A different thread

 

Beaver Creek, Alaska, on Dec. 30, 2024. Temperature -34F.

Hello 2025! Later this year, this blog will turn 20 years old. Twenty! I was just a few years older than that when I started writing here. If you still venture back to this cobwebbed corner of the Internet, you may have noticed that I haven't posted in some time. Although I hadn't intended to abandon this site, I now post most of my adventure stories on my Substack:

https://jilloutside.substack.com/

I originally launched the Substack as a reliable archive of a writing project that I thought ... hoped ... no one would read about an old trunk full of mementos I wanted to archive in the digital realm. Thus the name that I should probably change but haven't, "Adventure Unpacked." I haven't changed the name because the essays are still about "unpacking" adventure, in the sense of analyzing something into its component elements. 

There is still so much that intrigues me about putting my body in a difficult environment and grinding away at a physical challenge — emotion, relationships, identity, spirituality, physiology, psychology, philosophy, the list goes on — that I still haven't stepped away from writing about it after all of these years.

In 2023, I grew increasingly frustrated with this ancient platform — Blogger.com — and Google's refusal to support it. I was inundated with Spam comments that I couldn't moderate despite putting restrictions on commenting. Meanwhile, the real traffic to my site had slowed to a trickle. Social media killed the blogging star, and the once-rich landscape swiftly became a wasteland. The communities we built up in the early days of blogging disintegrated, and social media algorithms so deftly hid links that even my family members didn't realize I was still posting missives to "Jill Outside."

Then Substack came along to take a form of online communication even older than blogging — the newsletter — and revived a new golden age of long-form writing online. People could subscribe to a newsletter and receive it directly in their inbox, which meant actually reaching the people who want to read your stuff. Even if only five people subscribed, it was still a boon compared to the struggling storefront in a nearly abandoned shopping mall that Blogger had become. 

Since I migrated to Substack, I've been thrilled about the space. All the people who miss the Golden Age of Blogging, and all those who aren't even old enough to have experienced the wonder years of the 2000s, are finding a similarly rich community of writers putting their best work out into the world and striving to connect with others. It helps that Substack has developed a subscription model that helps writers feel like they're "creating for a purpose" — even if it is just five subscribers, such metrics mean the world to writers who, like nearly everyone, just want to be heard.

The model has its problems, of course. Most everyone has subscription fatigue these days. I subscribe to the digital content of four daily newspapers and that alone leaves me glowering at my credit card statement each month. People have to subscribe to multiple streaming services just to watch everyday shows, Spotify just to listen to music and podcasts, Amazon Prime to read books, the list goes on. Paying a monthly fee to individual bloggers on top of that is, frankly, absurd. 

And yet ... as I said ... it means so much to us. I cherish every person who registered for a paid subscription to my Substack. Still, I don't intend to put my content behind a paywall. If you are interested in reading missives about cold places, mountainous adventures, trail running, and bikepacking, I hope you'll sign up for a free subscription here:

 

Thank you for reading. 

Thyroid update 7

 

Whenever life feels all uphill, I find that a literal uphill slog always helps.

Hello, old blog! For six months, I've switched my online writing efforts to Substack. I switched because I hoped to expand my subject matter beyond obscure outdoor adventures and potentially reach new readers. Still, old habits die hard. I'm still mainly writing about obscure outdoor adventures, and my reach hasn't exactly blown up. But the Substack is up to nearly 700 subscribers and I am grateful for all of you!

I planned to use this blog for occasional personal updates. My ongoing health journey seems a good place to start. My last update was this time last year when I wrote about autumn ennui and my frustrations with the health purgatory I was in at the time — subclinical hypothyroidism. To summarize, my thyroid became a problem about eight years ago when a bunch of antibodies created by my own dumb body descended on the gland and launched a full-scale attack. The thyroid responded by overproducing thyroid hormones to a toxic degree. This resulted in all sorts of alarming symptoms such as tachycardia, tremors, muscle weakness, shortness of breath, brain fog, and the not-insignificant risk of cardiac arrest. 

