Why having kids makes people unhappy: they’re expensive.
Reboot
“Is freedom anything else than the right to live as we wish? Nothing else.”
—Epictetus
“We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.”
– William Faulkner
Salmagundi in 3…2…1…
One Direction
A few months back, I changed up my hairstyle a bit: while leaving the top the same floppy length I’ve stuck with for most of my life, I now started fading the sides and back. It’s a more modern look, and one that gives me pleasingly precise instructions; ask a barber to fade the sides from a 1.5 to a 3, and the results are reliably perfect. The top, however, remains a bit more subjective. So when I got a haircut three weeks ago, while the fade was indeed excellent, once I headed home and took a shower, I quickly realized the top had been left annoyingly long and over-floppy. In the hopes of getting a full month out of the haircut, I therefore headed back a couple of days later, and asked that my barber trim the top a bit further, too.
Turns out, I should have been more specific about how much I meant by ‘a bit,’ as I left that afternoon with an inadvertent buzz. Now, even three weeks later, it’s still one of the shortest haircuts I’ve had in my entire life. And, as I recalled from a year ago, when I also ended up with an even shorter unintentional buzz, once my hair is below a certain length, it all just kind of sticks straight up, in a look I’d refer to as ‘plucked chicken.’
But what I’d forgotten from a year ago is, it then takes a surprisingly long time to get past that plucked length, to where my hair regains its normal appearance: a part on the side, with some going to the right and more going to the left, rather than all of it just sticking out in prickly uniformity.
Still, I’m hoping that, in another week or two, I’ll again reach the point of directionality – basically, that I’ll have a very short normal haircut, rather than a lengthy buzz. After which, I should still have a month or two until I need to get the top trimmed again. Which is good, as that should give me time to come up with more precise instructions, and to save myself from again getting wildly over-sheared another year hence.
HMB
Recently, a friend’s mother ended up in the hospital after taking a fall on some ice. Although she was banged up pretty badly, fortunately, it looks like she’ll be fine. Though, to play it safe, she was put on a week or two of bed rest. I recommended she take the supplement HMB for the next few weeks, which my friend had never heard of before. I’m sharing more about it here, on the chance it’s new to you, too, and might similarly be helpful in the future for you or for someone you love.
In short, beta-hydroxy-beta-methylbutyrate, or HMB, is a derivative of the essential amino acid Leucine. It’s been widely studied, and it’s extremely safe. You can find it cheaply at GNC or other supplement stores, as well as online. Mostly, it’s been researched as a supplement for athletes, as it prevents protein breakdown, inhibiting something called the ubiquitin-proteasome pathway. The results there are pretty clear: if you’re just starting or re-starting an exercise program, taking 3g of HMB a day significantly increases initial strength and muscle gains, while also reducing soreness and muscle damage. In that context, definitely worthwhile.
However, more recently, HMB has also been studied for its ability to prevent muscle loss during periods of inactivity. Turns out, it’s extremely effective in a situation like my friend’s mom’s. One study followed older adults during 10 days of complete bed rest. Those given just a placebo lost 4.5 pounds of lean mass over those ten days. Which is a lot; in most cases, it would take nearly a year of training to gain that muscle back. Conversely, those given 3g a day of HMB only lost 0.37 pounds of lean mass over the ten days – barely any at all.
So, regardless of your age, if you end up unexpectedly incapacitated – or even if you just hit a crazy patch of life and realize you’re going to have to take a month or two off of your regular workout routine – consider taking HMB. It’s safe, it’s cheap. And, as research shows, it works.
Terwilliger
A classic I recently stumbled across again: Theodore Geisel’s (aka Dr. Seuss’) graduation speech to the 1977 class of Lake Forest College, reproduced below in its entirety.
—
My Uncle Terwilliger on the Art of Eating Popovers
My uncle ordered popovers
from the restaurant’s bill of fare.
And, when there were served,
he regarded them
with a penetrating stare.
Then he spoke great Words of Wisdom
as he sat there on that chair:
‘To eat these things,’
said my uncle,
‘you must exercise great care.
You may swallow down what’s solid
BUT
you must spit out the air!’
And
as you partake in the world’s bill of fare,
that’s darned good advice to follow.
Do a lot of spitting out the hot air.
