Lest you think I’ve just been watching YouTube all night, here’s a really compelling article about The Simpsons.

This pull quote spoke to me:

“America has certainly turned into Springfield,” says Matt Selman, who is, along with Al Jean, the current showrunner. “I’m gonna generously say: Good people are easily misled. Terrifyingly easily misled. That’s always been in the DNA of the show, but now it’s in the DNA of America. It was a show about American groupthink, and how Americans are tricked—by advertising, by corporations, by religion, by all these other institutions that don’t have the best interests of people at heart.”

I’ve been rewatching clips from the first ten seasons sporadically over the past few months, and I think that’s an astute point that I hadn’t really considered.

The pro wrestling world has a term for fans who know quite a bit about the backstage politics which makes the show possible: a “smart mark” (with “mark” being a carny term for someone who can pull one over on).

But much like internet trolls, the only way you could ever “win” as a pro wrestling fan is by not engaging. By consuming the content, you’re still a mark (even if you are a smart one).

Perhaps the reason so many people are drawn to The Simpsons is similar: you feel like you’re in on the joke, even when you can’t escape the gravitational pull of the society which the show is lampooning.

A friend recommended this video to me while I was out with Covid a few months back and I just got to watch it.

Now I get to recommend it to you!

If you are a nerd for process, you will love this. Just one small fact to entice you to watch this: did you know Waffle House employs their own meteorological staff?

The pen tool in Photoshop has long felt extremely inscrutable and unapproachable to me, so in my search to better understand how to use it, I came across this video.

I never realized how lacking my math education was on me in high school and college, but I feel like if I had content like this to help explain it, I would’ve fallen head over heels for math.

When he said “I do businesses to hunt more insights”, I really felt that. Great little snippet from the great Knowledge Project podcast.

Most companies don’t get it. Most people don’t get it. To them, problems are a sign of failure. They think that the default state is perfection. They believe that if we just worked hard enough — planned hard enough then there wouldn’t be any problems. The only reason we fall from that perfect state is that someone, somewhere screwed up. But that’s not reality. The default state for our reality is chaos. It is ruin. It is entropy and erosion and human nature. We build things to make a better world, and yeah, part of that is people failing. People fail all the time. That sucks, but you’re not going to change it. So you might as well do a good job living with it.

This is really what we all need to cope with. The times we live in are chaotic, filled with uncertainty, fear, and a sense of impending doom. So much so that even our children are suffering at historic rates.

But as I deal with my own struggles to make sense of things, I continue to fall back on accepting that we've always lived in a world that is rife with turmoil. All we can do is go along for the ride, appreciate what we have, and be grateful for those who we can lean on to help navigate it together.

There is too much in this article to even grab a single pull quote from. The entire thing is worth reading from top to bottom.

It did make me think a bit about how I can apply some of this knowledge to my own life. I personally struggle with “what will I be when I grow up” from time to time, and I think even simply knowing that this is not abnormal is helpful.

I think what many people really want from money is the ability to stop thinking about money. To have enough money that they can stop thinking about it and focus on other stuff.

But that ultimate goal can break down when your relationship with money becomes an ingrained part of your personality. You struggle to break away from focusing on money because the focus itself is a big part of who you are.

This, 100%, is me… and if you can relate to that yourself, give this whole article a read.

Under pressure, our free time – our entertainment time, our recovery time – tends to devolve into mindlessness. You know, scrolling social media. Re-watching the same show repeatedly. Numbing and zoning out. Nobody has the energy to learn how to play Axis & Allies after working for 12 hours.

Similarly, at work, people under pressure tend to simplify. We spend less time engaging socially, having fun, and experimenting. We crack down into Serious Business Mode.

While this can be a reasonable adaptation to get through a rough patch, it’s unsustainable. As we get burnt out, it gets even harder to play, reinforcing the cycle. All work and no play makes Jack something something.

Humans need play.

This all makes sense when you understand what your brain wants.

It doesn’t want nice cars or big homes.

It wants dopamine.

That’s it.

Your brain just wants dopamine.

There is a kind of brain fog that feels unique to early parenthood, and yet I know it isn’t. It’s the same sort of disorienting haze that envelopes anyone who finds their time is not really their own, but rather has been sacrificed to another purpose, voluntarily or otherwise. You lose pieces of yourself, little by little, often unnoticed, until one day you begin to emerge from your experience without the faintest idea of who you are, or even who you used to be.

I had this realization when I first got Covid last year, and it’s been gnawing at me a ton lately.

Ever since having knee surgery, I’ve gained weight to the point where I’m almost the biggest I’ve ever been.

My daily routine is just not at all what I want to do. What’s a day in my life, you asked?

I wake up around 6a and immediately grab my phone and doom scroll. Then I wake up and get breakfast prepped for my wife and kids, then I work.

I work from 6:30a until 5p, only taking occasional breaks to interact gruffly with my family and coworkers and stuff unhealthy junk into my body.

The unhealthy stuff has gotten worse over the last few months. I hadn’t had pop in nearly 2 decades. Now I find myself grabbing a Sprite from time to time. I also eat as much sugar as I can bear in as many forms as I can.

After work, I come home and if I’m lucky, I chat with my wife and eat some dinner, then I play with the kids. If I’m not luck and had a particularly tough day (which is the norm as of late), I come home and sit on my phone until it’s time to put the kids to bed.

I do like getting the kids down, it’s a routine I rather enjoy. Vitamins, pajamas, an episode of something, a few books, then tucked in.

After that, I sit on my phone while the tv blares something I’m only half paying attention to in the background. I eat more sugar. Eventually, I move to bed where I continue on my phone until pass out from exhaustion.

A night filled with awkward dreams and uncomfortable sleep greets me at this point (try sleeping with a heavy brace that keeps your knee locked straight). Then, I get to wake up and do it all again.

That routine sucks. It’s no wonder I’m itching for a change. I want to spend meaningful time with my kids and wife. I want to get involved with activities that bring me joy, like working out, tinkering with hardware, or programming new websites. I want to spend time hanging out with friends and folks who give me energy.

I’m heading out of town for an extended business trip here soon. I think I’m gonna budget my life a bit better while I’m there, and when I return, I’m gonna make some changes.

Because life has a way of making you forget who you are.

And when I start to remember the things that used to make me happy, it can only make life better for me and those who have to put up with me.