This was diagnosed as Grave's Disease in February 2017, and I went on medication to reduce my body's absorption of the overabundance of thyroid hormones. Over the next year, my thyroid slowly calmed down. By November 2018, I was declared "euthyroid" and was able to go off the medication. But my doctor warned me that I was unlikely to stay in remission for life. I'm still a prisoner to those infuriating microscopic snipers that my body sent out to attack itself — meaning I'm still full-up of TPO antibodies. Some Grave's patients always overproduce hormones, but the vast majority of us experience a slow, sputtering battle as our thyroid fights for its life for a number of years before it finally gives up. When and to what degree it gives up is a matter of debate, but afterward we need to take replacement hormones to restore our health. My endocrinologist admitted this was likely before cutting me loose to fend for myself because, you know, health insurance. 

And sure enough, the measure used to determine thyroid functionality — TSH — continued to creep higher. Thyroid Stimulating Hormone is the hormone that tells your thyroid gland to get to work. It's a sort of thermostat, cranking up the heat when the thyroid is being sluggish. When I was hyperthyroid, my TSH was at 0.0. When I was taken off Grave's Disease medication, it was at what is considered an optimal level, 1.4. The standard for "normal" thyroid function runs between 0.5 and 4.5 mIU/L. However, the upper limit for 97.5% of euthyroid (normal) people is 2.5 mIU/L (Source). People who land above that range but under the hypothyroid standard of 10 mIU/L must languish with the uncertainty — am I healthy? Am I slightly not healthy? Doctors don't know the answer and studies are mixed. The Internet overflows with theories and complaints about life with subclinical hypothyroidism — for good reason, I believe.

I can't say I've felt "normal" since before 2016. But my best years were definitely between 2018 and 2019. By 2020, my TSH hit 3.5, and I first started to feel something off with the levels of fatigue I experienced at odd times, my sudden inability to sit around the house without a blanket, hair that was thinning again after growing back thicker following the hyperthyroid years, and my useless brittle fingernails that I must keep trimmed to nubbins to prevent them from breaking off. Things like that. It was also 2020, which was an odd time for us all. And I was still "normal," so nothing could be done.

I ignored my thyroid for the entire volatility of 2021 and most of 2022. But by October, routine bloodwork at my physical pegged my TSH at 5.25 mIU/L. My cholesterol was also 263 mg/dL, which isn't just borderline high — it's high. As recently as 2019, my metabolic panels were pristine, so this was a surprise since my weight, activity levels, and diet hadn't changed. Maybe low thyroid hormones are affecting my metabolism? But my primary care doctor did not think this was likely. So off I went, into another year of purgatory. 

Over the winter, my mental health took an enormous dive. I've struggled with anxiety for years, really since I was a child. But the winter of 2022-2023 brought a sudden dip into depression — deep lows that had no basis in anything I thought should be affecting my mood. The depression in turn exacerbated the anxiety, and it was all-around an awful few months until I started taking an antidepressant in February 2023. 

October 2023 rolled around, and with it the autumn ennui that I interpreted as unresolved trauma and thus began EMDR therapy with my counselor. My sleep improved substantially with the antidepressant, but since I returned from Europe, I've been sleeping a ton. Upwards of 10-11 hours a night if I don't set an alarm. I've gained almost 15 pounds since May — summer is a time for adventure and not a time to watch my diet, and I just spent several weeks in Europe where food is delicious, so it makes some sense. But still ... 15 pounds seems high for what I've always understood as my body's calories-in, calories-out ratio. 

I went in for my annual physical last week. My TSH level measured at 8.72 mIU/L. Even worse, my cholesterol is still 262 mg/dL after all of the changes I made over the past year. I cut way back on ice cream. I added fiber. I switched to low-fat dairy and limited other sources of saturated fat. I gave up eggs! WTF.

