Navigating Health Challenges: A Personal Journey

Hello, dear readers and followers of Standing on the Ledge. Today is yet another new day.

What am I up to today? Well, it’s the middle of the night. It’s about 2 a.m. local where I am.

Why am I up in the middle of the night? Because my body decided it wanted to sleep pretty much most of the day yesterday. After I got some paperwork done (and did a little tidying on the paperwork), my body basically went: “Nope. We’re done. Lights out.”

Could be the medication shuffle. Could be my system demanding a long recuperation window. I don’t know. What I do know is that since the beginning of the heart saga, I’ve been trying to pay closer attention instead of guessing.

Health, without turning this into my whole personality

I’m still waiting on a cardiologist referral. In the meantime, I picked up a Fitbit to keep an eye on things — not as a diagnosis machine, but as a flashlight in a dark room.¹

One of the things that came up for me was heart rate variability (HRV) — the tiny changes in time between beats. In plain terms: it’s not just “how fast” your heart is going, it’s “how flexible” the timing is.² My numbers (at least as my wearable estimates them overnight) were low enough that it got my attention — and I started taking the “pay attention” route instead of the “ignore it and hope it goes away” route.³

They’ve got me on candesartan right now. I added a few supplements (CoQ10, zinc, magnesium), then learned the hard way that potassium isn’t a casual add-on with meds like this, so I stopped that one.⁴

Then the bloodwork came back: high cholesterol, and pre-diabetic. The pre-diabetic piece has been a known thing for a long time. The cholesterol piece was also “known”… and I ignored it. Bad me.

So I started looking at what I can do without spiraling into perfectionism. Omega-3 came up in my research. I started it two days ago. I’ve seen a small improvement in my HRV trend since then. I’m not calling it a miracle. I’m calling it a data point I’m going to track for a couple weeks and see what holds.⁵

That’s enough on the personal health for now. I’m not here to become my own medical drama series. I’m here to stay upright long enough to keep building.

Collapse update

With regard to my journey through the collapse — and the book — I think the first major arc has run its course. Right now I’m in a holding pattern, watching the next steps form. I’ve mentioned before that there are things I can’t talk about at the moment. Still true. I did get an update, I took my 24 hours to think about it, and I’m leaning toward proceeding. Whether I can write about it right now (or at all) depends on how this unfolds.

So… while the big pieces are in limbo, I’m doing what I do: triage, structure, and small fires.

Four-card spread for the day

Past: The Moon (reversed)
Present: Eight of Swords (reversed)
Future: Nine of Wands
Me (querent): Seven of Pentacles

I don’t use tarot as a fortune machine. I use it as a mirror — a way to get honest when my brain is either racing or numb. (Sometimes both in the same day.)⁶

Past — The Moon (reversed)

Reversed Moon, for me, is the hangover after confusion. Not the romantic “mystery” version — the messy version. Fog. Fear. Half-stories my mind invents when it doesn’t have enough information.

Psychologically, this is where I notice my brain doing what brains do under stress: pattern-making, threat-scanning, catastrophizing. If I don’t interrupt it, my imagination starts writing horror scripts and calling them “planning.”⁷

Sociologically, this is also the point where it helps to remember that “private panic” doesn’t happen in a vacuum. When systems shift — work, money, status, routines — the nervous system pays the bill.⁸

Present — Eight of Swords (reversed)

This one is blunt: release. Loosening. The moment you realize the cage door isn’t locked the way you thought it was — and half the bars are made of your own assumptions.

Eight of Swords reversed is me stepping back into agency: making calls, doing paperwork, tracking numbers, and choosing one next step instead of spinning in ten hypothetical futures.

It also pairs with a line I’ve written before, and I’m going to quote it because it still applies:

“One ask. One boundary. One clean close.”⁹

That’s not just about asking others for help. It’s also how I talk to myself right now. One task. One limit. One clean stop — before I turn “responsible” into “self-erasing.”

Future — Nine of Wands

Nine of Wands isn’t “victory.” It’s endurance. It’s the card of “I’m tired, but I’m not finished.” It’s boundaries, bruises, and the choice to keep standing anyway.

If the Moon reversed is the fog clearing, Nine of Wands is what you see when the fog clears: yep, the road is still there. Yep, there are still obstacles. And yep — I’m still here.

To borrow one more line from my own field-notes brain:

“It’s my system throwing a breaker so the whole house doesn’t burn down.”¹⁰

Nine of Wands is that breaker — but conscious. Not shutdown. Not collapse. A guarded, deliberate persistence.

Me — Seven of Pentacles

Seven of Pentacles is the long game. Assessment. Patience. “What I’m building takes time — and I don’t get to rush the harvest just because I’m anxious.”

This is the card that keeps me honest about timelines. Health changes take time. Legal/process changes take time. Identity rebuilds take time. And a book — a real one, with spine and weight — takes time.

Seven of Pentacles also carries a quiet warning: don’t confuse movement with progress. Don’t confuse effort with effectiveness. Measure what matters, prune what doesn’t, and keep investing in what actually grows.

Overall: what this spread means for me

This spread reads like a practical message, not a mystical one:

• I’m coming out of the fog. The past was fear + uncertainty + story-making. The task is to keep swapping story for evidence.
• I’m not trapped the way I think I am. The present is about undoing mental knots, choosing one next step, and refusing to let stress drive the bus.
• I need stamina and boundaries. The future is persistence — not dramatic action, not scorched earth. Just holding the line and staying deliberate.
• I have to think in weeks, not hours. My job right now is to plant, track, adjust, and wait long enough for the results to be real.

And if I need a final sentence to carry into the day, it’s this:

“Hope is not a strategy.”¹¹

So I’ll keep doing what works: small rituals, clean boundaries, measurable steps, and patience strong enough to hold my own attention.

Thank you for reading. Have a great day. Godspeed.

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Footnotes

1. Cleveland Clinic, “Heart Rate Variability (HRV): What It Is and How You Can Track It,” September 1, 2021, accessed January 21, 2026. ↩
2. Cleveland Clinic, “Heart Rate Variability (HRV): What It Is and How You Can Track It,” September 1, 2021, accessed January 21, 2026. ↩
3. Google Fitbit Help Center, “Track your health metrics in the Fitbit app,” accessed January 21, 2026. ↩
4. Cleveland Clinic, “Angiotensin II Receptor Blockers (ARBs),” accessed January 21, 2026. ↩
5. American Heart Association, “Prescription omega-3 medications work for high triglycerides, advisory says,” August 19, 2019, accessed January 21, 2026. ↩
6. Rachel Pollack, Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom: A Tarot Journey (New York: Weiser, rev. ed., 1998). ↩
7. Aaron T. Beck, Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders (New York: International Universities Press, 1976). ↩
8. C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination (New York: Oxford University Press, 1959). ↩
9. Lugh Sulian, “Help Without Collapse,” January 19, 2026, accessed January 21, 2026. ↩
10. Lugh Sulian, “The Freeze Response: Triage in Tough Times,” January 3, 2026, accessed January 21, 2026. ↩
11. Lugh Sulian, “My Journey Through Conflict Styles and Solutions,” January 14, 2026, accessed January 21, 2026. ↩
12. Lugh Sulian, “Magik Morn,” February 10, 2019, accessed January 21, 2026. ↩