Category — Uncategorized

I’ve been a picky eater my whole life, and while I’d like to think that I’ve become a little more adventurous over the years, the reality is that I rarely add a new ingredient. New recipes, sure, but they are made up of ingredients I’ve eaten in other ways.

I’ve been brie-curious for a few years. I’m not the best with cheese, in general, but every once in a while, I think about trying brie but ultimately back out.

Josh and I were out to lunch at one of our favourite cafes attached to a bookshop, with tables overlooking the river. I ordered a tofu sandwich with peanut sauce, and Josh ordered a brie sandwich with apricot jam. I heard myself ask, “Can I try a bite?”

I was as stunned as Josh was. But I went through with it. And it was fine. I’m committed to trying a whole sandwich at some point. Get myself familiar with the taste.

If I push myself, I can’t do it. If I wait to feel comfortable, I may wait years, but it usually goes smoothly. I wish there was a way to speed up that second timeline, but it is what it is.

And now I can eat brie tucked into things. I may be a few steps away from eating it on a cracker where I can see it.

One of the best parts of blogging is the chance to see the inner workings of a decision or situation. I feel like I need to qualify that by saying normal, run-of-the-mill blogging, the sort that feels like a person sitting across from you and sharing their day-to-day world. Like a friend would. Meaning, you don’t expect your friends to be aspirational or waste your time with lies. I’m currently reading The Castle by Jon Ronson, and there is so much about making content for an algorithm vs. just sharing what is on their mind.

But I digress.

Kottke had a blog post I really like because, from the outside, other people’s choices look easy. He sold his car, put his stuff in storage, and hopped on a plane to figure out where he wants to live next. If he had stopped there, I would have thought, “Wow, that is super brave. I would be terrified to do something like that.”

But that is blogging: The ability to continue the story and say, “I’m not going to lie… I’m a little terrified. Sitting on the plane to Narita, I looked out the window thinking ‘what have I done?’ But I’m also excited.” The story continues, and he is terrified. And he’s doing it anyway.

I’m really grateful that blogs exist.

Josh knew that it was going to be hard for me to leave the twins overseas this summer, so he asked where I wanted to go to make it easier, and I said I wanted to look for real magic in Cornwall because that was ground zero for The Magicians by Lev Grossman.

I subscribe to Grossman’s Substack, and I left him a question there: “Any chance you can pass along any must-sees that served as inspiration for when Quentin goes to Cornwall in the Magician King? In any of those places or beyond?” He didn’t write back, but months later, he wrote about Cornwall and posted the first (and only) chapter he wrote from The World in the Walls.

In it, he explains, “Also not exaggerated was the gorgeousness of Cornwall, which I’d always imagined as part Woolf novel (To the Lighthouse), part Gilbert and Sullivan operetta (Penzance), part Arthurian legend (Tintagel) and part old-timey riddle (St. Ives). This turned out to be about right. It’s now one of my favorite places in the world, which is one reason it turns up in most of my books.”

Much better than an answer to my question was getting to read the first chapter of the fictional book. A fictional book inside a work of fiction. How meta. Anyway, I loved it.

The Wolvog is moving into an apartment, and I’ve been lamenting the loss of the landline, because with it goes the loss of the communal answering machine.

No one calls anyone anymore, so I’m sure the kids do not feel the same way because it’s not as if they even get personal voice messages on their mobile, but I miss the days of seeing the light blinking and wondering if the call was for me or someone else.

But moreover, I sort of counted that one day I would leave embarrassing messages on my children’s communal answering machines, and technological changes have taken that joy away from me.

Sigh.

I really liked this piece on how our brain is in a constant state of betting on the future in real time. The hed and dek sort of says it all: “Your brain doesn’t see reality — it tries to predict it” and “Our brains are gambling addicts placing bets on what reality holds. And sometimes, they bet wrong.”

He kicks off the excerpt (from a longer book) with a story that explains the concept, which boils down to that we don’t calmly observe all the facts before we start moving. We take in enough information and then make a bunch of assumptions. And sometimes our predictions are correct, sometimes they’re not, and sometimes we don’t know what we set into motion by our prediction that wouldn’t have happened if our brains worked differently.

He explains: “You start with a prediction, a top-down expectation of what your brain thinks it’s about to see. Then bottom-up incoming sensory data either confirms this prediction or updates it if things don’t fit. This is known as the predictive processing theory.”

If all of this is true, slowing down, waiting to take in information, and giving yourself time to assess the “bottom-up incoming sensory data” before acting would all point towards better outcomes. The slow and steady tortoise wins not because it keeps plodding on, but because it moves more slowly. It enables its brain to use the data before taking a wrong step.

Keep reading to the end. It gave me a lot of food for thought.