ERE Adventuring

[NuncFluens]

Yeah, I held back on the cancer thing because it always sounds cooky, even if there is evidence to back it up. That's just a thing people need to find out for themselves :p
In general I think mushroom supplementation might be overblown for the regular dude, especially if you listen to Tim Ferris advertising Four Sigmatic Tea or Joe Rogan's Shroom TECH supplement. But I'm willing to be positively surprised.

[Alphaville]

especially if you listen to

lol, NO.

but yeah interesting stuff regardless.

was also surprised by your tree identification skills

[ertyu]

Buying supplements peddled by dudes who want to take subtle advantage of how other dudes don't quite feel like the alpha male they wish they were is against my religious beliefs. Some names in this list are the above mentioned two. But also any product peddled by Peterson.

[Alphaville]

But also any product peddled by Peterson.

100% salted beef?

[NuncFluens]

was also surprised by your tree identification skills

Me too! Apparently if you google each and every tree you can think of you find the right one eventually
If it wasn't for the leaf I would have gone with oak tree, though, so good thing that was there.

Buying supplements peddled by dudes who want to take subtle advantage of how other dudes don't quite feel like the alpha male they wish they were is against my religious beliefs. Some names in this list are the above mentioned two. But also any product peddled by Peterson.

Bonus points if the product is actually called "Alpha Male" .

[Alphaville]

Bonus points if the product is actually called "Alpha Male" .

the label... it's a baboooooooooon!!!

one can't make up this stuff....

[Stahlmann]

I haven't been smartest in lifestyle design (difficult to be Diogenes these days...) so dabbled in supplements/"biohacking". Turkey tail is good stuff. I tried tablets (so I outsourced my health to no name supplement company).

Still hesitating on planting own stuff. Worried with concentration of active ingredient per mushroom (outsourcing my health to my own devices).

Check out reishi or cordyceps or... it's bottomless pit. It's like booze for specific people (not me ).

BTW, with diminishing role of church, rising of authorities in forms of youtube "superstars" is interesting. Yea, I'm from generation "I've found this on internet...", but not "I've seen this youtuber").

[NuncFluens]

Yeah... I had my share of colorful powders when I started strength training too. With my interest in mushrooms growing I find myself wanting to try those, but I'm afraid it's just the same letdown all over again. I guess as long as I can pick them from the woods it won't cost me any money, at least.

What I got really good at, however, is not listening to those "superstars" anymore :p

[Alphaville]

ive seen reishi and cordiceps at the hippie store for ages. never bothered due to absurd prices and ridiculous claims.

but the wild mushrooms seem like a nice added bonus to a good hike and some fun explorations. not about the merchandise.

as for biohacking: i can vouch for the magic powers of nice organic red cabbages to liven up a winter diet. such fine vegetables--and so crunchy!

[NuncFluens]

Work
We are now on iteration no. 10 of the infamous slide deck, but something has changed. I had to prepare another presentation for tomorrow's end-of-project meeting and found myself applying all the tips from the marketing team. Not only did it cut down the time I needed considerably, as I left out all the text and used pictures instead, but it also was kind of fun. And somehow that flipped a switch, it seems. As I went back to the neverending slide-deck it was actually fun, too. I'm very confused, but I take it.

Work-Life Balance
The 3rd week of my hard-boundaries-around-work experiment is coming to a close tomorrow. I had to work a bit on Wednesday (started late, stopped early), so I'll take additional time off next week to compensate. I stuck to my other self-set boundaries, though, which I'll document here in short for future me:

• I do not check work on off-days. No mails, no opening the team chat, no nothing. I even interrupt my internal monologue everytime work starts pushing in. I've also set times for when I start work (at the earliest) and end work (at the latest), so I'm working from 8AM to 5PM at most.

• I am now planning my daily work in 4 chunks of 90 minutes each morning. These are mostly single-purpose blocks, although they might be interrupted by colleagues in dire need. Busywork is done at the end of these blocks, if the primary goal has been reached already. If I get too much busywork I set aside a dedicated block for that too. This leaves a lot of time for integration of new insights i.e. coffee, food, lazing about.

• I'm also trying to let go of perfection/need to please. I am the kind of person who wants to be good at whatever I do, or else I lose motivation. In the past, this has depended mostly on external approval. Now I'm trying to set "worthy" goals in the hopes that achieving them might give me a sense of accomplishment. At the same time I'm working on my arrogance, as in not worrying that I will be let go when I occassionally disappoint.

