surprise! you are now enrolled in shit-show university.
It’s been another week in the shit-show, and we’re all a bit worse for the wear.
On the home-front, the big updates are, a) we got our hairs cut off to get French-er (let me know when it’s working), and b) my kids started a pod. Alongside all parents everywhere, I gave up.
Some things to make you smile:
I am proud of this rat, and you should be, too.
I had a wide-ranging discussion with a wise woman in technology this week who amazingly describes herself as a “black-futurist-Octavia-Butler-prepper.” It reminded me of this article on how one housewife became a prepper, and this book, which I’ve been dying to read: Notes From An Apocalypse: One Man’s Journey To Visit Doomsday Preppers Around The World. (I am working hard to keep up a healthy diet of travel literature, and this fits the bill nicely in a current-events-end-of-world sort of way).
A good (long) read: On competitive running, exactness, and finding permission to be myself. “It’s odd to have one of your coping mechanisms become the thing you abuse to seek approval.” Yep!
Apparently, Covid and Culture Shock feel the same in your brain! Here’s why.
The One-Minute Version:
When someone moves to a completely new culture, many of the ‘autopilots’ your brain uses for thousands of small decisions every day become ineffective. In a similar way, your current environment has likely changed sufficiently enough that many of your own ‘autopilots’ are no longer working. When this happens, the next remaining option for your brain is to use a second decision-making process that requires far more effort and energy (glucose) to operate. Your body can only supply glucose to your brain at a certain rate – a rate far below what would be required to use this kind of thinking continually. Thus, additional thinking about routine matters has likely left you with a chronically depleted level of glucose in your brain. All to say: You are experiencing “culture shock”.The Father of the Bride cast reunited for a 25 minute sequel (spoiler: a Zoom wedding) and it was one of the highlights of my week. Read about the making of it here (cue Steve Williams telling the writer when she asked early in the pandemic if he had time to talk, “I have nothing but time.”) Watch it here.
For those following the newsletter comments about the Netflix movie My Octopus Teacher, my mother, who works in an aquarium, sent me some thoughts via email about how the man knows it’s really the SAME octopus. (One vocal reviewer found this implausible.)
Hello Claire, Although I have not watched My Octopus Teacher and am totally excited to see it, I can absolutely say that my fellow aquarium octopus handlers say that each one they feed knows them immediately. They come up from their tank and grab their arm with their suckers and wait for food and play-time. If a stranger comes to feed them, they do not come up from the tank. And when their octopus dies after reproducing, the handler cries like they lost a child. Maybe the Octopus Dad in this movie feels like he needs to reconnect with his real son when his South African octopus dies. That’s going to take a lot of explaining though why an octopus was more important to him than his son.
And finally, another reader, apropos of nothing (?), asked, “Nice one.....always enjoy reading from you...Did you ever do drama in school?”
There’s a relevant story here about a 2-person play where I was the woman who turned into a chicken, but I’ll save that for another time.
Quack,
Claire