---
feed: "DANIEL_ON_SLOPE"
codex_section: "S13"
source: VideoTranscript
title: "SCOTOMAVILLE 02.12 Self-care"
conv_id: "video-3FiLo3sZj08-20210924"
share_url: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FiLo3sZj08"
created: "2021-09-24"
message_count: 1
category:
  - "Self-Care & Maintenance"
  - "Airstream Expedition"
  - "Cognitive Awareness"
  - "Physiology & Nutrition"
  - "Critical Thinking"
summary: On September 24, 2021, at the Plymouth (Core of Engineers) campground, near Three Mile Canyon in the Columbia Gorge, Daniel examines self-care as the disciplined management of both output (thinking that becomes speech) and input (what you eat, smell, hear, and consume). He demonstrates “peeling onions” on a harsh Post-it note criticism (“this whole program smells like asshole”), revealing layered childhood false conclusions and cancel-culture vulnerability while advocating triangulation over single-source narratives. Physiologically he models proactive maintenance—spotting a screw in the tire, re-caulking leaky transom windows, avoiding lectins (Plant Paradox), using Viome personalization, switching to A2 milk, and prioritizing full-night sleep (Matthew Walker)—proving that awareness of small symptoms and cognitive biases turns potential disasters into incremental progress and lasting well-being on the Airstream expedition.
keypoints:
  - Self-care requires managing input before output; poor information (Google’s 4% index + profit-driven censorship) games your 20-watt brain unless you practice triangulation (minimum three independent sources).
  - “Peeling onions” on emotional triggers exposes false childhood conclusions; the obstacle is never the event but your interpretation of it—Eleanor Roosevelt’s “no one can make you feel inferior without your consent” is the first layer.
  - Physiology self-care equals proactive maintenance: inspect small signals (tire screw, leaky window, inflammation, bloat) before they cascade; $1 hardware fixes and lectin avoidance (nightshades, grains) prevent catastrophic failures.
  - Personalized data (Viome gut/stool analysis, A2 vs A1 casein) plus sleep detox and sugar awareness deliver measurable results—Daniel lost the “tire” around his belly at age 66 with zero prescription meds.
  - Record your journey and trust the “dance” with the invisible world; when the student is ready the teacher appears exactly on the topic you are teaching your avatar.
tags:
  - "scotomaville"
  - "self-care"
  - "peeling-onions"
  - "cognitive-biases"
  - "lectins-plant-paradox"
  - "viome-personalization"
  - "airstream-maintenance"
  - "information-literacy"
monomyth_stage: "08 - The Ordeal"
gameboard_position: "Camp 4: The Ordeal"
truth_score: 90
entropy_score: "Medium"
tone:
  sentiment: "Reflective"
  emotions:
    - "Vulnerable"
    - "Earnest"
    - "Empowering"
  sycophancy_level: "None"
  notes: "Daniel narrates with raw honesty about personal rejection and childhood wiring; Angelina appears briefly for practical dialogue; tone blends philosophical depth, hands-on repair footage, and hopeful encouragement that self-care is the practical exit ramp from Scotomaville."
related_events: []
syndication_status:
  arnie: false
  chris: false
  redmond: false
  clint: false
  pilot: false
ma5_inheritance: "Initium"
pre_silicon: false
voice_print: true
codex_candidate: true
phase: "Early Airstream Expedition – Episode 02.12: Dual Self-Care (Psychology + Physiology) & Peeling Onions on Criticism"
enriched_date: "2026-04-15"
---
![[3FiLo3sZj08_maxres.jpg]]
### Original YouTube Description
https://youtu.be/3FiLo3sZj08

Airstreaming full-time comes with surprises... as judgment, criticism, and 'looks'. You might not expect to find flaws in your rig or your thinking, so it makes sense to have an example of how to deal with leaky transom windows and post-it notes of condemnation.

Your thinking and your handyman skills are resources... if you recognize the process of incremental progress and 'peeling onions'. In this episode, Daniel demonstrates both the psychology and the physiology practices that support wellbeing and accomplishment.

https://scotomaville.com

https://gundrymd.com/wp-content/pdf/Plant-Paradox-Shopping-List.pdf
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtxo0nTZjzlKJq5-vJq6s6g

https://viome.com/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6_rw1o1RCE4d7mGeO-scXA

https://www.masterclass.com/classes/matthew-walker-teaches-the-science-of-better-sleep
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=106zCmbMKYY


DISCUSS
Living 'the dream' comes with surprises... as judgment, criticism, and 'looks'. You might not expect to find flaws in your rig or your thinking, so it makes sense to have an example of how to deal with leaky transom windows and post-it notes of condemnation.