I do have some problems with that approach, though. As I'm contracting (as in pulling together) my working time now, I can't ease off and do things at a later time. I feel like I need to be switched on now, and make the most of the little time I alloted to work or else I won't be able to enjoy my free time. This leads to all kinds of strange and contradictory feelings.

Sunday evening I felt anxious about everything I would have to get done this week. As I refused to think about work on a sunday, I had no way of making sure if this was justified. Monday morning I time-blocked the most important things in advance and found that I had lots of time left. Tuesday I broke our system and spent the whole day fixing it, so I had to move time-blocks around and was in a hurry again. And right now I have an hour left tomorrow morning to prepare for a meeting. I feel like I could prepare today and quell the anxiety, but it's after 5PM, so I shouldn't. I have no idea what the healthy option is here, so I stick to the plan and ignore work for now.

All this leaves me wondering if this is just one big hump I need to get over. Maybe I've learned some unhealthy behaviors that make it extra hard to change and all will be easier once I got used to this new life of mine. And maybe I am learning new unhealthy behaviors by setting the boundaries too hard. This is really tricky right now :/

[Alphaville]

Monday morning I time-blocked the most important things in advance and found that I had lots of time left.

hahahaha! great!

you can now enjoy longer coffee breaks, and read mycology websites while you space out, but *don't tell the boss*

remember that workweeks are designed with the average worker in mind.

if your work is above average, you can do more more more more, get promotions, do more more more.... which is careerism, or living for your work. some people are wired for that. specialist salaried professional.

or.... you can get results fast, pocket the free time, profit. this is closer to ere or tim ferris or other work hacking type stuff. (but this is between you & your deity, no need to blab about it to coworkers, etc., who might be jealous and sabotage, or the boss who might put more on your plate.)

check out maybe @viktor k's journal who claims to work only 2h/week and get paid full time based on superior productivity? or something. i can't verify his claims but sounds like an appealing setup...

--

eta: one thing to add is that work is a social thing and making your colleagues look bad by doing more work in less time can disturb the ecological balance. so there's an ethical argument to pace yourself and enjoy breaks while everyone else is sweating to catch up. i.e., not making other people redundant. especially if you're not a careerist. if you're a careerist, then it's the olympic games and you must race for the gold. but which path-- is your choice.

[NuncFluens]

hahahaha! great!

you can now enjoy longer coffee breaks, and read mycology websites while you space out, but *don't tell the boss*

remember that workweeks are designed with the average worker in mind.

if your work is above average, you can do more more more more, get promotions, do more more more.... which is careerism, or living for your work. some people are wired for that. specialist salaried professional.

or.... you can get results fast, pocket the free time, profit. this is closer to ere or tim ferris or other work hacking type stuff. (but this is between you & your deity, no need to blab about it to coworkers, etc., who might be jealous and sabotage, or the boss who might put more on your plate.)

check out maybe @viktor k's journal who claims to work only 2h/week and get paid full time based on superior productivity? or something. i can't verify his claims but sounds like an appealing setup...

In my head I know this, but I have no intuition whatsoever of where I stand productivity-wise, so the belly says to work more. I blame this on the home office, as I just can't see that the others are taking hour-long coffe breaks anymore. I know that they do, of course, but it's hard to be sure when I can't see it . Maybe I'll just need to ride this out for a few weeks to get to the point where it feels okay.

I will have to check out viktor k's journal. If those 2h/week are true I might have a lot to learn there

eta: one thing to add is that work is a social thing and making your colleagues look bad by doing more work in less time can disturb the ecological balance. so there's an ethical argument to pace yourself and enjoy breaks while everyone else is sweating to catch up. i.e., not making other people redundant. especially if you're not a careerist. if you're a careerist, then it's the olympic games and you must race for the gold. but which path-- is your choice.

Again, this has gotten harder with home office, as the "ecological balance" was kind of keeping itself when people were constantly interrupting me for coffee or reading over their e-mails to make sure they are adequate. The slack was built-in before, but now I have to create it on purpose, or end up being stressed all the time :/

---

A few thoughts on my last post came to me yesterday:

• I have little compassion for myself. When I think back to dieting for fitness reasons it was basically the same. I'm the kind of person to stick to the plan as written until I drop. Which isn't a bad thing in itself, as sometimes things just suck and I need to get through to the other side. But I might be overdoing it by trying to be extra hardcore. This insight also made me feel okay about working 5 days this week instead of the 4 days that I had planned, as I was beating myself up about that (Failure! Failure!).

• I have a problem with letting go of unfinished work. Possible things to handle this: Separating work-ToDos from life-ToDos so I won't have them there on the page when I open my journal, implementing an end-of-work ritual, and re-reading "Getting Things Done" with regards to building trust in my "trusted system" and "closing the loop".

