Practice Session #44

Welcome to my show notes for this week’s session of Practice!

We record these sessions every Sunday. I try to publish the audio on the same day of recording, but once in a while, I may get delayed due to various reasons.

Also, I will usually have the AI-generated transcript and my initial notes published on the same day of recording as well. On Fridays, I’ll (try to) go back through and proof the transcript while I add all of my notes.

I’ll be utilizing this opportunity to clarify and elaborate on points that I may not have conveyed as well as I would’ve liked to. I’ll also provide links to further information and resources.

So, on Friday, I’ll intersperse all my notes with the transcription from the audio below (unless I don’t 🤷).

Intro.

[00:00]

CK: Okay, ready? Here we go.

Heyo! I’m CK, and you’re listening to Practice. I’m your functional systems integrator, and this is my podcast where practice is not just the theme of the show, but the whole purpose behind it. What started out as a practice of podcasting, as well as speaking in general, has evolved into a practice of self-coaching and self-reflection while espousing half-thoughts and providing unsolicited advice.

As always, I’m fortunate to be joined by my Practice partner and partner in life: Pam.

Pam: Hey, that’s me.

CK: Pam is also my pattern awareness manager, and every Sunday we reflect on the past week and my progress with this practice, along with other lifestyle practices, as well as theories and ideas behind the virtues of practice itself.

We’re doing this on the fly, so don’t hold me responsible for what I say here. Make sure to check out my show notes where I’ll provide some fact-checking, self-psychoanalysis and commentary on things I could have done better. You may find this and more information about this project at ForcesOfEqual.com/Practice.

Catch up with the Anomaly and the Linchpin.

[01:20]

CK: We’re recording today on December 27th of 2020, and this is practice session number 44.

Pam: And the final session for 2020.

CK: Wow, that’s right. Let’s end the year on a good note? I didn’t know what to say there, but I don’t know… you know, it’s 2020, so…

Pam: Anything could happen.

CK: Yeah. So let’s go ahead and get into the quote for this week. And this quote comes from Stoic philosopher, Marcus Aurelius, who I’ve quoted many times before. And this quote popped up yesterday, I believe. And I also had a interesting one pop up this morning from Marcus Aurelius as well. So his word is seeming to be very pertinent lately, for whatever reason. So the quote goes like this:

“Whatever happens to you has been waiting to happen since the beginning of time. The twining of strands of fate wove both of them together-”

Oh, sorry. I totally added a word there. Let me try that again:

“Whatever happens to you has been waiting to happen since the beginning of time, the twining strands of fate wove both of them together…”

Um, sorry, I’m kind of confusing myself. That last line isn’t sounding right for some reason.

Pam: Yeah, there’s something missing. Cause what- what are being woven together?

CK: …”The Twinings strands of fate wove both of them together”

Um… didn’t I- I’m pretty sure I just copied and pasted that. Is that not making sense to you either?

Pam: No. ‘Cuz I don’t understand what the two things are that are being wove together- woven together.

CK: Okay. I just looked it up real quick and this is what I’m finding. Okay:

“Whatever happens to you has been waiting to happen since the beginning of time. The twining strands of fate will both of them together, your own existence and the things that happen to you.”

So, huh…

Pam: You were missing the end of the quote.

CK: Yeah, and I kinda think, like, I don’t remember the end when I jotted that down and the quote made sense to me without it for some reason, but this past week has been kind of- well, it’s been very confusing for me for a myriad of reasons. So we’ll be getting into that.

So anyway… so here’s the quote, and I don’t know what’s going to come out of this or how I’m going to relate this week’s session to it because it’s- uh, I got- my brain’s not working at a hundred percent today or this whole week.

So anyway, this is the quote again, and this is both for myself and for the audience. So here we go. Comes from Marcus Aurelius:

“Ahatever happens to you has been waiting to happen since the beginning of time. The twining strands of fate wove both of them together, your own existence and the things that happen to you.”