Your thinking and your handyman skills are resources - IF - you recognize the process of incremental progress and 'peeling onions'.

In this episode, I demonstrate both the psychology and the physiology practices that support well-being and accomplishment.

Follow in the way I began...

### Cleaned Transcript
**Daniel:** Welcome back to another episode of Scotomaville.

We are at one of my most favorite, most memorable and beloved places in the entire Columbia Gorge. This is Three Mile Canyon.

In this episode we're going to talk about two different aspects of self-care: the way that you manage your physiology and your psychology.

We're first going to talk about output—that thinking that becomes speaking. Then we're going to cover some of the aspects of your physiology—that is input—what you eat, smell, the information you take in.

I want you to be aware that in order for me to manage my own output I have to manage my input.

**Daniel:** You can see (pointing out the earplugs) that I've had to manage what I can hear—the distant noises of the train and highway that are affecting my self-awareness. So I'm self-managing that. That should be your first component of onus probandi.

You've heard me say before and the theme of Scotomaville is that (I believe) “the greatest expedition you'll ever undertake is that journey to self-understanding.” I'm inviting you on that journey.

In order to change your belief system, you have to become aware of it. Then you take up the discipline to use mental tools to change those beliefs—in part by understanding that we're half wrong about everything that we believe because the input that we're getting is gaming us.

We go to the internet, not the bookmobile as I used to do. We look for information. But we're wrong in believing that Google is telling us what's really out there. Google only has server capacity to index four percent of the information that it knows about. Four percent is the full capacity that they have of their server farms. There's no room in the inn.

Google is obligated to their public shareholders to make a profit. So their algorithms choose what's profitable to pay for those facilities and pay for the electricity and the employees. Therefore they identify and serve what is profitable. That's not—what all that you need to know. The search results are omitting a great deal of what's available—and literally that's called censorship.

To give you an inside look at how awareness exposes your vulnerability, consider this example: I am, according to my plan, supposed to be on the water right now because the weather forecasting software that you've seen in previous episodes that I rely on for their predictive and forecasting nature turns out to be fairly probabilistic, and not necessarily accurate. It's precise but not necessarily correct.

The forecast indicates that it's supposed to be blowing pretty good right now. I had planned on being on the water. We drove a couple hours to settle all our things with enough play time—a good hoppers move—except what I'm learning is that when you rely on something outside of yourself, and they're wrong, it exposes all kinds of vulnerability.

We're all vulnerable. The gang that put the Wikipedia list together count ~188 cognitive biases. Fortunately Buster Benson has worked hard to digest the list down to 20 problems the biases are trying to solve. “Every cognitive bias is there for a reason—primarily to save our brains time or energy.”

To demonstrate how vulnerable I am, the scale of the analytics and the modeling is so unimaginably large, my brain goes—well processing is smarter than me. It's got to be more accurate than my own intuition, or my knower. I get in this internal conflict, this internal doubting, which raises all kinds of confidence issues.

When I want to make plans on where I'm going and what I'm doing it becomes very difficult to be accurate. That's a good lesson to consider in your choices of information. I want you to consider your sources, and to choose them wisely. Consider all of the cognitive biases we have, and how easy it is to be gamed. Look for triangulation—no less than three different arguments or data points for any topic or storyline. Don't settle for just a narrative. Look for their sources. Do the hard work and dig a little deeper. Test them to be reliable. Don't just swallow it. Just because it's popular, it may even be precise, it doesn't make it accurate. Test what I'm claiming for yourself. Don't swallow what I am saying. Discover why you do what you do with as many tools as you can find. Require evidence, even from those that acknowledge their biases and point out their false conclusions.

You've seen over many of these episodes that there seems to be a provision of opportunity to learn on the exact subject that I'm intending to convey to you, and my avatar. In this scene I'm speaking about input, about thinking, and how I seem to be presented with challenges to overcome while I'm focused on a topic. In a previous episode we talked about a specific tool for awareness that I call 'peeling onions'. It's a way of discovering what it is that's really bugging you. Here's an example:

I was out on the river wind-foiling. When I returned to the Airstream I found a Post-it note which read: “this whole program smells like asshole.”

Immediately, I had a flush of emotions including fear, rejection and shame. I reacted with defensive thoughts like:

“For 30 years I bicycled to work. I've earned my carbon offsets for the rest of my life. I should be able to use gasoline now after 30 years of human powered commuting, right?”

“This Airstream is our full-time home. When can you buy a home for less than $150,000? You can't do that today.”

