Category — Uncategorized

I finally updated my phone from iOS9. I was still able to use 32-bit games because I decided not to update my software last year so I could continue to play those games that didn’t update to 64-bit.

And then one by one, the rest of my apps stopped working. The first to go was Starbucks. It wouldn’t work with anything under iOS10. Fine. I wouldn’t drink coffee. Then LinkedIn went. Fine. I didn’t need to see shared articles. Twitter went and I couldn’t download new apps that I wanted to try because they wouldn’t work with my phone. But I still didn’t update it.

The straw that broke the camel’s back? MailChimp. When MailChimp stopped working last week, I took a deep breath and said goodbye to my games. I could live without coffee. I could live without cool meditation apps. But I couldn’t live without the ability to check MailChimp from bed or on the go.

I really dislike the new operating system, but MailChimp is functioning once again. And I miss those old games. Damn those developers for not updating them to 64-bit. I’m looking at you, Activision. You’ve lost my app-purchasing trust.

I found out about a book — Words on the Threshold — which led me to an old Atlantic article about last words. A daughter started writing down all the things her father was saying at the end of his life, and the experience led her to look at “the linguistic patterns in 2,000 utterances from 181 dying people, including her father.” What do people say when they don’t have a lot of time left to speak? Who asks questions, who makes requests, who uses many words, and who uses few.

Or this thought:

We have a rich picture of the beginnings of language, thanks to decades of scientific research with children, infants, and even babies in the womb. But if you wanted to know how language ends in the dying, there’s next to nothing to look up, only firsthand knowledge gained painfully.

It’s not as if anyone guides the dying towards their last words in the same way we guide babies to speak their first words. And it’s also not about the literal final word; it’s the final words, the last thoughts conveyed, sometimes over days. What are the most important points to get across when you have limited time?

I don’t have answers. I thought about it while reading the article; what would I say — beyond I love you to the people I love — if I only had a few hours left. And I couldn’t come up with anything. Though that’s the point: that it’s not like the movies where someone summons their most profound thoughts right before their dying breath. It’s not something we can imagine until we’re in the moment.

It makes my throat feel tight to think about it.

One of my biggest sources of anxiety is forgetting things. It’s why I carry my bullet journal around the house. I write down everything. Everything. From things I need to do to quotes from books to memories from childhood (that must have come into my mind for some important reason).

Recent entries: A quote from A Case for Jamie by Brittany Cavallaro, a statement about how much I love it when Linus’s ears flicker while he sleeps, a reminder to check the miles on my car, and a single word: colophon.

I’m so scared that if I don’t take a moment to write something down that I’ll spend double that time feeling bothered that I’m forgetting something. So I take minutes out of my day to jot down the name of a resort in the Maldives (Soneva Jani), a phrase I heard in a Downton Abbey episode (“All Sir Garnet”), and create a reminder to purchase a gift for a friend.

It makes me feel like everything is neatly in place inside my mind.

*******

The New York Times points out that there are many brain training options out there for remembering things — from chunking to memory palaces — but few active methods for trying to forget things. Mitigate the stress thinking about an event makes us feel — absolutely. But actively forgetting that said event ever happened — not so much.

The New York Times writes, “To intentionally forget is to remember differently, on purpose. Importantly, for scientists and therapists, intentional forgetting also may be an ability that can be practiced and deliberately strengthened.” They explain the forgetting strategies along with forgetting benefits.

I sat with the article for a while because forgetting brings me so much anxiety; even forgetting unpleasant things. I’m fascinated by memory exercises and party tricks like remembering the first 100 digits of pi, and I never thought about how we don’t have corresponding exercises for forgetting. Forgetting is just something that happens, something we need to fight against. Except that sometimes we remember things we don’t really want to remember.

Food for thought.

The Washington Post has a brilliant opinion piece about regulating pregnancy, which, by default, talks about infertility as well. People don’t understand how pregnancy works. They don’t understand that you can’t move an ectopic pregnancy. They don’t understand that you can’t pee on a stick immediately after sex and know whether or not you’re pregnant. They don’t understand how cycles work or periods happen or uteruses function because they won’t speak about these things. They’ll only regulate them. Or, at the very least, form an opinion within their lack of information.

She sums up the whole problem in a single sentence: “There’s another reason that has nothing to do with the law: If you don’t understand how female bodies work, you might end up believing some really harmful things about women.”

Go read the whole piece. (But not the comment section.)

I am a superfan of Carolyn Hax’s column. I differentiate myself from a regular fan because I even read her daily column when I’m out of the country. So I’ll skip the Skimm for several weeks, but I’ll never skip Hax, even if it means accessing her column over super-slow portable wifi.

Here are ideas from three recent columns that I bookmarked.

Advice One

This was an old column they re-ran a month or two ago about trust.

The need to control is really just a failure to trust. You have to drive because so-and-so will be reckless; you have to keep your mate in sight or else s/he’ll cheat; you have to do everything yourself because underlings won’t be as competent . . . stop me when this sounds familiar.

A failure to trust, meanwhile, is really just a triumph of fear. Fear of crashing, heartbreak and failure in the examples I just gave, but it’s all one biggie — fear of the unknown. Specifically, that you won’t be able to handle any outcome that deviates from the one you’ve envisioned.

Which means the person you don’t trust is yourself. Right?

Isn’t that freakin’ brilliant? Need to control = failure to trust. Failure to trust = triumph of fear of the unknown. Fear of the unknown = lack of trust in your own ability to cope. Seeing it spelled out that clearly made me understand my desire to control the world.

Advice Two

The next was a few weeks ago. Another trust situation, but this time it’s being upset by someone’s history.

You haven’t changed. What has changed is your girlfriend’s understanding of who you are. That understanding changed because you were honest and transparent about your history. Her response to your transparency was to choose not to be transparent with you. Or trust you … Your history made you who you are, the person who chose her — no small thing — and the person who has been honest with her throughout.

It didn’t make me see the world differently, but I just loved how she led the person through that answer.

Advice Three

This was just a little nugget in a column last week about a person wondering if their boyfriend was losing interest:

Being good to yourself is how you learn to recognize the sensation of someone being good to you.

LOVE THAT. Every single person needs to be taught how to be good to themselves so they can find their boundaries.

What good advice have you read lately?