my life in chiang mai has taken an interesting turn these past few months. up until january, everything seemed to be going well. i'd run twice a week (20k total) and work out six times a week. on top of that i'd walk around 20,000 steps every day. i was on top of the game in regards to my mental state and my physical fitness was excellent. i was able to maintain such a lifestyle mainly due to an explosive energy i had for running, which in turn gave me the energy to do even more of it. but all that was about to change, in a gradual way.

by the end of january, i'd feel some numbness in my feet. i'd notice it every now and then but didn't take it seriously and continued at the same pace. the numbness turned into swelling and that's when i started worrying. as a first line of defense, i thought i could change my socks because the very hot express dryer that i used to dry my clothes might have tightened them a little bit. little did i know that my socks should be the least of my worries. at that time, i had already started a daily course of 5g creatine and 350mg magnesium and they were just beginning to kick in. i didn't think much of it. magnesium is supposed to be good for you. it relaxes your nerves, calms your blood vessels, helps with recovery. i took it every day for about a month. my self-diagnosis for my feet got very deep and complex and i started self-medicating with anti-inflammation pills and cool gel on my feet and legs. the pain was gradually moving up towards my shins and to my knees. i didn't really know what was happening and i was starting to panic. i stopped running and walking. not because i thought it was a good idea and that i should rest, but because i was physically unable to walk or run.

things started going downhill, or at least that's what i thought, and my dopamine baseline started dropping. the last thing you want is to go from a very high dopamine level maintained through an extremely active lifestyle to a completely sedentary one. you go through physical and mental transitioning where your body starts adjusting to new realities. your excellent resting heart rate that you once vaunted starts backfiring. when you have good cardiovascular efficiency, your heart beats less because it doesn't have to work hard to deliver blood and oxygen to the rest of your body. but when you suddenly become sedentary and essentially turn into an unmoving potato, your heart is still caught up in its old glory days and doesn't realize that the body needs more oxygen and more blood circulation. around this time, i also abruptly stopped taking the magnesium. after a month of daily doses, my nerves and blood vessels had adapted to being in a deeply relaxed state. my blood pressure ran lower, my vascular tone was calm. when i suddenly cut it off, my body didn't just snap back to normal. the rebound hit me hard. my blood pressure dropped, i started feeling dizzy, and my heart rate became rapid and elevated as my cardiovascular system scrambled to compensate. the combination of a newly sedentary lifestyle, an efficient heart that was still beating at athlete pace, and the sudden withdrawal from a month of magnesium was the perfect recipe for feeling like something was seriously wrong.

this became a little too scary and i seriously thought something major was wrong with me. by this time i had already made multiple visits to chiang mai ram hospital with no tangible evidence of what the main issue was. my own self-diagnosis was that it was over and i was dying, my time had finally come. i became hyper-focused on every single sensation i'd have and made sure to panic as a result. i gave up on the individual visits to the orthopedic and neurology departments and decided to purchase a premium health package from chiang mai ram hospital. i tested everything. my blood, my urine, my stool, did sonar, ecg and what not. everything came back clean. my organs are healthy and nothing seemed to be wrong with me. the only flag was that my iron and ferritin were slightly elevated and i started another round of self-diagnosis to see if this was what was causing my symptoms. i started donating blood to reduce the iron levels and i'm already on session two. i'm still not certain that the iron has anything to do with it, but i believe i have damaged some nerves in my feet from the excessive and extreme running and walking routine. i fully blame myself for this. not taking hobbies or things in general to their extreme is something that i am learning for certain. fast forward to april, my medical self-diagnosis continues and the latest update is that i'm waiting on my appointment confirmation for a nerve conduction study that might provide some clue on what's going on with my feet.

during the past two months, while i was being sedentary, i came across a new friend. a friend i was destined to meet. that was claude code. the moment i started using it i realized how good it was. that same explosive energy i once had for running, the kind that made me want to do more and more of it, i now have for programming with claude. i knew i was going to take this to its extreme and never stop using it. i'm spending an average of ten hours a day on claude. i built a few projects and tools just to get familiar with the capabilities and i have a few unfinished projects sitting somewhere on my local machine. the one thing i loved working on was ڕێ, a ridesharing and carpooling app for kurdistan. a fully kurdish app that helps drivers connect with passengers while travelling between cities and towns in the kurdistan region. it's a beautiful app and looks a little goofy, but that's mainly because it's a reflection of its creator. it has a solid foundation and it solves a problem i was personally struggling with back in the days when i couldn't find a ride back to my apartment after visiting family on the weekend. the app is ready. google play has approved it and you can download it now, and the ios version is expected to be approved this week.

i'm currently in bangkok, at the lobby of my hostel, wiring up this blog for my new personal website. i think i'll be writing more of these. perhaps i can reflect on them in the future and leave a digital footprint for my journey here on earth.