Adventures with contact lenses
(Sunset in Maine)
Housekeeping note
Yesterday, Intuit bought Mailchimp for $12 billion.
It was the kick in the pants I needed to move my weekly email thing off Mailchimp — because god only knows what Intuit is going to do with all those email addresses.
If I was one of the cool kids, I'd move to Substack, but it's only a matter of time until they sell out too, and all Substack emails look exactly the same.
So here we go with Buttondown, an email program that, as far as I can tell, is one dude's side project. It's supposed to be easy enough for a Boomer to figure out, flexible enough for a designer to get fancy with, and "privacy-heavy," whatever that means.
Contact lens story #1
I got my first contacts in 8th grade. I was desperate to get rid of my glasses and all the things they supposedly said about me. After a few months of begging my parents for contacts, they relented.
The first time I tried to put in my new contacts, it was a goddamn disaster. Every time I put a lens on my fingertip and filled it with a few drops of saline solution, the lens folded in half, or fell off my finger, or went into my eye inside out, or folded in on itself once it was in my eye, or disappeared completely, only to show up half an hour later on the bristle of a hairbrush near the sink. After what seemed like hundreds of failed attempts, I was in tears, frustrated and furious with myself for not being able to do something that should be so easy.
Instead of thinking, "this is a new thing and it's going to take time to learn, so I need to be patient and keep trying," I took the express lane to "I suck at this, like I suck at everything else, and I will never be able to do anything because I'm too stupid, and why even bother trying."
(I figured it out eventually.)
Contact lens story #2
My father, who has always worn hard or gas-permeable contact lenses, is getting cataract surgery next month. His eye doctor wants him to start using soft lenses, something about getting his eyes ready for the procedure.
A couple weeks ago, I overheard him in the bathroom, muttering and cursing as he tried to put in one of his soft lenses. I knew this would be good, so I grabbed my phone, stood outside the bathroom door, and began transcribing (without his knowledge). Behold:
Jesus Christ. This fucking shit. You motherfucking son of a bitch.
(silence)
God dammit it will not stay in there!
(silence)
God you motherfucking bastard son of a bitch.
(silence)
Oh shit. You motherfucker. You son of a bitch. God DAMMIT.
(silence)
It’s finally in there, the son of a bitch. GOD.
My takeaway: Berating yourself for struggling to learn something new isn't healthy. But neither is cursing at a tiny piece of plastic, like it's the plastic's fault. Sometimes it might help to admit that YOU might be at least part of the problem.
Good stuff
They are going to rebuild the old 9:30 club. (Washingtonian)
This tweet. (Twiiter)
The right to bear arms. (Reddit, so it may take a while to load)
Social anxiety memes. (Demilked)
WTF are Tencel, Lyocell, and Modal? This has answers. (Elle)
This dialect quiz is old. But at least for me, 110% accurate. (NYT)
Punch Me Up to the Gods is one of the best books I've read in years. (Publisher's site)