2. Hard Pills to Swallow & Gum Chewing

Forget Spotify Wrapped, Let Me See Your WebMD Wrapped

When I say I hope this newsletter finds you well, I mean it. I, perhaps like a lot of people right now, am ::Going. Through. It.:: Which is also why this newsletter did not find its way to your inbox on the first day of the month, which was my original intent. I have not been well - physically, mentally, or emotionally - and I know I’m not alone. The past few weeks have been rough and I - a chronic insomniac¹ - have been plagued with unending fatigue. Is it a holdover Covid symptom, seasonal depression, or some secret third malady I haven’t discovered yet? (Sends one kidding not kidding text to a friend about having narcolepsy ➡️ now all my targeted ads are clinical trials for narcolepsy)

The past couple of weeks have been seemingly nonstop gut punches - people continuing to choose perceived proximity to power over actual allyship when given the choice, another (another, another, another) extremely talented friend telling me they’re leaving the brewing industry because they’re sick of the constant fight, counseling another (another, another, another) woman who got terminated when she reported sexual harassment. It’s a heavy time and it seems unrelenting. All of these things have been on a constant loop in my brain and muddied my intended topic for this month’s newsletter.

In October, I was invited to be the keynote speaker (baby’s first keynote) at the Pink Boots Australia Annual General Meeting. I was feeling then much like I am now. I didn’t have anything positive to say. I don’t want to engage in toxic positivity when what I really want to do is scream. I had also recently (finally) finished Thinking, Fast and Slow and recalled one of my biggest takeaways from the book on substitution, which is that if there is a difficult problem you cannot solve then there is an easier problem you can solve - find it. So I did and I shared during my keynote that I had found an easier problem to solve for myself and for them because screaming into the void trying to enact change was proving to be too difficult of a problem to solve.

So here we are, with me finding the solution of being overwhelmed and exhausted and unsure of what to address by deciding to write about the topic I had originally planned to write about, which paradoxically is motivation.

Last month, I officially committed to retaking my Master Cicerone exam for the third time. In less than 300 days,² I will be trying to claim the two points by which I did not pass the last time. Retaking it was not a for sure thing until there was an exam date scheduled. As a friend of mine said, I’m not one to get to the finish line and quit before crossing it, but damn I didn’t and don’t want to study for the exam again. I have joked that studying for the Master Cicerone exam had been my entire personality for over a year. I would like another personality. I have spent the six months since I last took the exam going down delightful rabbit holes just because they interest me. Some of them are beer related, almost all of them are sensory-related. I planned some pretty big projects for next year. I don’t want to go back to spending nights and weekends studying the same topics over and over.

Not wanting to study again also brings me to the big pill I had (and have) to swallow: I hate having to learn commercial examples. I won’t go too into the weeds with the breadth and depth of knowledge one is expected to have to pass the Master Cicerone exam, but I will explain for the uninitiated that one particular bullet point that is a thorn in my side, which is that candidates are advised to learn at least 5 different commercial examples of all 100+ beer styles tested on the exam from producers in at least 3 different countries. I do not like this. It is not a good use of my time. 

However.

It is likely I would have passed the first time I took the exam had I decided that memorizing 500+ commercial beers was a good use of my time. I definitely would have passed the second time had I decided that memorizing 500+ commercial beers was a good use of my time. I followed a similar pattern when taking and retaking the Advanced Cicerone exam. Technical topics? No problem. Ask me anything about brewing, beer flavor, and ingredients and I can knock your socks off. Ask me to name three commercial Weizenbocks from three different countries and I will make them up because I do not know because I didn’t take the time to learn them because I. Don’t. Want. To.

Actual feedback I received after not passing by two points: “You wrote about beers that do not exist.”

So, over the past few months, I have found myself pondering whether I prefer to double down that it’s not a good use of my time, take the L, and celebrate that I excelled at the topics about which I’m passionate or stop being a brat and decide that learning this one thing I really hate is worth the glory and validation of passing.

Motivation is a topic that’s been top of mind for me after learning something that intuitively I think we recognize as true, which is that neurologically, we don’t get motivated until we start whatever it is we’re trying to find the motivation to do. Sitting around and waiting to get motivated means you will never accomplish that goal. The motivation won’t come until you take a substantive step - I say substantive here because buying that book (guilty) or course (guilty) or saying that you really want to accomplish X (guilty) is not the same as actual action. I can *feel* that learning about motivation is going to be my next rabbit hole obsession that I will talk about incessantly to anyone like a kid telling you about their favorite dinosaur. More on my current dinosaur topic below.