Okay. So that makes a little more sense. Anyway. Let’s reflect on the past week because it’s been quite the week for us. And I want to go back to last week’s session of Practice… and I forgot to mention that I woke up there morning feeling a little off. Although, once we got rolling with the session, I felt okay. I felt fine. And we got through the- the session just fine

And I forgot to mention what I was going through. And what that was was I woke up with a little bit of a sore throat and I felt a little more tired than I have- I have been considering that I got a really good night of sleep. And so I felt like I was coming down with a cold. And so I was dealing with that through last week’s session, but I got through that and, you know, got caught up with whatever we were talking about.

And actually I just listened back to the session before we started today and really enjoyed what we were talking about. So I would urge listeners to go back and check that out, if you haven’t yet. We talk about our experience with releasing Not Bad Advice and our mindset around working together and coming together and synergizing our talents and knowledge to bring about something greater than what each of us could do individually.

And so, yeah, it was a really interesting episode to listen back to, and I’m a little more enticed or a little more motivated now to start sharing these Practice episodes. So that’s another thing that came out of releasing Not Bad Advice. So that’s a positive for sure.

But anyway, so I was feeling a little sick, some symptoms of a cold, and then got through that and otherwise felt fine. Maybe a little bit of fatigue, didn’t think anything of it. And usually- I mean, I talked about my health and my meticulousness with my nutrition and routines and all that stuff around health, and so I don’t know the last time I’ve been really sick.

Pam: I can’t remember.

CK: Yeah, and if I do get sick, it’s, you know, I have some symptoms of a cold, like maybe a little bit of a sore throat, some congestion, and it goes away in a day. Like, I’ll wake up the next morning and I’ll be fine. And if not, it’ll be the second day. And I can’t remember if I’ve had a sickness last three days within the last, I don’t know, two or three years. So…

Pam: because I know, I remember the last time I had a cold when we were in Connecticut, um, was that a year or two ago, and I was really sick for a few days and you were around me sharing a hotel room and you’d never got it. And we were commenting then on how that was the first time that either of us had been sick in years, like

CK: And I think that was two years ago.

Pam: Yeah, I think so, too. So it’s been years

CK: And so I, of course we have the coronavirus pandemic going on now, so that popped up into my mind, but I, my symptoms didn’t really reflect that of what. The main symptoms of coronavirus seem to be, they seem to match that of a cold, a common cold, and so thought I’d be fine by Monday, but come Monday, I felt worse and I was like, Holy cow.

Okay. So this is for real. And then I believe by Tuesday I was feeling much better. Like the sore throat was going away. And so I was like, okay, so, you know, it’s come called, I’ve dealt with this before. And this time it took two days to recover. You know, by the third day I’ll be a hundred percent. But by the third day, I didn’t feel that much better.

Like maybe by 5%. So, uh, I looked back through my journal throughout the week this morning, and I noticed that. On like Wednesday or Thursday, I kind of reflected back on Monday and Tuesday and I proceeded on Monday and Tuesday. Like they were normal days, pretty much like normal work days. I kind of try to get through my routines and stuff.

Although I noticed that I was more fatigued and my brain wasn’t functioning at a hundred percent. It took me a little longer to do stuff than normal. And. I think my motivation was still there. Like all my motivations were still there, but it, like, I just couldn’t get into the flow is as much as I usually could.

And so I, you know, I, I knew that I had some cold symptoms and I was dealing with that. So I wasn’t too worried and I knew I was feeling better and I was recovering and. So when I was looking back on Wednesday or Thursday to Monday and Tuesday, I thought that maybe I was functioning around 60% of my normal capacity on Monday.

And then I thought much better on Tuesday. So I kind of jotted down maybe 75% and then on Wednesday when I thought, you know, okay. So my typical pattern on this day, I P P B. Back to pretty close to a hundred percent, but I didn’t feel that much better. I felt maybe 5% better. So the jump from Monday to Tuesday was much bigger than from Tuesday to Wednesday.