My primary care doctor referred me to an endocrinologist, and I got in fast thanks to a new doctor who just started at the clinic where I was treated for Graves Disease. She thinks it would be helpful to start on a low dose of thyroid hormone replacement to see how I respond. I haven't had my thyroid hormone levels officially tested in a few years (I used to track these through self-ordered testing, but haven't yet this year.) But I'll have those tested in two months, hopefully when I'm in a better place all around.

I'm excited! Truthfully, I've been reluctant about thyroid hormone replacement because dipping back into hyperthyroid territory would be awful — I know how it feels and I definitely do not want that. But there's little risk on a low dose, and I'll check in soon enough. Perhaps I'll start to feel like I felt in 2018 again. That would be amazing. If that happens, I definitely want to celebrate by relaunching a winter training routine and signing up for a spring race. Right now I'm thinking either the White Mountains 100 in Fairbanks (which hasn't been officially announced yet) or the Bryce 100 (for which I'm not currently qualified and would have to finish a 50-miler first.) Hundred-mile ultramarathons are so rewarding but so hard that I want to stick to familiar territory for my foray back. By March or May 2024, it will have been five years since I last finished one, which is not a trivial amount of time.

Autoimmune disease is the pits and I have one of the gentler ones ... although I know I'm at higher risk for other autoimmune conditions, so I count my blessings each day that I "only" have a wonky thyroid and asthmatic lungs ... and generalized anxiety ... and mild depression ... and seemingly incurable grass allergies ... and chronic back pain ... and a tendency to fall on my face with such frequency that my primary care doctor laughed at loud when she saw all of the items on my 2023 chart. 

Perhaps it's just life that's the pits, and we're all doing the best we can to get through it. 

I'm grateful for the medical community and all of the assistance they've given me in this regard. Thanks, science. 

I'll write another update about my progress. If you're interested in my past thyroid updates, you can find them here:   

Thyroid update: April 12, 2017

Thyroid update 2: May 19, 2017

Thyroid update 3: July 19, 2017

Thyroid update 4: May 24, 2018

Thyroid update 5: May 10, 2019

Thyroid update 6: October 9, 2022

On blogging

All screenshots are from the Wayback Machine — such a fun rabbit hole to dive into.

It’s odd to acknowledge that I’ve been blogging for nearly half of my life. I launched my first blog in late 2002 at the naive age of 23. Blogs themselves were still in their relative infancy. I’d recently latched onto bike touring as a large part of my identity and decided since my new hobby had changed my life, I wanted to help others discover it as well. 

I initially started “Bike to Shine” — a play on lyrics from Ben Harper’s “Burn to Shine” — on Blogger. At the time, the platform didn’t offer a lot — no photos, for example. So I continued to update journal entries from Blogger (which was possible to do from rural county libraries.) But I also taught myself a rudimentary amount of HTML and launched a digital "magazine" at biketoshine.com. 

BiketoShine.com was an expensive endeavor for me — I believe at the time I was paying something like $30 a month for hosting. Since I didn’t have personal access to the Internet at home (I lived in a house with eight roommates and only one desktop computer and dial-up phone line among us), I usually worked on my blog after-hours at my desk at the Tooele Transcript-Bulletin. I wrote wordy posts about the wisdom I’d gained on the single bike tour I’d completed thus far. I also tried to pass myself off as an expert in whitewater rafting (a sport I was already terrified of) and backpacking. I promoted my site everywhere I could — Ken Kifer’s bike forum, crazyguyonabike.com, plastering a printout of the Web address on the back of my friend’s truck shell. I hoped to gain thousands — or at least tens — of readers and leverage my great new Web site into a lucrative carrier in outdoor magazine writing. 

Comic Sans! The horror! Also note: "I'm not athletic. I don't particularly like challenging myself physically."

