Hello, great and vast Blog World! I am back. It's not New Years or anything where I am starting up a new resolution (and anyway, I am still struggling on my 2020 NY resolutions of meal planning!)
I have not had an alcoholic drink since Dec 2 2014 and I am still blissful about it. Still very much in love with sober living, may it be ever so! My life is far superior to what it could have been had I not made that one simple yet impactful change.
No, instead, something else is bringing me back: the desire to document changes with age. I will be fifty this year. Although I could die today or tomorrow, I am going to act as if I will live to 100 and consider this Half 2 of life. If I want to actually get to 100, I have some changes to implement.
And, being honest, I want to document the (hopefully? age-related?) change that I have been experiencing, which really galls me and sends me down the Contingencies pathway. I think of it as "cotton brain".
Cotton brain comes and goes. I first started noticing it in 2018, where I had a very stressful job. My heart rate was consistently up about 20 beats per minutes into the 80s (it's usually in the high 50s/low 60s), and I just couldn't think very well. I see the term "brain fog" and it's probably describing the same thing- my head just feels like there is a ton of interference, like my head is full of cotton and my thoughts have to travel around it.
Today is a "clear" day. I feel mostly pretty good head-wise. I want to track the days as far as the cotton brain goes and see if I can pick up some trends, things that seem to work vs things that don't seem to work. I want to track stress level, diet, sleep, and anything else that might be going on.
So, starting today, Sunday March 28th
Brain Clarity: feels about a 6 or 7 on a 10 point scale where 10 is crystal clear, sharp and 1 is can't function.
Stress: Low (calm and rainy Sunday, house is already clean, no items on the agenda)
Sleep: Medium (6 hrs, 30 mins)
Exercise: TBD, yesterday got 10k steps and also went on a 5 mile bike ride with my son. This amount of exercise is unusual but it was good!
Diet: Yesterday, was so-so. Went on that bike ride but then had a small soft cone with son afterwards. Meat-free but not dairy-free.
I am cooking today to prep for the week. I am roasting veggies (eggplant, red and yellow peppers, garlic), have soaked some Great Northern Beans, will prep up some soup and also make a huge salad and split it up into containers for me, my husband, and my son.
My overall goal has been to be about 90% vegetarian and 80% vegan- e.g. limited amounts of animal product.
Misc: I am on day 2 past my first COVID vaccine (Moderna). I had a few side effects: I had a short-lived metal taste in my mouth that was gone by yesterday morning (so fewer than 24 hrs), plus soreness in my left arm where I got the shot. That is done this AM, so not quite 48 hrs post the shot.) Also, I had weird muscle? neuro? pain in my other arm, in my wrist area, which I thought might have been not related to the shot at all but possibly carpal tunnel or a similar computer-related injury. I live on my laptops (business and personal) and thought perhaps working on computers for 21 years has been catching up to me. But the pain is gone this AM, so we'll see if it returns prior to Shot #2. I will give it a week and then will hop into VAERS to report the symptoms (https://vaers.hhs.gov/ if you're interested and have any vaccine side effects to report.)