And then from Wednesday to Thursday, I still didn’t feel that much better. Again, maybe another 5%. So from Monday I went to 60% to Tuesday to 75% to Wednesday, I went up to 80%. Then Thursday, maybe 85%. And I’ve been slowly increasing by 5% each day since then. And so by those calculations, I figured by tomorrow, by Monday, I’ll be at a hundred percent and that’s kind of what it feels like now, like today I feel pretty close to a hundred percent and maybe some fatigue and I’m sure there’s some residual effects.

And usually when it gets. Later in the afternoon, I start feeling that fatigue again. So I, you know, when I wake up, it’s when I woke up throughout the past week, it’s been interesting because I’ve been getting good sleep. And, uh, at some nights I actually, haven’t been getting as much deep sleep as I usually do.

But in terms of the total time I’ve been getting good sleep in terms of the timing. My cycles have been on point, so. In general, my sleep has been good, but when I wake up, I don’t feel like I got as good a night asleep as the metrics tell me, as I usually would have, you know, if I wasn’t sick. So there was that, and I’m totally losing track of where I’m going with this. So anyway. Oh, so I guess I didn’t.

Pam: Kind of buried the lead here.

CK: Yeah. So the punchline of all of this was that I got my test deck yesterday. Uh, my coronavirus test yesterday morning and I tested positive. And so it wasn’t become cold. It was coronavirus

Pam: And I kind of laughed at you when you ordered the test. Cause I was like, come on, it’s like, it’s a cold, you’re fine. Like, I mean, on one hand it was, it was the right thing to do to get the test. But I was also kind of like, you don’t have it cause we don’t leave the house. Right. You, you don’t. Yeah.

CK: And that’s the thing, like I got the test back positive and I was just stunned, like on one hand, I’m like, Okay. That makes sense. That I’ve felt this way for more than two or three days. Like I know it gives me some validation of why I’ve been sick for a week and, but on the other end and I was like, how could I possibly gotten infected?

Because I haven’t had any close contacts. Excuse me. I haven’t had any close contacts by the definition of being within six feet for more than 15 minutes cumulatively. I haven’t had any close, close contact with anyone for over two months. And that last close contact was with my family, my parents, and my brother and his wife. Who has, who have been part of our social bottle or social bubble of, I believe like our social bubble has been seven since the beginning of the pandemic. And like for the past, maybe six months or more, it’s actually been five. And so like considering all that Pretty much as close to minimal risk as you can possibly get with, you know, two people living in the same household.

Pam: Yeah, I go to the grocery store.

CK: Right,

Pam: only thing we don’t do is we don’t do the grocery delivery. I actually go and get it, but we don’t interact with people. We don’t touch other people. We’re not in the same room with other people. And we’re masked when we are, or at least, you know, I am when I go to the grocery store.

CK: Right. And so even that fact alone confused me of how I could have gotten a cold or the flu or whatever it was when I didn’t know what it was. And so, yeah, so I, you know, I also had an inkling that it might be the flu instead of a coming phone because it was lasting stolen and it being. Virus or a COVID-19 or Starbucks coffee too, was like the last possibility that, you know, we thought it could have been. So, yeah, like just considering all of that, how we’ve been isolating ourselves and we haven’t had any close contact and I still got infected somehow. Just goes to show how easily you can get an infected without even knowing. And, and then even when you are like, my symptoms didn’t really reflect that of the major COVID-19 symptoms. So even though I was feeling sick, I still didn’t think I had COVID-19. So. You know, that’s just my experience. And I just happened to be unlucky enough that even though I took all the precautions and lowered my risk as much as possible, I still ended up getting infected.

And fortunately I’m young, relatively young. I’m 41 to be exact.

Pam: young at heart.

CK: Yeah, definitely. And I’m healthy. So I was able to get through it. Although, you know, I also had some confusions or, you know, I, when all this started, I was like, you know, I’m not really worried about. Getting infected because I know I’m healthy and I know it won’t really affect me that much.