Obviously, it didn’t work out that way. I did gain at least tens of readers, but eventually, I began to resent the thankless after-hours work and hosting fees. When I announced I was shutting my site down, another blogger offered to mirror the poorly designed pages on his site. To this day, I can still access remnants of my first blog at http://bonius.com/biketoshine.com — a fun (if embarrassing) time capsule of my youth. 

Ausilia and I pose with Dave in Anchorage in 2014.

Going online also revealed the cyclical nature of life. After a few months of writing, I added a PayPal link urging readers to “Get involved in the adventure!” I still remember the thrill of my first donation from a man named Dave Cushwa. Here was a complete stranger who took me seriously as a writer and adventurer! The Internet seemed so young and innocent back then — these types of distant connections were still a novelty. 

Eleven years later, we connected again in Anchorage, Alaska, before the 2014 Iditarod Trail Invitational. I don’t remember the reason Dave was there — I think he was helping out Italian competitors Ausilia and Sebastiano in some way. But I remembered him. He greeted me and I reminded him of the $10 and the subsequent confident boost he gifted me when I was a baby adventurer. 

“You’re basically the reason I’m here,” I joked. Dave flashed a knowing grin. 

Bike to Shine went dark in 2004. I too went dark, moving to Idaho to work late nights on a newspaper copy desk followed by later nights of bars and parties and days of sleeping and hangovers. My relationship with my boyfriend was in tatters. My bike sat dormant on an unused trainer. My more adventurous endeavors lapsed as well. This was the “quarter-life crisis” that led me to make a last-ditch effort to revive both my relationship and adventure dreams by moving to Alaska. 

 Within a month of moving to the 49th State, I was a full convert to all things Last Frontier and wanted to reveal my discoveries to everyone I knew. I started what one might now call a newsletter, but at the time was simply, “the annoying reply-all mass e-mail.” An acquaintance sent me an unnecessarily mean “unsubscribe” sort of response, and that’s when I slinked back to my origins and discovered that Blogger.com was not only free, it was way better than it used to be. 

I launched “Up in Alaska” and published my first post on November 3, 2005. “So this is my new online journal about moving to Homer, Alaska — a place where it snows in October, where moose traipse through my backyard, and where everyone can spell my last name but if you can’t spell “Xtratuf,” well, so help you God.” 

 At the time, I had no conception of where this blog would take me within a matter of weeks. I couldn’t foresee the connections I’d make with Alaskans in the blogosphere, how they’d introduce me to this crazy thing called “snow biking” and the then-inconceivable goal of a 100-mile wilderness race on the Iditarod Trail in the dead of winter. I couldn’t imagine that complete strangers would cheerlead my audacious race goal and offer crucial gear and training tips when I had no idea what I was doing. It was this whole thing. I’ve already written an entire book about how this blog changed my life. 

It’s strange to realize that this fateful step took place nearly 18 years ago — that if my blog were a baby, it would have grown into adulthood this year. What growing up have I done in that time? It’s difficult to quantify. I’m still riding bikes. I’m still hopelessly dedicated to adventure. I'm still making editorial and design choices I'll likely regret later. I’m still a newspaper copy editor who’s actually okay with the fact I’ve moved laterally through a low-end career. I figured out early that I don’t find value in work just because people pay me to do it. Money and some measure of success are necessary in life, but they’re not interesting in and of themselves. What feeds my fire, and what gives my life meaning, are stories. I value moving through the world, accumulating experiences, observing all the details I can take in, learning what I can, and telling stories as a way to connect with others. 

The blog was the simplest way to accomplish this goal. This is the reason I stuck with it even after social media caused a sea change in the landscape, and even after the community that brought me up through my baby years abandoned their own blogs and disappeared into the void. Although I remained, I realized that the community is what I missed the most. I again began to resent the time and energy I was spending on an endeavor that was feeling more and more like whispering into the void. 