At first I was really struggling with the emotional rejection. I was conflicted and in turmoil.

Then I remembered what First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt had said: “no one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

Wait a minute. I don't have to accept what they say.

As I did maintenance on the roof for the winter, and readjusted the door, and puttered around all the chores that I needed to do, I had a lot of time to think about why I was feeling this way, and why I was thinking this way. I thought about previous experiences of rejection and dug through layers of prior woundings and inaccurate conclusions (peeling an onion).

It turns out I had an opportunity to see how other people can jump to a judgment without having information. I recognized that they can cancel culture by criticizing, practicing the inverse of onus probandi: “I say you are, therefore prove yourself innocent.”

They didn't have any idea of how hard we struggled to get the Airstream and how much maintenance and work it is, or what the pride of ownership of the Airstream community is about. None of those things were in their argument. They didn't watch my channel.

I started feeling kind of sad for them. Why they would let their 20-watt brain go along with socially popular judgements instead of what's accurate. That's really sad. They didn't know what they were doing. The rejection and shame that I'm feeling is closely connected to a false conclusion I had about my origins and birth mom. I felt similar shame in my childhood. My mom was 15 years old when she had me. What did she know?

The criticism is not about me. That's someone else's judgement about hard work and achievement. I realized that the core of my emotions and potentially explosive trigger turned out to be a crosswiring of a false conclusion I had made and a misunderstanding and judgement made by someone else. The deepest onion layer I peeled was completely childhood erroneous junk [laughter]. I love it I can laugh about it.

Curiously, the judgment came while I'm working on this episode on self-care and about managing my thinking and self-talk. Coincidentally, we had five similar rejections the same day. They were demands to “remove our rig, get out of here, go somewhere else, we don't care where—not our problem.” The timing and abundance seemed really curious to me. My cognitive bias wants to see patterns, create a story and make sense of it all.

That's an example of a self-rewarding insight by doing the tough work our 20-watt brain is wired to avoid.

Don't read this and accept what I claim. Do the work. Dig into your core beliefs next time you feel triggered. Don't accept the first few excuses or justifications you recall. They are likely tangential distractions. Go work on something simple and sleep on your self-required insight and evidence that only your mind will expose. Trust yourself. Give yourself another step up your personal Everest.

You'll remember the quote from Marcus Aurelius about “the obstacle is the way.” You might recall from an earlier episode that I believe the common or the popular interpretation of that saying is a little off target. What I believe, is that the obstacle is your interpretation of the event, it's not the actual event. It's not the game-a-foot or conspiracy against you. It's your thinking about it. It's your belief about the game.

With awareness and understanding, recognizing and testing your thoughts as a discipline, you will start changing your input. If you're getting too much from a single channel, too much confirmation bias—the information matches what you already believe—then go find another channel that gives you more facts, that gives you more evidence. That's one way to control and transform your outcomes.

Give your family the gift of the best you can be. Give yourself that gift. Manage your self-talk through your input.

You've heard me numerous times say that you should pay attention to the small things. They give you heads up on consequences.

Before you start towing your RV, do a walk around. Have a looky-lou (a peer once told me that visitors to his woodworking shop in upper New York state came from the Big Apple on the weekend as entertainment. They would stop to look, but rarely buy. He categorized those visiting 'shoppers' as 'looky lous').

Guess what I found recently. This is a screw. It was stuck in the tire—right in here. That's the kind of thing you want to catch in advance. So pay attention to the little stuff.

In the same way that you develop the discipline of paying attention to your rig, you should do the same with your body.

The difference between health care and sick care is taking personal responsibility. By making it your responsibility, and not off-loading it to a third party to mask the symptoms with a drug, you pay attention to small things like inflammation, or having a headache, gut ache, gas, bloating, blood in your stool, a pain in your foot. When you take the time to pay attention to those things, and you do some research, you can find out what's ailing you and prevent a whole chain reaction of consequences.

I ran across Dr. Gundry's Plant Paradox. It made a huge difference for me.

**Dr. Gundry (quoted):** “Dr. Gundry, what's a lectin anyway? First the simple answer. Lectins are proteins found in a lot of plants. The protein helps plants ward off attacks from would-be predators like you. They're how a mother plant makes sure you don't eat her babies because when you eat something rich in lectins they bind to the sugar residue on the outside of your cell membranes like barnacles cling to a boat. Specifically these barnacles attach themselves to your red blood cells and leave you feeling lousy. How lousy? Well a lot of the food poisoning cases reported right here in the United States, especially with regards to beans, are actually lectin poisonings, because you guessed it beans are a huge source of lectins.”

