April 5, 2022:

The unpredictability of MS episodes inevitably forced me to curtail physical activity. Years ago I gave up bicycles and sk8boards. Eventually I had to acknowledge it's unsafe to climb tall ladders, so that nowadays the landlords have to send a handyman for even simple things like swapping in new batteries when smoke detectors chirp. This is an expense for the landlords and an inconvenience for me, amplified by landlordial racism: they don't want Mexicans in their house, so that I've sometimes had to listen to chirping for several days while awaiting availability of an acceptably caucasian maintenance guy with a tall enough ladder.

With symptoms coming increasingly frequently I now wonder if it's necessary to give up activities like hiking. Solo hiking especially. Unsure that having the spins on a desert mountaintop when it's 105f and I'm all alone up there would demonstrate the most responsible foresight. Yet at the same time, I don't want to imprison myself inside a world of unnecessary or exaggerated anxieties. There's parental precedent for that, which I emphatically wish to never emulate.

It'll be a learning process, I suppose. Hoping for more trial, less error.