal licensing across all states sure seemed like it should have been a keeper. But alas American health care is a mess.

Thankfully we’ve got a doctor local to us in Montana who we’ve been slowly building up a relationship with over our first year here. After his star turn in this gastrointestinal saga, I am ready for a round of blood work and a look at the big picture with him.

We’ve even been dabbling in a few theories with our Large Language Model friends. While ChatGPT goes to a lot of trouble not to diagnose, we’ve been able to run down some leads on our own and bounce them off our doctor. I’m looking forward to getting a look at my liver panels and gallbladder. Maybe tweaking some of the pharmaceutical line up.

While it may seem a bit grim, I’m considering that with enough questions asked and enough clever inferences on our behalf from our new AI friends, maybe we can get further. Sure we are down 3 doctors and up 30% cost wise, but maybe these plucky kids can make do with a chatbot, a young doctor and a can do attitude.

Categories
Medical

Day 834 and Inside Out

I had a really rough night last night. It’s entirely possible my original theory of industrial lettuce wasn’t the whole picture.

For a little timeline clarification. Yesterday, I woke up with stomach troubles after eating agribusiness salad chain for dinner on Wednesday. I had meetings on Thursday so I took some varied drug store tummy medicines and gutted it out. I even had a very fun time at my meetings. But then as the adrenaline of the day wained I was heading towards disaster. The nausea and had was getting worse.

I realized I couldn’t attended a dinner with some old friends but Alex was fine. I told him to pick up some Tums on the way home. As his dinner wore on my symptoms got worse and worse.

I felt like I was beach ball ready to pop. My stomach was distended so far I felt like I had back problems my stomach pushed out so far. I was tight Mike a drum. The pain and nausea consumed my focus. Around 7:30 or so I called Alex saying I needed a doctor or a visit to urgent care. I couldn’t tolerate it any longer.

Blessedly our doctor in Montana called back almost immediately. He had just personally had a case of stomach flu or norovirus himself and mentioned it was trending up nationwide. At that point I was mostly moaning and curled into a ball from the nausea and gas. He prescribed an antispasmodic called dicyclomine. It helps calm stomach cramping.

I had an hour of crying and praying waiting for it to kick in. I’m sure I scared the shit out of the other hotel guests with the moaning and crying. I was begging Alex to please fix it. To find something else I could take. To do literally anything to relieve me of this horror. Thankfully around 930pm or so it kicked in fully. How do I know?

I was able to vomit. A lot. Seven times over the course of half an hour. And then I was fine. My stomach deflated down to a normal size. The nausea abated. The pain and cramping subsided. Four hours of intense misery has passed with a drug that turned me inside out.

I spent all of Friday in bed sleeping it off. I missed all my meetings and couldn’t eat anything till dinner time came around. I’m having some soup and I suspect I’ll simply pass out. New York is an inside out kind of place sometimes and I’ll just have to live with it.

Categories
Culture Homesteading

Day 828 and Unscheduled

One of the things I’ve done to treasure about Montana is easy it is to hang out with people if that’s what you want. Maybe it’s the community we’ve cultivated, or maybe it’s just the people who gravitate to the Rocky Mountains, but it’s just really conducive to normal unscheduled human time together. People just hang out.

Now sure we live in a pretty special weirdo valley with Gallatin. I’m a child of a weirdo mountain town valley. Boulder and Bozeman remain very fundamentally similar attitudes on life even if in Montana you’ve got way more space. People are friendly and people are weird. The tolerance and acceptance is what you’d expect from a high trust culture.

I’ve got trips to big cities ahead of me. I’ll be in New York City in the coming weeks. It only took a half dozen texts to block my calendar for a full 72 hours in Manhattan. There is surprisingly little room for chill hangs. Honestly I was impressed so many people wanted to spend time with me. But also booking out that time is how New York works. The days are scheduled.

I’d prefer a world where it’s simple to say just come on over. We can do that in Montana. Friends come over. We always have house guests. But in a city I can’t afford to just rent out a whole bar or event space so it’s not like I can have a big gathering unless the weather is good enough for the park. So perhaps that’s just the nature of higher competition venues.

But I will say it’s awfully nice to just have amazing people just hang out and be normal with you. Maybe you go for a meal. Maybe you have folks over for a beer. Sometimes people bring their dogs. And it’s just a real nice way to live. Lots of space to be private and plenty of joy to be found in occasionally being a social animal.

