Toward the end of Q1, I had been dealing with a mix of vertigo, lower back pain, headaches / elevated blood pressure, sharp stabs in my abdomen, and various aches & sores. My initial approach was to field small breaks - but regardless of the time period (1 day, 1 hour, 1 week, etc) taken and what felt like a reprieve - several ailments would return almost instantaneously. Around April, I started experiencing episodes of hypertensive blood pressure, and knew then I had to take a more serious approach toward improving my health.

I’ve been offline - fully phone and PC-less - recovering week-by-week, while building structure around exercise, sleep, posture and recognizing/processing stress. I’ve been working an average of 75-80 hrs/wk. through most of my 20s - and though I am thankful to have learned much from these experiences - they have contributed to an overconfidence in my ability to manage stress. I’ve learned first-hand that the ability to deal with acute stress (day to day, week to week on concentrated tasks/projects) does not necessarily synchronize with upgrading adaptation around chronic stress - the latter of which has very likely been lagging for me.

I wrote a memo back in Q1 detailing what I had felt when a lapse in performance took place last summer in 2025 (which will likely not be the last time by the way) - to recall, this was a uniquely powerful experience given that the main stakeholder in my professional life up until that point had largely been myself. And from mid-July and through February/March, I likely worked ineffably and unsustainably (too little sleep, too much caffeine) toward restoring not only the books of my subscribers, but also belief in myself. Upon “checking this box”, and adjacent to sudden grief that took place in my personal life earlier this year, I suppose this may have been the catalyst to releasing months, or even years, of chronic, pent-up abuse…

Could stress really cause all these things? In my and some professional opinions’: that is perhaps 40-50% of the equation. The other half is likely the lack of care toward my body. I assure you, the Reader, that I was just as surprised as you are now upon learning that a diet consisting of only Chipotle, and getting less than 1,500 steps a day with zero sunlight, is apparently not “functional living”…