Shifting Energy

So I had an asthma attack. Ha. That was a surprise. Best I can figure out is I inhaled some kind of particulate baking. But man am I getting old. There's no bounce. It completely sidelined me for a full day and I couldn't beat it back no matter what I sucked down. I had to take prednisone which took forever to kick in for some reason. 

I finally did my labs. All good. My sodium is persistently low and I can never figure out why. But that speaks to how when I'm woozy, it's either salt or potassium I need. My A1C is finally in the normal range for the first time I think ever. I've been a solid 5.7 my whole life. Now 5.5. It's kind of amazing.

You'd think I'd feel better but disappointingly, no. 

They didn't test the liver stuff at all, which was annoying. Especially as I've been increasingly symptomatic since Covid. If I can ever get through to the hep, I'll ask for an order. I don't like being this symptomatic with all normal results. That's what got me into this mess. Why does my body do this to me? Refuse to show a card while brewing the most absolute foulest bullshit.

I will say, with regards to Covid...the pulse ox now registers things like 98. Or it'll show 97 and then go UP. It didn't ever go up for the longest time, only down. So that's exciting. However, my sense of smell seems to have gone wonky, which is so weird to me this late in the game. It's very in and out. I'll be able to smell something for a second and then it's gone. Or I can taste one thing and not another.

Anyway, trying to gear up for the end of the holidays and have us all ready to hit the ground running once 2023 is officially here. 

Teen...we decided to switch colleges for her dual enrollment. We started digging into degree programs and program requirements at different colleges in the area and there's a clear winner with a satellite campus fifteen minutes from our house. If we do all the dual enrollment course work there we eliminate any credit transfer issues for her Bachelor's. Seems like a smart move

But it has raised the issue of how much can she handle. If her muscles and joints don't stabilize, they're going to make things hard. She gets really tired and that triggers the dysautonomia which hits her heart hard. In fact, she's been going to bed early for weeks now and only just last night had the energy to stay up with us to watch a movie as she's finally coming out of whatever this latest flare was. Logistically, when her muscles are that tight, she can't coordinate well so things get broken or dropped. She just about wiped out the Christmas tree at one point and broke a bunch of other stuff this past week.

Handling a full-time course load and navigating a campus is going to be tough. I've been talking to other parents who tell me their kids had to go part-time or had to take breaks.

For the Bachelor's I think we're okay. She can live at home where we can support her. Also, we'll use all four years of high school to take 2-3 courses a semester which will hopefully knock out ~2 years of degree requirements. Then she can take 2-4 years to finish the BA at her own pace and still be on track in terms of the traditional timeline.

But she wants a Master's. That's probably going to be out-of-state. As things stand now, I am not sure she can handle working to cover her expenses and graduate school. She's not going to be able to burn the candle at a million ends. So we are having a lot of discussions of alternative career paths that would allow her to stay close enough for us to support her. Or maybe we move to where she goes. We're open, but either way, unless things improve, she's going to need extra support. One mom I talked to said she took care of all the day-to-day stuff; cooking, cleaning, errands. I think that's something the teen may need.

That then raises the issue of developing independence. As I told the teen, at some point you're not supposed to be with us, you're supposed to be out on your own, separate from us figuring stuff out. It's tricky. Where's the line between helping and hurting? It's very hard to see when there are health issues in the mix.

As for me and 2023...I'm just here to make money. I don't care how I do it. I'm hoping to get big ticket items up and running. I have one I did a soft launch on and it's slowly selling. I'll throw some marketing into it once the holidays are done and hopefully that'll be some good income. I have another one ready to go, just need to set it up on a platform. 

My struggle is I need to make my peace with the fact people aren't interested in solid advice based in reality, they are solely interested in what they think is important and you can't tell them any different. I need to stop being precious about this and caring about quality and just meet the market where it's at.

People want to chase dreams. They don't actually care if they ever catch them. They confuse the dopamine hit of buying a thing (class, information, what have you) with progress. It drives me nuts, but I can't win so I need to make my payday where I can get.