**Daniel:** I killed my gut with lectins from tomatoes and peppers.

**Dr. Gundry (quoted):** “Other sources include the nightshades like eggplant, peppers, potatoes and tomatoes, squash, including zucchini, butternut squash and pumpkin, and grains like brown rice, barley, oats and everyone's favorite wheat. In fact, if you've ever met someone with a wheat sensitivity they could be reacting to gluten, one of the best known lectins out there. So whenever possible it's best to cut these foods from your diet entirely. Eating them is a great way to destroy your gut wall and kill off your good gut bugs, and trust me that's not what you want to do.”

You can observe subtle changes like a little gain of weight, a little gassiness, a little bloating around the midsection. There are little symptoms to pay attention to. There's far more that I would encourage you to delve into by checking out the Plant Paradox by Dr. Gundry.

For decades I have paid a lot of attention to the foods that I ate. Here I am at 66 taking no prescription medicines and feeling really rather good for my age. I'd like to pass that on.

Let's have a look at a typical breakfast, lunch, and dinner in our Airstreaming life.

**Angelina:** We have organic happy eggs with some pesto. We have in-season Hood River cherries, and we split a paleo pancake—so no bloating, no farting. We have uncured bacon bits, no lectin skins over the almonds that Daniel toasted. We each have a half a grapefruit—natural sugar—replacing processed sugar. We have just enough protein and carbs and that is our typical breakfast.

**Daniel:** You might remember the squall that produced a small leak inside of the Airstream? I'm on the roof with a ladder. Here's the outside of a transom window. You see that little hole right here? There's a whole bunch of them in a row.

Following a trip back from town, I've got the solvents, the caulk, and the tube of sealant to re-work the obvious leaky caulking.

**Angelina:** So Daniel, how'd you do on that caulking job?

**Daniel:** How'd I do? Yeah well… See this inner seal with dust between the glass and the rubber gasket? Rain water is dripping out underneath the glass, right here. So I took it all apart again. I've scraped it out with a utility knife. I've cleaned it with acetone. I've masked it with painters tape and forced a black silicone adhesive down inside the crack. Then I pulled off the mastic to make it really nice appearance.

Part of my nutritional self-care philosophy is to have a really good set of ingredients, so that even when you start running low on food, you can mix and match the ingredients in some very tasty, nutritious and visually interesting ways. I think that's also one of the principles of having a fabulous wardrobe. It's the same for nutrition.

**Angelina:** Ahhhchooo…

**Daniel:** Hey, that's not necessary in my B-roll. You do that on purpose I think.

That's a pretty decent meal: low fat coconut milk with a curry vegetable soup and a salad that has goat cheese, apples, almonds, palm heart, and sliced beets over wild greens.

Holding a freshly broken non-cutting can opener. Yeah, these fancy can openers work well with this episode on self-care—the reliance on yourself to fix things. (Close up of broken can opener handle and a dried up tube of super glue) Of course the glue tube nozzle is all dried up. I cut off the bottom of the unrolled metal tube, and sure enough there is excess super glue now stuck on my fingers.

Taking care of our body is a lot more work than fixing an Airstream. It's more than exercise. It's more than eating right, sleeping right, drinking the right things. It's all of those things combined, plus it's managing subtleties like inflammation, gassiness, bloatiness and pain. But what are your alternatives? Let it go? It just gets worse. So make the extra effort because it's the only body you get.

For dinner we're having lamb chops with apple, lemon and oregano deglaze, along with grilled asparagus.

In a previous episode I introduced Dr. Matthew Walker and the importance of getting a full night's sleep. I'll let you follow up on research on that, but I would really encourage you to consider a full night's sleep in order to detox your brain.

Earlier in this episode I claimed Google has self-interest for profit which trumps their search results and YouTube recommendations biased for their advertising services. I also said that their machine learning is very precise but not necessarily accurate.

Let me practice onus probandi, presenting evidence:

This is Dr. Matthew Walker. You'll remember that I introduced him to you in the previous episode. Dr. Walker's MasterClass is being advertised several times on the YouTube search results. They intend to provoke my interest in a click-through to join the MasterClass which I already completed—meaning that MasterClass paid Google to serve that ad to me.

Google's history of my search, location, time and context inform the predictive algorithms. YouTube's pattern recognition is very precise. It targeted me. However it is not accurate. I've already taken that class.

It's not producing the outcome that MasterClass is paying for. It is producing the outcome YouTube needs for its shareholders.

