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I’ve heard both that the Sherlock episode that aired on Sunday was the last episode ever and that everyone would be open to continuing the series.  I watched it, waiting the entire time for the ending so I could judge whether things felt neatly wrapped up.  I decided that if things were neatly wrapped up, it would mean the series was over, and if there was a cliffhanger, the series would continue.

My mind only half-watched the episode.  The other half was worrying about whether things would be ending.

I think we’ve established over the years that I’m not good with endings — even when I am looking forward to whatever is next.  For instance, I start mourning books when I’m about midway through the novel.  I start thinking about how happy I am with the characters, and how much fun it is to spend time with them, and how it will be sad when it all comes to an end and I will never ever find characters that I like as much as the characters in front of me.  I think that even when I have numerous books lined up to read, all of which I am equally excited to tackle.  I think that despite having proven myself wrong between the last book and the current book.

I don’t know why I do this every single time.

Sherlock is a weird show because there are long breaks between the episodes.  The last one was last winter, and then the rest of the season unrolled over the last three weeks.  Before that, you got three episodes every two years.  So it’s not as if I’ve spent time with them, week after week, and now saying goodbye to them will mean an end to a routine.

Still, the idea of never seeing these characters come together in new storylines made me feel anxious through the whole episode.  Movies come and go, but book characters and television characters get under my skin and start to feel like people I’m Facebook stalking; unable to interact with them but enjoying trying to figure out their life from a few photos.

It was nice to hang out with Sherlock and Watson for an hour and a half at a time.

And I have no clue if that was the last episode or not.

I encountered two interesting (albeit morbid) thoughts in the same week.  The first was an essay on Kokatu.  The author lost his father last spring and is currently musing on what he should do with all of his father’s game save files.  It made me think about my own game save files and what I would want to happen after I’m gone.

I mean, I’ve worked hard on my Hay Day farm and solving the puzzles in LEGO Dimensions.  I hope someone would come around and keep those games going for me, or at least enjoy playing inside all of my hard work once or twice, despite the fact that I would break everyone’s fingers if they touched those game save files while I was still alive.

The essay is really about what we leave behind and the stories those files tell.  His dad played hours of Civilization, which begs the question “why?”  Because it was fun?  Because it was a place where he felt in control?  I know my love of Hay Day is tied to the low-stakes organizational nature of the game.  Cleaning my house is big and unruly: Do I want to save or toss this paper?  Taking care of my fields in Hay Day takes a swipe of the finger.  The game behaves in the same way, day after day after day.  In an unpredictable and often-times scary world, Hay Day is a sunny place where it never rains, crops never die, and the townspeople live in friendly harmony.  The exact opposite of watching the news.

I hope someone keeps these save files as well as all of the maps and notes I have stored in a box that go with hundreds of interactive fiction games.  But those are my wishes; once I’m gone, I don’t know if those things will matter to anyone else.

*******

The second thought came in a podcast.  In “Messages From the Beyond” on Note to Self, Manoush and her team speak to a mother who is using Safe Beyond, a service that allows you to record emails, voice notes, and videos and will deliver them certain dates or on set events in the future after you’re gone.

The woman in the episode is recording messages for her children as she battles cancer, though she changes course towards the end of the episode when her kids let her know that they will not be able to handle receiving an email from her on their wedding day if she is not at their wedding.

The podcast producer asks the hard question, one that inadvertently comes up in the essay above, too: Are the messages for the creator or the receiver?  If the creator wants to make them, should the receiver have to read them?  Or if the receiver says they don’t want them, should the creator stop even though she has a need to leave her words behind?

I don’t like the idea of surprising people and having a message pop into their inbox when they least expect it, but I do like both the idea of leaving messages behind as well as receiving messages after someone is gone.  Of course, I don’t trust other websites and their machines, so I could see myself only doing something like this via paper or digital files on my computer with many backups.  And then marking the envelopes with messages such as “to be read on your graduation day” or “to be read whenever you miss me.”

It would make me feel better to know I left behind those notes and that people will still get to connect with me after I’m gone.  But I’m not sure if the people I would leave them for would want them.  Maybe it would make it harder to let someone go.

I think it helps if it’s a natural extension of what you already do while you’re living.  For instance, when the kids went on a camping trip this year, I filled their bag with little notes marked “to be read on the first night” or “to be read when you’re missing home.”  One of the kids had a hard first night, and I had to drop off a new handful of notes to be read because they opened up all the remaining notes to get through that first night.  So maybe they would want notes after I’m gone.

But maybe those camping notes only worked because the kids knew they were a paper bridge between seeing each other again.  Words to hoist them over the divide until we’re on the other side of the trip.  And, clearly, death would not be like a camping trip at all.

Unlike the save files, which were made solely for myself, these notes would be reaching outward, speaking directly with people I love.  They would tell people information, much in the same way those save files tell a story, but those words would be meant for them vs. ideas that they inadvertently stumble across when boxing up a life.

It was food for thought during a long drive.

Would you want to receive notes after someone was gone?  Would you be okay if they came to you on random days and you never knew when you’d receive one?  Would you want to leave other people notes this way?

I first heard about Universal Basic Income from a childhood friend who touts it as the best! idea! ever!  It’s not a bad idea, but it’s an idea that works best in its natural environment as part of the overall economic and political system.  If not, it’s sort of like placing a lion in an elementary school.  You can do it, and it would certainly be interesting, but I don’t think it would be what we’d call successful for either the lion or the students.

