Category — Uncategorized

I’ve been waiting for Maria Konnikova’s poker book for a while, and it’s finally coming out soon. As far as I understand, it’s not actually about how to play the game. It’s about decision making, told through the story of a journalist learning how to play poker.

Because it’s coming out soon, there has been a lot of press about it, and one of the most interesting excerpts was in FiveThirtyEight. It’s the title that got me: “The Hard Truth Of Poker — And Life: You’re Never ‘Due’ For Good Cards.”

Oh.

And this is the paragraph where that title kicks in:

Doesn’t this mean I’m due for a break? I can’t possibly keep losing. It simply isn’t fair. Gambler’s fallacy — the faulty idea that probability has a memory. If you are on a bad streak, you are “due” for a win. And so I continue to bet when I should sit a few hands out.

That “faulty idea that probability has a memory”—that is the story of cycling. I spent so many journal entries explaining why the current month had to work. Because it had been X amount of months since I had started trying. Because it had been Y amount of months since my last loss. I know that’s not the way probability works, but that idea popped up in my brain (and still does when it comes to other situations): Weren’t we due for a win?

Though Konnikova says that we only think this way when we’re losing. We think we’re due for a win. She says people don’t think about how the next hand will lose when they’re on a roll. But… that hasn’t been true for me. I do spend a lot of time fearing that the next time won’t work.

Regardless, it’s both comforting and discomforting to know that “Nothing you do matters to the deck. The cards will fall how they may.” Sigh.

I’ve been playing with Window Swap. It’s a site where people can upload the view from their window, and other people can look through it.

There aren’t that many on the site, so you end up running into the same ones again and again. If you want to submit one and give me more to look at, you can read the upload directions here.

Enjoy the view.

A post bubbled up this week from 2019 asking how well you’d fare in rebelling under an oppressive regime. The answer is—as you’ve probably guessed—depressing. It couches the question within the story of The Handmaid’s Tale. How many people would rise up and fight a corrupt system?

Few will fight Gilead after carefully weighing up the consequences – after all, the most likely outcome is failure and obliteration. What drives forward fights against an oppressive society is a rival vision – a vision of equality, liberty and justice, and a sense that these should be defended, whatever the consequences.

You need to read the whole article to understand why people may not be happy but still allow things to happen. The article also points out: “Hannah Arendt famously argued, the atrocities of the Holocaust were made possible by normal people, manipulated into conforming to a horribly abnormal set of behavioural norms.”

Food for thought.

Carolyn Hax has been on a roll, providing excellent advice left and right the last few weeks. I ended up bookmarking three posts in the same week. And this one gets to the heart of a common topic of conversation in our community: how much do we tell people our story and is it right/wrong to not educate the people around us about infertility, loss, adoption, donor gametes, and so on. (I’m leaving it as so-on because the list that we could create is long and varied. Please add your personal situation to that list.)

A question asker poses what is the difference between secrecy and privacy? Carolyn answers:

I see privacy as not sharing information with people that isn’t their business.

I see secrecy as not sharing information with people that is their business.

I also think it’s possible for something to fit the privacy definition and still be unhealthy — meaning, you share so little of yourself that you can’t form meaningful connections or you starve the ones you have.

Which gives you the frame. You can share with anyone; meaning, it is your right to tell your story to anyone and everyone you wish. But if you don’t wish to share your story with random stranger you begin speaking to in the grocery store, that is okay, too. That’s privacy.

I just really liked that distinction.

It is my 14th blogoversary today, which is a fitting time to tell you this story about how my blog saved my life* this week.

Frost appeared on the contents of the freezer. We tried clearing out the ice in the freezer, but it didn’t fix the problem, and it only got worse—the refrigerator suddenly didn’t feel as cold as normal. We knew we had encountered a similar problem in the past and removed the back panel, but we couldn’t figure out how to do it again. We were stuck, and set up a repair call despite my fears of having workpeople in the house in the time of COVID-19.

Then I remembered that I wrote a blog post about the experience. A quick search brought up the correct post. It didn’t contain many details, but we now had a date, so we could look through files and try to find the video we used. We found that, too, though we still didn’t have instructions for how to get off the back panel. We were stuck.

Except… my blog gave me the date. So I went through my photos taken on that day, and found that we had photographed the location of the hidden screw we needed to remove.

The next morning, we woke early to get started. The video didn’t tell us to unplug the refrigerator, but my blog post did, so we unplugged it to be safe. It took about two hours to melt and clear out all of the ice and unblock the drain tube. This time, we documented the experience in detail with notes in my journal and videos. We’re waiting out the weekend to make sure we actually fixed the problem, but it’s currently looking and sounding better. It comes full circle because I’m now writing about it on my blog once again so I remember what we did.

For 14 years, I have shown up in this space. 30% of my life so far. I have documented the highs and lows, the news articles that caught my eye, the books I’ve read, the freezers I’ve saved. I’ve recorded my feelings about infertility and loss, the people who have come and gone, the changes that have taken place through my thirties and forties. This blog has been an amazing receptacle to hold my memories and return them to me when I need them.

Thank you, blog, for being there for me for 14 years. And thank you, to all of you, for reading it.

* Clearly, I do not live and breathe due to my blog, and the title is more a tongue-and-cheek usage of “saved” as in kept content. Though you can never be too careful right now about COVID-19. And all joking aside, I do believe that the connections I’ve made here have strengthened my mental health and wellbeing. So, yes, I don’t think “saved” is too strong a word.