And seeing all these reports of asymptomatic infections and all that stuff, I was like, okay. Yeah. You know, if I, I, I, I, I thought I’ve already had it. So in, you know, I didn’t have any symptoms or anything, or I did have like some little mild minor symptoms pop up here and there that I thought might’ve had something to do with it.

And I’ve gotten tested before and they ended up being negative, but I thought, you know, as healthy that I try to be, I thought, you know, I wouldn’t have felt much of any symptoms at all. But I’ve been feeling these symptoms of the sore throat and congestion and fatigue for a week. And so that kind of surprised me that someone of my health could still be effected that much.

And, you know, that just goes to show or goes to illustrate the uncertainty of this virus and the effects. And we’re still finding out stuff about it and different people are responding to it differently. So, yeah, I mean, it’s just still so uncertain. And especially with this, with this. New strain in particular that is causing issues in the UK.

And they’re speculating that it’s more infectious. Maybe that’s how I ended up getting it. Maybe not, you know, who knows? That’s the thing like we don’t know. And there’s so many variables, so yeah. I don’t know whatever it is. It’s really scary to think that if I can get it and I’ve been taking all these precautions. you know, all these other people who aren’t taking precautions, it’s just scary to think that, you know, that’s why it’s spreading. That’s why it’s infecting more and more people is there’s so, yeah, so and, okay, so, and the other weird thing is that, you know, we’re thinking that since pans. The one who has a little bit more of a risk of being infected, because she’s going to the grocery store.

We’re thinking that it would have been most likely for her to have gotten infected and then her to bring it home to me. her symptoms, 10 symptoms. Do you want to talk about what you’ve been going through?

Pam: Um, yeah, so, um, CK started having symptoms on last weekend and whenever I’m around someone that’s sick. I start getting like psychosomatic sometimes. Like I think that I’m getting sick because I’ve been around someone who sick. So I spent all week thinking like, Oh, I think I feel a sore throat. I think I feel a sore throat and I never did.

Um, But by, um, Christmas Eve, my eyes hurt, like, um, if you’ve ever had a sinus infection, the pressure behind your eyes that like headache pain, I have that, but I don’t have the sinus pressure or anything else. It’s just that my eyes ache and are really painful. If I look, um, Like an extreme in any direction. that has been my symptoms for the last four days that my eyes are killing me. And so that started, um, what for four days or so after. You started getting symptomatic. So that’s why we’re so confused about where it could have come from, because it would have been natural for me to have gotten sick and then, you know, passed it to you before we knew that I was sick. So we’re trying to figure out how you could have become symptomatic. And then me, so many days later,

CK: Right.

Pam: uh,

CK: And is it, has that been noted as a symptom when you’re experiencing,

Pam: So I looked it up and it’s the most common symptom in children, yeah, exactly. Um, so I don’t know if this is what, uh, cause a headache is really common, a really common symptoms. So I don’t know if this is what people would be calling a headache. It’s certainly not. My head doesn’t hurt. It’s just behind my eyes. Um, so I guess it could be classified as a headache, but

CK: Just to be clear, Pam hasn’t been tested yet.

Pam: I’m

CK: Her test is coming. Yeah, we’re doing at home tests. And so mine was confirmed yesterday and we’re just assuming Pam has it because she has that symptom in

Pam: I’ve been in your bubble for the last week.

CK: Yeah. So it’s pretty much a given, but I mean, if that comes back negative, that’s going to be really confusing. Yeah. I mean, that would be so confusing, but you know, there’s also the possibility that. I got a false positive, and maybe this is the common cold or flu or something else, but

Pam: You’ve never been this sick though. You’re so tired.

CK: But fortunately I feel okay now maybe a little bit of a fatigue, but going through my morning routine today felt a lot different than the whole past week.

