Category — Uncategorized

I am very very very swayed by book covers. They will get me to try a book, even if they won’t get me to love a book. But isn’t that one of the hardest things? To get someone to give something a try? Book covers work on me.

But I saw this site featured on Kottke, and I decided to try it. The idea is that you read one page. If you like it and would keep reading, you can click reveal. If not, you go on to the next book. I ended up clicking reveal on a book I would never have given a chance to because I didn’t connect with the cover.

Point taken.

My TBR is already too long, so I’m not really looking for more books to add to it. But I thought it was a very cool way to browse books from home without cover influence.

I have a book I added to my TBR — the Carrier — that is about a society where you can get someone else to carry your emotional pain. “Why should you suffer when she can do it for you? Welcome to Eudaimonia, a revolutionary company that can free you from your unwanted emotions.”

I liked the writing, but I really liked the question at the heart of the book. Is it ethical to have someone else carry your emotional pain? What if it’s voluntary? Can it ever truly be voluntary? Who would choose to absorb someone else’s pain if they had another choice? What if it shortens the other person’s life? Would it be okay to use the service if the person knew the risks and still opted for the position?

Heady questions.

I found the book during the heat wave, when I wanted to hire someone to work on our lawn because I didn’t want Josh working outside. But isn’t it sort of the same thing? To hire someone to be physically uncomfortable for you? Maybe not totally the same thing because there are perks to working outside, whereas there are no perks (that I can imagine) to feeling someone else’s emotional pain. But the book topic gave me pause.

Josh has wanted a new mattress for a long time. I have not wanted to change mattresses. I like our mattress enough. If he had never brought it up, I would have never thought anything about it. The mattress just is in my brain. But I do have fears that we will end up with a worse mattress. I have certainly slept on enough mattresses to be able to identify a bad one. So I am content with the mattress I know over an imaginary better mattress, which may or may not exist.

But then we got a hotel upgrade.

I have no idea why we were chosen for an upgrade, but when we checked into a hotel, we were given a better room. And the better room came with a better bed. Like a noticeably better bed. As in, I’ve never slept in a more comfortable bed.

We took apart the bedding to see the mattress because it was so good that I would have bought that mattress on the spot. It was a Hypnos mattress, which has a royal warrant. They supply beds for all of the royal residences.

Oh.

We have been trying to track down a Hypnos mattress in the US. There are suppliers who say they carry the mattress, but we’re unsure if it’s the same one we slept on or some made-for-the-US model. And then cost because we’re seeing anything from normal (a few thousand) to the abnormal-for-a-mattress (the cost of a car). Our nearest options are a day trip from home.

The bed was just that good.

This essay was like a lightbulb for me, and you can replace workplace clockspeed with any influencing clockspeed. Your family has a clockspeed. Your partnership has a clockspeed. Whatever you allow to influence you has a clockspeed.

So if you have been working for a company that moves at X pace, and you’ve been laid off, your brain tells you that you need to have everything figured out within X pace. Even if you could figure it out at a different pace. Your brain has been wired to think that you need to move faster or slower than you technically need to move. Part of your job, once that job is done, is to uncouple your brain from that job and remember your pace.

The same goes for marriage or any breakup. You don’t have to figure out your next move at the relationship’s speed. You need to move at your own speed. If you’ve been making family-building decisions quickly to be ready for the next cycle, when you take a step back, you also need to take a step back from that decision-making pace.

See if it resonates with you.

The iPhone does a great job of bubbling up photos you’ve forgotten about through its Memories feature. If you keep swiping left on your phone, you’ll find a small set of widgets, and one is a photos widget that creates tiny slideshows from the same date (three years ago, today!) or around a theme (people with animals).

One night, I was looking at it when I realized, as I moved my phone, that it felt like I was in the image. It was a picture I had taken days earlier of a fountain next to the Tower Bridge, and it looks like you could walk behind the fountain. It was so strange. The picture looked three-dimensional.

I swiped again, and a new picture appeared with the same effect. It was the Wolvog cuddling Beorn, and I teared up because it looked like I could touch both of them. The Wolvog looked three-dimensional, and Beorn looked so tangible that he could have been alive.

I had to Google to figure out what happened because the Beorn picture was clearly old. It’s something called Spatial Scene, and you can turn it on for any photo on your phone. I was even able to use it on a picture of my grandparents from 45 years ago that I keep on my phone. You just tap the hexagon icon in the top right corner, and it temporarily changes the image into a Spatial Scene. When you’re ready to go back to normal, you click it again.

It is strangely emotional, especially looking at pictures of people or pets who are gone and feeling you could touch them again.

Have you played with the feature?