But overall I decided to stick to the hard-boundaries 4-days-a-week plan until mid-january. Going back to the fitness thing (where I learned all I know), it really might be like a diet. In the beginning it's great, but as time goes on problems come up. That's when I have to stick it out and see if the suck is temporary and the body adapts eventually. If things still sick by mid-january, though, it might be time to adjust.

[Alphaville]

I will have to check out viktor k's journal. If those 2h/week are true I might have a lot to learn there

sorry i misremembered, was 1-2h/*day*

viewtopic.php?p=232086#p232086

i don't fully understand the terminology in his exchange with @scott2 but i get his use of free time...

A few thoughts on my last post came to me yesterday:

• I have little compassion for myself.

this is seriously one of the biggest things one has to learn in this lifetime, and the basis of all sanity.

[ertyu]

I'm the kind of person to stick to the plan as written until I drop.

This seems to have a straightforward solution: consciously write saner plans. Strength

[NuncFluens]

Just a little bouquet of current thoughts to orient myself for the weekend:

Work
The big partner project is "done". I just need to write the follow-up contract, calculate what it will cost them, check with two different departments if I did it right and then send it over. Oh, and I need to provide a handbook for how to duplicate our monitoring system. Oh, and they broke the system yesterday, when they changed the server settings again without talking to us. No fucks given at this time

Even with all the leftover tasks, this still feels like a big weight off my shoulders. I think a lot of the stress and the deadlines came from this project, and now that it's mostly over I'll have one less huge thing on my plate. So I'm looking forward to next week, as I suspect that his was the big hump I had to get over.

Guitar
I've been playing the electric guitar for some 15 years now, but never took it very seriously. Well, as is my nature, I took it insanely seriously for a few weeks at a time and then barely played for the next few months. Recently, however I noticed how my fiance doesn't like what I play which bothered me a bit. So she suggested I'd play something "more bass-y", like Queens of the Stone Age. Normally I try to play more technical stuff, like thrash/death/black metal, but I took up the challenge in a way.

I didn't really learn any songs, but went straight to learning the elements of the stoner-doom style and what can I say? It just flows out of me. I've written 2-3 half songs in 2 weeks and for the first time feel like they could work out. It's not just a collection of riffs anymore, but it develops naturally. This is really weird and has led me to take it way more seriously again, while having an eye on integrating my playing into my life in a sustainable way.

In other news, my main bass guitar (I still have some 9 guitars of all kinds) doesn't work as the battery clip is broken. And I just gave away my soldering iron, so no quick fixes I might have to reactivate the 6-string behemoth from the basement. Also, the drum machine is driving me crazy, so you might have to wait a bit for my first EP, lol.

Mycology
I've noticed how protected areas (where I'm not allowed to pick mushrooms) are extremely badly marked. Apparently the signage is just a compliment, as every citizen should know the geocoordinates of those areas by heart. I've since managed to find an online-map with those coordinates for my area, though, so all is good for now. A few areas will be off-limits, but at least my recent (and only) find is still fair-game.

I'm planning to go on a hunt quite early tomorrow, as the sunlight starts fading at about 3PM now. I have about 3 hours planned, some of it on my bike, so I should have enough daylight. In preparation for this I did a few hours of research on the Enoki mushroom and it's poisonous lookalikes. One of its lookalikes is so deadly that even minimal taste tests are strongly discouraged. Luckily the spore prints are quite decisive (white = edible, brown = death), so I'm confident to be able to identify it conclusively. I'll just have to leave everything that is not decisively an enoki :/

I've also created an account on a german mushroom-forum where I document my finds from now on. They'll never tell me it's safe to eat from a photo on the internet, but it's another safety net. In addition to that I've found another local group that focuses more on gathering, cartographing and eating mushrooms, but with the corona-situation they had to cancel all meetings of course. I'm looking forward to reach out to them in the future, though.

Also, with 850g of oyster mushrooms found, at an estimated price of 15€/kg, I've made back more than half of what I spent on this hobby with my first find. This is excluding the time I spend, of course, as I was an avid hiker before anyways. If things keep going this way, I'm in for a real mushroom knife and basket soon

Lastly... goddamn Coronavirus
Let's end this writeup with some more gloom. The numbers are up, and while the lockdown-screws are pulled tight on paper, noone cares and there are no controls. The government has also decided to make an exemption to the rules for christmas (well, a loosening, at least), so I'm expecting things to get much worse. I'll keep in the tirades for now, but have started to stockpile food for the coming apocalypse. I'm a doom-prepper now, thanks Corona.