Like I, it took me so long to get through my morning routine this past week. I just. I mean on one hand, uh, I guess I’m fortunate that I have these routines in place, so I don’t really have to think about what I need to do or even what I want to do. Like it’s just stuff that I do. And so I just start doing this stuff and it took me probably, uh, almost.

Twice as long to get through my morning routine, which is usually about an hour and a half to two hours. So yeah, but, but at the same time, I kind of took a more relaxed approach to it and, you know, I wasn’t in a hurry to get through it and I knew that I should be relaxing and trying to recover. And so. I didn’t really even have stuff that I needed to do those days.

So it wasn’t like I was in a hurry to get to anything and get through the morning routine and all that stuff. So, yeah, I took it easy, but. Yeah, it took a while to get through my routines, but today, you know, I was almost back to normal and I felt good going through it. And it kind of felt weird getting back to normal.

I’m not sure why, and I don’t know how to explain it, but it’s weird. Cause it didn’t feel like a normal Sunday. Cause my morning routine on Sundays have like this certain color to them. It seems like, and it felt different today. And I don’t know if it was just cause it was Christmas week or, you know, it was

Pam: Because we’ve had four Sundays in a row.

CK: yeah.

And you know it, or, you know, of course I was, it was a different week for me dealing with the coronavirus. So, yeah, whatever it is, I feel a lot better today. And I think tomorrow I should be pretty close to a hundred percent, which is good. So, you know, I can get back to my stuff and do what I want to do.

And, you know, fortunately it’s probably the best time to have gotten sick

Pam: Yeah.

CK: when, you know, I didn’t really have much in, was gonna a lot anyway. So yeah, that, that was fortunate. But anyway, yeah, I mean, it’s just really weird and it’s really weird to experience it. And I still haven’t really wrapped my head around it yet, and I’m just really baffled about how I could have been infected.

And so just still trying to process all that, but yeah, I mean, things aren’t really getting better, especially here in California. So it’s really worrying, worrying to see that I was able to get infected somehow and, you know, in spite of being so isolated. So

Pam: Well, and we’re really fortunate in the sense that it’s just us in this house. You know, if we lived with your parents

CK: yeah.

Pam: all of these precautions and you still got sick, that would be a really scary, um, situation. Or if we. Had gotten together with them before you became symptomatic. And one of us was a carrier.

I think those are all things that are really scary to think about adding in the layer of the fact that we have been so safe and you still got her, we still got it. So like all these people, like thinking that they’re being safe because like, Oh, I’m only seeing my parents or I’m only seeing my friends or we’re eating in a restroom out on the patio with where there’s air.

Like, whatever. Like all of that I think is. Is so irresponsible and we’re fooling ourselves.

CK: Yeah. I mean, there is the notion of reducing the risk level as low as possible and calculating the costs and benefits between that. So, yeah, you’ve got to decide for yourself, you know, what the costs, what your costs and what your benefits are and how much risk you’re willing to sacrifice. But yeah, it’s just, uh, hopefully this is a, an experience that can help inform your decisions and yeah, I would just urge everybody to be careful and be mindful and. Yeah. I mean, this is a scary, it’s that it’s the whole invisible nature of this is just crazy and it’s a lot to think about, but yeah. Um, fortunately I, I feel okay. And, um, you know, there’s that notion of worry for my parents because they’re probably. A little, they’re probably taking a little more risk than we are even like, uh, they’re pretty much quarantining now or self isolating.

Now I think my mom, or I think maybe both parents are still going to the grocery store, but that’s pretty much it, but yeah, even that, like, you know, of course I’d, rather than that go out, but. Yeah. I mean, even the most minuscule risk of exposure could end up being the point of exposure. So yeah, I guess, I mean, yeah, I don’t know what else to say, but just be careful and yeah, I think, uh, let me go back to this call real quick.

