Health wise,
Things have been great while on my two month holiday in Italy. While that might paint a sophisticated picture, I stayed for my duration there with my future in laws, so don't imagine some high baller lifestyle.
I've always been a lone wolf since childhood. I enjoy the company of others, yet I'm very comfortable on my own too. Since I moved to London 7 years ago, I felt caged. I kept comparing my life as a teenager with what I believed was being an adult( 18 years old).
I was reminded of my 'freedom years' during my two month holiday in Italy. Life is great, I did not have to worry about one single thing and income was coming without me doing anything.
As my holiday days were almost gone, things started falling apart.
My manufacturer screwed up big time my products, costing me thousands in the process and more importantly, a lot of time. Not a lot to elaborate on here, just that I ran out of products and bills began pouring in. I started feeling more stressed and stressed.
Coming back to London, I never managed to take the business further than £3k a month. I could have, but facebook restricted my budget to £36/ day since the beginning and then suspended the ad account completely.
With stress pilling up from all directions, I decided I need to have the covid vaccine. I'm not for or against vaccines, so please, don't make my thread about that.
I did not book it but only decided a week earlier that "I'm going there on Monday."
Every single day leading up to the vaccine I was reading everything bad there was about it. Come Sunday night, I was as stressed as one could be, couldn't sleep all night thinking about having heart complications from the vaccine. One could argue it was peer pressure, but in the end it was my decision.
Something in my gut was not right. Shaking and crying, I told my girlfriend I couldn't bring myself to go and that I haven't slept all night. She was reassuring, kept telling me everything was going to be alright, stop thinking about it and leave it for now.
On Monday I had what I thought was a
heart attack. My heart began racing, I wanted to run far away from the impeding doom I was feeling. I did not call an ambulance but packed my bags and moved in with my girlfriend with my mom.
Went to a private doctor, had an EKG that told us there was nothing wrong with the heart but she gave me heart beating regulating pills and
2 xanax / day. Since I couldn't take the vaccine, I could not bring myself to take the beta blockers or xanax. I knew something was wrong, not with my heart, yet she gave me heart pills and xanax.
Being so paranoid lately, I wanted a second opinion. I waited 6 hours in the emergency room at my local hospital, just to be told there's nothing wrong with
me or my heart. Still, the doubt and palpitations were telling me that something is causing them and at this point, stress should've subsided.
Booked another consultation with my GP, which reassured me my heart is fine, got some blood and stool tests. Turns out I had a
panic attack , not a heart attack.
I was diagnosed as
prediabetic with a A1C of 6.0%. (Canada, US and UK all have different ranges). Normal range is under 6.0%, 6.5% and above is considered diabetic.
Also, I tested positive for
helicobacter pylori, a bacteria that causes bloating, stress, palpitations, high sugar in blood, anxiety, loss of appetite and weight loss.
I went from 104kg in September to 88kg on November 22(today). Lost a total of 16 kgs/35lbs because of this bacteria and stress.
I am taking some antibiotics which should treat it and cut my carbs to under 100g a day in order to lower my A1C. I do believe it is this high because of the bacteria and stress, as I'm not eating lots of sugar anyway.
I plan on retaking the test to verify the eradication of the bacteria and later redo my A1C.
Mentally I am much better, yet sometimes I feel afraid to be alone. I am optimistic things will get better both mentally and physically.
Business wise,
As mentioned above, my manufacturer screwed up big time my products. Not being able to recoup losses, facebook closing down my ad account and everything else happening for me, I closed down my website.
I ended up switching from highly optimized, branded website to Etsy. I also switched from custom made products to generic ones.
Revenue dropped to £0 as I was basically starting out from scratch again and two months later I am here :
While it still makes me money, there's no brand anymore and no point in scaling. At any point Etsy could decide to close it down.
Yet, there's lots of light and optimism as I'm planning to launch a crowdfunding campaign for my old yet new clothing brand.
I don't care about copy cats yet won't share the product until I have my pre launching campaign ready.
This will be the only execution I am fully dedicating myself to and putting my name out there behind it.
Also, this will be my last attempt of building a
productocracy .
Most probably I will have a MVP by early January. MVP for a clothing brand ? I know, it sounds weird, but stay tuned to find out why
.
Health is wealth.