This should be insanely stressful to me (to everyone), but I've switched to full on gallow's humor for now. Here's to hoping that my (and your) loved ones will be safe.

[NuncFluens]

Mycology - Trip Report
I went out on another trip today, in hopes of finding Enoki. To get to where I wanted to pick them I had to go along the river which is a protected area, as all our rivers seem to be. As soon as I entered the area, I started looking around and managed to find my first little cluster of enoki mushrooms. Taking a closer look confirmed my suspicions that I did find them before, but just didn't know what they were at the time. A few minutes later I found the second cluster, and the third one came right before leaving the protected area.



So seeing how I found them before and managed to find 3 clusters in about 30 minutes, I had high hopes on finding some more along the way. Long story short, I was out for 4.5h and I didn't see a single one of them where I was allowed to pick them. I thought I did once, but as it turns out those were young Sulphur Heads (Hypholoma fasciculare) as evidenced by their bright sulphur-yellow gills, which are poisonous

I also managed to find some more oyster-like mushrooms, although all of them were dried-out, frozen or already decaying. It seems the species isn't as rare as I thought, but somehow the climate this year seems to be off (blackberry season was also a disaster this year). Even "my" tree where I found the huge cluster last week had a smaller dried-out cluster on it.

Apart from those "target mushrooms" I was looking for, I found about a dozen species I didn't recognize, some of which I took home for later analysis. The coolest one was this leftover Hedgehog Mushroom (?), which was deep frozen and definitely not edible anymore.



And that's basically it. I'm kinda crushed by my bad luck and have decided to not go out for another trip tomorrow. At most, I might check back to the spot where I found the oyster mushrooms last week. If I remember correctly, there also were some enoki nearby, so maybe I can catch my white whale tomorrow :/

[ertyu]

The enoki picture is beautiful

[Alphaville]

wow!

eta:

which was deep frozen and definitely not edible anymore.

why? are you sure? have you heard about noma's "old vegetable" menu?

eta2:

And that's basically it. I'm kinda crushed by my bad luck and have decided to not go out for another trip tomorrow.

bad luck? wtf? your report reads like you had a blast exploring and learning, and you got some great photos, but this one statement is a headscratcher.

[NuncFluens]

why? are you sure? have you heard about noma's "old vegetable" menu?

Apparently the "slow freeze" that happens in nature isn't great for texture and taste. Seeing how I would have had to carry it home for 90 minutes, it would have thawed just as slowly, probably absorbing the thawed snow and getting all mushy (the bad kind). In general old hedgehog mushrooms are said to taste bad anyway, but I only found that out later.

I had an interest in Noma for a while, but have decided that I can't possibly reproduce their work on that level, so I let it go for now. I didn't hear (nor was I able to find anything online) about the "old vegetable" menu. Can you point me in the right direction?

bad luck? wtf? your report reads like you had a blast exploring and learning, and you got some great photos, but this one statement is a headscratcher.

Yeah, I left out the boring 90 minute slog through a forest where nothing was alive. The trees were dying, no mushrooms anywhere except for some age-old polypores, no underwood, nothing. I'd suspect a pesticide-bombed timber operation, but it's impossible to harvest trees at such an incline. I also fell down 3 times and my feet were wet the whole time (wrong shoes), as it was mushy, snowy and icy all mixed together. Most importantly, though, I went out to find food and failed. Maybe my mind wasn't in the right spot :/

On the bright side, I expect to find an abundance of edible mushrooms in the hedgehog spot, as it was thick with moss and underwood and very far off the beaten trails. So there were definitely bright spots, but I'm not inclined to focus on those right after a 4.5h slog through the mush. Maybe tomorrow

[Alphaville]

the noma thing about the old vegetable i saw in a video. basically his produce guy got him interested in old produce that was left on the vine, old shriveled leaves, frozen berries, shriveled roots, that sort of thing. apparently they taste good and intense and whatever. i don't remember much about his gardener except that he looked a little like the old manager at köln, with the glasses, who looked like a bike mechanic, hahaha.

anyway im thinking a mushroom that has good flavor but a broken cell structure could still be dehydrated and powdered, or braised in a stew or blended with a pumpkin soup or something.

pesticide bomb sounds nasty, i hope you find a healthy patch of forest tomorrow. happy hunting! just get in the moment, and whatever happens.

--

eta, much later: then again, staying in pajamas all day is also a highly valuable weekend skill.

(i have a black belt in it)