Oh shit. I deleted the actual. Okay. So whatever happens to you has been waiting to happen since the beginning of time, the twining strands of fate. Well, both of them together, your own existence and the things that happened to you. So I think this stood out to me because, you know, like I was saying, we’ve been taking all these precautions and.

Pretty much reducing risk as close to zero as possible. And we still ended up getting infected. So, you know, this quote kind of goes on to say that this on one hand, it seems like the quote says like your Destiny’s kind of already mapped out for you. Um, but I think that’s a little too. Mm, mysterious in my mind.

I think it’s a little too metaphorical. Um, but, uh, you know, I’m not sure how to say it more objectively, but it’s kind of almost the domestic stick perspective that, you know, what’s going to happen too, is going to happen or, or what happened to you happened. And. no, you can’t it’s it’s um, Oh man, I’m running this so many different thoughts, like predetermination and Um, yeah, I’m getting way too mixed up, but the thing is like, I’m trying to, on one hand, Calculate or figure out or solve how I got infected, there’s so many variables in it’s a complex system, and sometimes you just have to accept things for what they are and how they are and move on from there. And.

Kind of determine the meaning out of that. And it’s like, it’s already happened and I can’t like go back and figure it out because there are, there are too many variables and I can’t really isolate these things. So I just want to move forward from here and tell people my experience and kind of hopefully spread the awareness of how. This virus can spread and yeah, I think know I’m kind of out of mental energy now.

Pam: can I add a non virus take to it?

CK: Yeah. Please.

Pam: So what it made me think of is that. You can’t get so attached to the outcome of what you’re doing, that, um, you have to spend your days doing what is fulfilling and what makes you happy and what is working towards what you think that you want and not get so tied up in whether what, what the outcome actually is, or, you know what this, this, uh, Fate is that you think that you’re towards because it’s going to change.

And, um, if you’re not happy with what you’re doing today, then you’re kind of missing the point. So, um, you know, figure out how to be happy today and, and work towards what you, what you want, but don’t get so wrapped up in the outcome because things are going to change and you don’t have any control over those outside forces.

CK: Yeah. I love that. Thank you for that. That could go to exemplify how we compliment each other and work well together. How, you know, you’re able to come up with that perspective, which I totally agree with. And I would think that I would have come up with it if I was able to think about this for awhile, but, you know, fortunately we have Tim here to help and provide these reflections and.

Ah, man, I totally blanked on what else I was going to say. I think it was going to be really good, but yeah, I lost it. So I’m going to blame coronavirus and yeah. So I’m looking forward to getting back to a normal week and yeah, I mean, this sickness was really. And knowing because usually I would know. Pretty much get halfway better in a day and then be fully better the next day. And just not getting better day after day was really frustrating.

And yeah, like this, I started feeling some lethargy and yeah, it wasn’t fun. Fortunately, it wasn’t too serious for me, but. Yeah. I mean, it still wasn’t fun, but yeah. Uh, before we leave off, is there anything cool going on with the stars?

Pam: I’ve got nothing for you this week. I have let my self go. Taking the holidays off.

CK: Well, that’s fine. I remember looking at the moon yesterday. Uh, like really cool. There was a pretty cloudy night last night with the moon pocket. It’s like really cool. Think a, there might be a full moon coming soon.

Pam: there is a full moon coming soon. Yes.

CK: So, yeah, we’ll wait a minute, Dan. And, uh, yeah, this is the last episode before the new year. So.

Pam: Year.

CK: Yeah, happy new year, everybody. And hopefully 20, 21 will bring in some better news for us. We can use our 2020 experience to progress. So yeah, before we leave off Pam, where can people find you?

Pam: You can find me on Twitter, where I’m at Pamela underscored Lund.

CK: And you can find me on Twitter where I’m at CK disco and I’ve actually been on social media, a pretty good amount this past week. I’m also Instagramming at disco bleep. And so you can check out those channels and connect with me there. And so, yeah. Thanks for joining me, Pam. Thanks for joining me as always and hope you all come back next week.

And keep on practicing to Lou