Meaning, people have a tendency to see something working in one place and believe they can implement that idea in another place.  The reason it works in the first place is because the idea is integrated into a larger mentality and belief system, and the reason it usually doesn’t work in the second place is because the system doesn’t really fit with the overall personality of the new space.

The idea of UBI is to give people an allowance that covers all of their needs.  You work out what is the lowest amount of money a person can live on while having their basic needs of food, shelter, and health care met, and then the government gives that money to the citizen so they have the breathing space to find their most productive space in helping society continue to run.

You may have heard about it recently because Finland is testing out the idea on 2000 people.

Listen, there are definite benefits to UBI.  If everyone has a basic income, you don’t need millions of social welfare programs.  There would be no homelessness, no hunger, less crime, more education.  People wouldn’t stay in jobs that make them miserable simply to hold onto benefits.  In fact, employers would no longer have to worry about providing benefits at all.  You would still need to work if you wanted extras like fashionable clothing or iPhones.  But your basic needs would all be covered.

It sounds good, and it certainly could work, small-scale.  But UBI requires high taxation levels (at least it would in capitalistic countries like the US), and a social mentality where people put taking care of their neighbours over their own personal gain.  I can’t really see that working out large-scale in the US, especially not in today’s political climate.  I can’t even see it working large-scale in Finland, or any country without a shift in mindset.

But I’m totally curious to watch it play out.

Do you think something like UBI could ever work, large-scale?  Any economists out there with thoughts on this?

I’m reading Maria Semple’s Today Will Be Different* and came across a quote that I’ve been thinking about nonstop:

I don’t mean to ruin the ending for you, sweet child, but life is one long headwind.  To make any kind of impact requires self-will bordering on madness.  The world will be hostile, it will be suspicious of your intent, it will misinterpret you, it will inject you with doubt, it will flatter you into self-sabotage.  My G-d, I’m making it sound so glamourous and personal!  What the world is, more than anything?   It’s indifferent. … But you have a vision.  You put a frame around it.  You sign your name anyway.  That’s the risk.  That’s the leap.  That’s the madness: thinking anyone’s going to care (p.96).

Writing a blog is complete hubris.  Why the hell should I believe that anyone wants to read this drivel?  Half the time, I finish a post and think, “Should I bother posting this?  Maybe it would be better to just keep telling these thoughts to Truman instead.”  (Truman gets all of my thoughts first, and you get the cliff notes version of my mental vomit.)  Why click the publish button?

And yet I clearly do.

The ChickieNob and I have an enormous new project that we recently started since work is winding down on the book.  Every morning I wake up saying to myself, “What the hell are we thinking?  Why are we writing this?  No one will want to read it.  We are wasting our time.”  By noon, I’m doubting that thought.  By after school, we’re energized and brainstorming.  By evening, we are giddy with our own brilliance.  And then I go to sleep, and it all starts again.

We’re going to write anyway, as Semple would say.  We’re going to jump into the madness of thinking that anyone’s going to care because… why not?  I mean, why the hell not?  If it fails, it fails, and no harm is done except wasted time and bruised ego.  If it succeeds, it succeeds, and we ride off into the sunset like rodeo clowns.  (In this mental image, the ChickieNob and I are always dressed as rodeo clowns, gearing up for our performance as the sunsets in the ring.)

I guess I’m just passing along this quote in case it helps you, too.

Write anyway.

* It is such a good book.  She is the queen of making unlikable characters that you end up liking anyway (though they don’t deserve it).  I consider her the anti-Franzen, who makes unlikable characters that you continue to dislike even after you put the book down.

Last year (okay, so it wasn’t that long ago, but it’s still fun to say “last year”) Note to Self had an episode called “There Is No ‘Off the Record’” about a “future were every word you utter is recorded and saved.”  Your life, transcribed.

This is different from writing everything down in a journal or keeping a really detailed calendar.  Recording your life (and then automatically transcribing it) means that you (and everyone who interacts with you) would have a record of every word spoken.

You would be able to go back and re-read your favourite conversations again.  You could snuggle up with your partner and re-read your first date every anniversary.  You could remember every funny thing someone said to you long after they’re gone.  Imagine that: You could type their name in the data system and bring up every time they spoke to you or you spoke about them.

But.

It would also record every snide remark you make behind closed doors.  It would record your arguments, and you may be tempted to re-read them and cringe over every hurtful word when you’re down.

I’ve been wobbling on the fence, thinking about this episode a lot, because we’re in a strange age where words are recorded — such as typed on Twitter and then screenshotted by various people even after the person deletes their words — and people still deny that they said such things.  And other people believe them.  That is the most bizarre part: The words are there in black-and-white — either written down and spoken in a recording — and the person says, “I never said that.”  And people echo, “He never said that.”

So what is the point?  I mean, beyond your own personal record?  What is the point when other people can see or hear the proof and still say, “Nope.  Never said.”

At the same time, how can we ever move forward and change as human beings if we’re always held to old ideas?  What if someone has offensive ideas and their mind is changed?  Should we go with the most recent words, or do we hold them to their older ideas, too?

I don’t think I’d want every conversation recorded and transcribed, despite seeing all the benefits to the  system.  I would love to relive some old conversations; but I couldn’t handle people who say, “Nope, never said it” despite evidence to the contrary.  It’s bad enough as is.

What do you think about the idea of recording and transcribing every single day of your life?