It wasn't just the comments that faded away. It was any kind of reciprocal reader engagement. The intimate stories that people used to share on their blogs became snarky memes, generic photo captions, and hashtags. In turn, I felt over-exposed and self-conscious in this space. I considered pulling away — I even tried going dark a couple of times. But it never stuck. I still don't care about viral content or influencer culture or any other measure of Internet success. All I want, still, is a space to be vulnerable, to scratch my name into the proverbial cave wall, and to continue to learn and grow. 

My blog as written by ChatGPT

These are interesting times to be a creative person who has essentially grown up online but also remembers what the landscape was like before the Internet was ubiquitous. Beat has been dabbling in AI development at work. Last month, he sent me an example of an essay that ChatGPT-4 would pen when instructed to: "Write a vivid and introspective blog post in the style of Jill Homer, author of the Jilloutside.com blog, detailing a challenging yet transformative endurance adventure in the wild." 

The result provided an unsettling mirror that I did not like gazing into. Through its generic scope, ChatGPT did capture me. But it seemed to capture the worst of me — the flowery language, the overwritten descriptions, the navel-gazing. I don't claim to have fixed any of these issues in my writing — this, in many ways, is who I am. Still, it's uncomfortable to acknowledge that yes, this is my digital footprint. When our AI Overlords take over, this is how I will be replaced. 

"You should have ChatGPT write your blog for you," Beat teases me, and I won't admit to him how much this suggestion hurts my feelings. If there is no longer value in connecting with other humans through the power of the written word, what even am I doing with my life?

I feel as though I've reached another crossroads with blogging. In Spring 2022, I launched a Substack newsletter as motivation to continue working on a personal archiving project I'd started. I figured a few family members and friends would sign up — or maybe not even them, because most didn't seem to check in with my blog anymore. What I found was a surprising amount of interest. And not only that — new engagement. Other writers who I'd followed on Twitter for years were writing on Substack. Authors on road trips. Runners grappling with past eating disorders. Mountaineers addressing trauma recovery. Feminism and journalism and essays about what it means to be an "Oldster." The more I dug in, the more I realized, "Here it is! Here is the blogging community I've lost. It's back!"

This realization came just as I'd grown weary of the Substack corner I'd boxed myself into, which was essentially writing only about artifacts from my more distant past. I too wanted to expand my writing to any and all of the issues I'm exploring in the present — including mental health, grappling with climate change, the challenges of middle age, grief and loss, existential philosophy, and of course, outdoor adventure and travel. 

I decided to shift gears. After doing so, the only pieces I've written are a day-by-day account of a recent bikpacking trip through the Scottish Highlands. It's the same sort of thing I've been writing on this site since the start. It's not exactly my wider goal with my Substack blog. Still, the response has been satisfying. I nearly doubled my subscriber list within a month, including 23 paid subscribers. Paid subscriptions are a thing with Substack. They're voluntary, and in my case still more of a donation or tip than an exclusive subscription. I haven't yet published subscriber-only posts, although I likely will in the near future. I like that there's a place where I can be particularly vulnerable and honest in my writing and still connect with readers without having to blast the entire Internet with my deepest feelings. 

Thank you to those who opted to "support the adventure." It's certainly not a requirement, but it means a lot and motivates me to stay committed to the craft. Perhaps, like Dave, our paths will cross someday and we'll be able to muse about the good ol' days before ChatGPT took over the world. 

While I dip my toes in the Substack ocean, I'm not exactly sure what to do with this space. It's been around for so long that it remains a great way to connect with people from my past. I still sell a few books each week directly from the links here. I certainly have no intention of taking down its vast archive, which I sadly nearly did when I was in the midst of mental turmoil last November. But will I continue to update this blog? It's difficult to say. 

If you are still around and still reading, I'd encourage you to check out my Substack page and sign up for the e-mail list. You don't even need to sign up, though; you can simply bookmark the page and read posts online, similar to any other blog. If I truly make a full migration, I'll post a much shorter update and link at the top of the page. But it's been fun to take this trip down blogging memory lane. Thank you.