Categories
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
Politics Travel

Day 787 and Feeling Rich

I accidentally shattered the glass on a social phenomenon that my husband hadn’t consciously noticed till I brought it up. There is a fondness among rich white wealthy countries for taking vacations in places where they feel richer. It’s not good enough to be middle class in a wealthy country, the goal is feeling wealthier in a poorer one.

The British have Thailand, the Americans have Mexico, and apparently the Germans have Mallorca but you could probably spend half an hour naming places in which first world white populations like to go on vacation to feel richer than they actually are in their home country.

It’s just particularly acute with Americans, especially our Boomer class elders. The American middle class loves to feel rich. And we are rich comparatively. We are in the global 10% every last one of us. The poorest American is almost astonishingly better off.

It’s a part of the God given inherent manifest destiny of our mythos that all Americans are rich and it checks out when you compare us to other economies. But what happens when you don’t feel rich at home?

Apparently you go abroad because being rich and living in luxury aren’t the same thing. Plenty of Americans don’t feel rich. It’s a source of intense insecurity and much of our national politics reflects the desire of Americans wanting “being rich” to mean living in luxury in comparison to someone else.

I don’t fully understand it or even like it but I’m experiencing it in Mexico right now and it’s not an entirely comfortable existential experience.

Categories
Chronic Disease Travel

Day 786 and Snow Birds

I woke up at 5am this morning to begin my journey from Bozeman to Puerto Vallarta. My father’s 80th birthday celebration is taking place in the appropriately warm tropical conditions so favored by retired snow birds. And it’s his party so he gets to chose his favorite location for us to gather to celebrate him.

Both my father and I live in Montana, but he tends to prefer travel more than me by a wide margin. I travel mostly for work and family obligations. I don’t find travel to be fun or an enjoyable luxury. Vacations aren’t my thing. Especially when it involves travel to somewhere hot. I would have been happy to celebrate in the -20 in Glacier personally.

Most of dislike of travel comes down to not caring for hot weather because of how much it hurts my body. It makes my spine swell. Humidity and heat are my enemy. I live in Montana partially for health reasons as anything above about 75 kicks in some of my inflammation issues.

Add in the additional strain on the spine of sitting in uncomfortable seats for hours and I’m currently struggling mightily not to wail uncontrollably from the pain. I desperately want to lay flat to ease some of the tension that has built up from needing to hold my body still and upright in uncomfortable airplane seats. I don’t want anyone to see that I’m barely holding back tears because the pain is so bad.

Alex got tisked by the flight attendant for trying to retrieve some of medication as we’ve got one of those useless bulkhead seats. It’s a terrible choice for even a modest disability as all the things that keep me functional in my travel bag were immediately whisked into overhead compartments. We didn’t do it fast enough and the attendant hovered asking that we hurry it up.

I haven’t done short haul flights in a while as most of my travel has been flat lay seats on international overnights. I wasn’t prepared for how much sitting up in a tight domestic airline seat would hurt. All I want to do is lay flat on a bed for 24 hours after this.

I’m on an airplane packed to the gills with Lily Pulitzer knock off wearing Boomer blondes and their salmon shirt wearing deeply tanned husbands. They all seem cheerful and excited to be headed to Mexico. Snowbirds are a colorful species. An exotic and hopefully endangered species that will eventually give way to more local and regional appreciation as the next generation of travelers pursues less Jimmy Buffet stylings.

Categories
Emotional Work Startups

Day 785 and Not Overwhelmed

Life feels pretty nonstop for me at the moment. I’ve got three deals I’m working on that are about to go out for fundraising, I’ve got my own fundraising to do, and I’ve got eyes on me from press. Normally this would be a full plate for me but I am taking a trip to celebrate my father’s 80th Birthday this week.

Normally I’d be panicking about packing. And I did have a few little moments of anxiety about getting everything done today. But I’m actually looking forward to the trip even as I have all this professional excitement.

My father loves startups. He just lives for everything about technology. He never missed a Comdex when I was a kid. He still goes to CES even now just to see what might be out there. His enthusiasm for this world is clearly where I got it.

So I think I might be looking forward to bringing all of the energy around chaotic.capital to his birthday. My father wasn’t a particularly demonstrative father but I know he’s really proud of the career I’ve pursued. So it seems fitting that for a celebration of his life and this major milestone that I get to bring some of the world he loves so much with me.