If you’re nodding along to this, what is it that made you relate? What is it that you feel like you want to do but haven’t been motivated to start? I encourage you to spend time examining why you haven’t felt motivated. If it’s fear (it usually is - what if I try and don’t succeed), start ugly and do it anyway. If it’s something you’re not invested in, examine whether you actually want it or whether you feel like you should do it. If it’s that, then decide not to do it and put it out of your head.

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Passive Sensory

Being sick and asleep for the entire month of November and some of December means that I have been trying not to freak out too much about clogged nasal passages (my sense of smell and taste have recovered just fine, for those wondering). However, as anyone who has spent any appreciable amount of time around me in the past few months can attest, my most recent kid-talking-about-dinosaurs topic has been the way we breathe. 

Yes, breathing.

Surprise! Most of us are doing it wrong.

At least according to the 2020 New York Times bestseller, Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor. The book is not without controversy as the author frequently presents his singular, although compelling, experiences as “proof” of scientific research that needs more fleshing out. As the book jacket puts it, the book draws “on thousands of years of ancient wisdom and cutting-edge studies,” a nice-enough-sounding euphemism for formulating convenient theories that just so happen to accomplish exactly what you set out to accomplish.

One major reason the book resonated with me is that I’ve been doing off-and-on research about how our lifestyles impact our sensorial abilities, something I don’t see a lot of people talking about or studying. Most of us probably know the standard rules about sensory - don’t smoke or eat anything spicy or greasy before doing sensory. Don’t wear scented products. Even more intermediate tips like staying slightly hungry because it heightens your sensory perceptions.

But what about the impact of a high-fat diet on your ability to perceive fatty acids? What about links between your pulmonary health and the amount of volatiles you are able to inhale when conducting a sensory evaluation?³ What about taking care of your mouth and nose to keep them in the best shape possible?

Back to Breath, one of the practices I’ve picked up from it is the importance of hard chewing. According to the book, hard chewing helps build new bone in your face and helps to open airways. Since we don’t spend hours having to masticate tough meat and fibrous plants and grasses, most of us have relatively weak jaws. One proxy to strengthen our jaws and stimulate cell growth Nestor suggests is gum chewing, specifically hard varieties like mastic gum.

I’m not really a gum chewer but I am a fan of relatively passive habits that I can do to help potentially strengthen my sensory abilities. Now most days, as part of my afternoon routine, I chew a piece of Falim gum, a brand from Turkey. 

It’s not the greatest tasting gum but I’m able to gnaw away at it while I work, plus I’ve found that having to work at chewing gum is a great way to channel late afternoon restlessness and stress. Further, on days (or weeks, like recently) when I don’t have it in me to hone my skills in a more active and mindful way, I’ve still accomplished something beneficial. It allows me to substitute the more difficult problem of being unwell and not able to perceive at my usual level with the simpler problem of accomplishing one small task that will be helpful to the bigger picture.

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And finally

Before we leave each other, here are a few more things that I am up to these days:

1. Reading Past Scents: A Historical Perspective on Smell by Jonathan Reinarz. More on my research about the role of olfactory neutrality of those in positions of power being an overlooked core value of Eurocolonial cultural hegemony coming soon-ish.

2. Listening to Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky. So! Many! Words! Come! From! Salt!

3. Obsessively relistening to this episode of the AbScent Presents podcast interview with Johannes Frasnelli about his smell training research with sommeliers. Practicing smell training does so much more for us than just improving our descriptive language abilities for exam purposes.

1. Is it chronic insomnia or does my contrarian, anti-establishment streak extend to my natural Circadian rhythm wanting to be biphasic rather than submit to the continuous, consolidated sleep dictated to us by the capitalist machine? I have thoughts.

2. One habit I have that I convince myself is endearing which is actually probably very irritating to the person I do it to is to send text messages counting down the number of days until the next Master Cicerone exam. If you’re in the market to receive a text from me telling you what you already know when you’re already stressed out, HMU for your own “Only XXX more days! 😱” texts.

3. In true kid-talking-about-dinosaurs fashion, I even wrote a letter to James Nestor asking if he had come across any research that discussed this. Yes, an actual letter because that’s how he stipulates people contact him with research questions. I had to look up whether the date or address comes first in a formal letter and find stamps and everything. A few weeks later, I received a form thank you email from his executive assistant with a “PS - no, he didn’t find any research on that.” Oh well, onward.