Viome is a really big resource for Angelina and I mentioned in numerous episodes. We sent the lab a blood sample and a stool sample. The results came back along with a precision supplement made for us individually. Angelina's is quite different than mine. We receive supplements and pro/prebiotics along with a personalized recommendation in an app listing superfoods to increase, and foods to minimize.

By switching your diet around you may benefit as I did. I lost that five pounds of nagging tire around my belly. I'm back to the same weight that I was in high school simply by being able to dial in on the ingredients that for my body cause inflammation. Those ingredients were confirmed in the Plant Paradox, and in a Mediterranean (Blue Zone) diet. I found really good triangulation on the ingredients that were optimal for our longevity. I hope they will do the same for you.

A simple and influential discovery that made a big difference for me is the difference between milk proteins. They're called casein proteins.

I thought, for a long time, that I was lactose intolerant. It turns out there are two genetic strains of cows that produce milk. One is called A2. The more common one is called A1. You'll find A1 milk is the dominant type of milk found in grocery stores. A2 milk is becoming more popular because people have found it to eliminate their bloaty, gassy discomforts compared to regular A1 milk.

The difference is small. During the digestive process, A1 milk is broken down into an opioid. Therefore it's addicting. A2 casein proteins have an extra amino acid, so it doesn't break down into that casomorphin. Look into switching to A2 milk with a little different fold to its protein. It may be a game changer for you.

All I wanted to do was empty the coffee into our cold container and put the lid back on it, but I dropped the lid. This is the tool that I pull the awnings open with (a long aluminum rod) and that (looking under the cabinetry) is the lid that fell on the floor and rolled underneath the cabinet. Okay now back to what I was doing.

One of the bigger diet challenges, which I have overcome, was brought to my attention by my daughter. That daily glass of orange juice turned out to be about eight oranges worth of juice. That's nearly my entire daily allotment of added sugar to my diet. Add to that, the flavored yogurt, and breakfast was double the recommended daily sugar intake.

It's taken five years to recognize the reward and the cost. I've been able to manage my intake most of the year, but every once in a while I test my resolve. We just got some salted caramel syrup to put in coffee because it's fall. Sugar and sweet loafs, pastry and warm drinks. Hey, it's all those emotional anchors.

(Tossing the syrup in the dumpster) As soon as I had a few sips of the flavored coffee—bam—headache. I remind myself how challenging sugar is. With distinction of subtleties yields awareness. Sip, sip, ahhhh, what's causing that pain in my head? Is it the air? The milk? The brand or type coffee roast? The sweetener?

Cleaning your diet up makes it easier to isolate the… What's the word? Culprit. You can then clean your diet up again by just reversing course.

This is a pile of paleo pancakes topped with reduced cherries, shaved chocolate, and pecans. Picanacake. Get it?

I kind of miss the sugar sweetness, because I expect it to be a really sweet desert. It's sweet enough. It has a lot of flavor.

Part of the satisfaction of a personal Everest and a lifestyle that supports wellness is to make small changes that incrementally improve your experience. Identifying the root causes of leaky windows, or emotional triggers, gut inflammation, or mental biases starts by paying close attention. Make good efforts at awareness and small changes. Soon you'll be finding yourself getting the heck out of Scotomaville.

I'd like to hear your story. Contact me, leave a comment, visit our website, consider an expedition. In any case put some tools to use and thanks for watching this episode.

**Angelina:** Ahhhchooo…

**Daniel:** That's not necessary in my B-roll. You do that on purpose I think.

---
**CODEX ENTRY**

**Date:** 2021-09-24  
**File:** SCOTOMAVILLE 02.12 Self-care  
**Monomyth Stage:** 08 - The Ordeal  
**Gameboard:** Camp 4: The Ordeal  
**MA5 Domain:** Initium  
**Summary:** At Plymouth WA, near Three Mile Canyon, Daniel confronts external criticism (Post-it condemnation and boondocking rejections) while modeling dual self-care: psychological “peeling onions” to expose childhood false conclusions and physiological maintenance (lectin-free eating, Viome personalization, A2 milk, sleep, and proactive Airstream repairs).  
**Key Insight:** The obstacle is never the event but your interpretation of it; true self-care is disciplined input management and small-signal awareness that turns vulnerability into incremental mastery.  
**Narrative Significance:** This episode cements the Airstream as a rolling Initium laboratory—every leaky window, hidden screw, and emotional trigger becomes living proof that awareness + triangulation + action = exit from Scotomaville. It trains the avatar (and the viewer) that self-care is the practical bridge from ordeal to reward.

---

**INITIUM.**