And be careful what you swallow.
snotty ingrate
For the second time this winter, I have a cold. Though, sadly, while the first was mild and mercifully brief, this one has me down for the count. The past two nights, I slept terribly, completely unable to breathe through my stuffed nose. Today, I’ve moved on to the runny nose stage, flying through tissues at an alarming clip. But though I seem to have blown out my entire bodyweight in mucous, it appears I’m a surprisingly efficient snot factory; no matter how quickly I clear out my nasal passages, I re-booger just as fast.
Still, in between stretches of complaining and feeling sorry for myself, I’ve been hit by moments of extreme gratitude. Not for how I feel at the moment, which is miserable indeed, but for how I feel the rest of the time. The vast majority of the year, I can breathe easily (and through both nostrils!), even if I normally take that delight entirely for granted.
Similarly, until I fractured my wrist at the end of last year, and then limped through months of splinted immobility followed by the ongoing process of wrist rehab, I had sort of overlooked how excellent it is to have two working hands. (And, in particular, to have my dominant hand working, a distinction whose magnitude I first truly grasped while learning to wipe with the other hand.)
All of which makes me think of the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, and his beautiful writing about ‘non-toothache days.’ As Hanh observes, when you have a toothache, it’s all you can think about; you’d give nearly anything to make that pain stop. Yet, once it inevitably does, you’re only briefly grateful. Soon, you’re back to forgetting how wonderful it is just to live in a world of happy teeth. That said, and despite my daily meditation habit, I’m sure achieving the mindfulness required to constantly appreciate the beauty of non-toothache days (and non-snotty days and two-handed days) is still well beyond me. Indeed, even by next week, if I’m back to cold-free, I’m sure I’ll again completely overlook the beauty and joy of that simple, healthy baseline. But, for now, surrounded by my pile of tissues, I’m at least reminding myself to look forward to it. If I can’t be grateful in that moment, I can at least improve this current moment by trying to be appreciative in advance.
Cut
Benjamin Franklin, who helped Thomas Jefferson write the Declaration of Independence, once share this anecdote with Jefferson:
When I was a journeyman printer, one of my companions, an apprentice Hatter, having served out his time, was about to open a shop for himself. His first concern was to have a handsome signboard, with a proper inscription. He composed it in these words: “John Thompson, Hatter, makes and sells hats for ready money.” with a figure of a hat subjoined. But he thought he would submit it to his friends for their amendments. The first he shewed it to thought the word “hatter” tautologous, because followed by the words “makes hats” which shew he was a hatter. It was struck out. The next observed that the word “makes” might as well be omitted, because his customers would not care who made the hats. If good and to their mind, they would buy, by whomsoever made. He struck it out. A third said he thought the words “for ready money” were useless as it was not the custom of the place to sell on credit. Every one who purchased expected to pay. They were parted with, and the inscription now stood “John Thompson sells hats.” “Sells hats” says his next friend? Why nobody will expect you to give them away. What then is the use of that word? It was stricken out and “hat” followed it, the rather, as there was one painted on the board. So his inscription was reduced ultimately “John Thompson” with the figure of a hat subjoined.
Word Up
My whole life, I’ve loved words. Enough so that, when I was just four or five, whenever I learned a new one, I’d walk around for the subsequent week trying to wedge it into as many sentences as I possibly could. A voracious reader from even that age, I stumbled across most of my new words in books. And, each time I did, I was assiduous about looking it up.
But, over the decades, I ran into fewer and fewer words that I didn’t know. Until, eventually, I had fallen out of the definition-hunting habit. When I did find something new, stopping my reading, even just to make note of the word, seemed an undue hassle. And I could almost always roughly grasp the word from context. So, instead of pausing to Google, I’d just plow ahead.
Back in November, however, I came across a surprising use of ‘salient’ in an Economist article. And, as I happened to be sitting next to a physical dictionary, I paused to look the word up, discovering a second definition I had never known: an outwardly projecting part of a fortification or line of defense.
I have a longstanding weakness for secondary meanings – ‘pedestrian,’ in the sense of ‘commonplace,’ being a favorite – so I wrote the new definition of salient down in my journal. And then, a few weeks later, I stumbled across ‘anatine’ in a short story, looked it up, and wrote that down, too.
From there, a new habit was born – or, more accurately, an old one rebirthed. In the few months since, I’ve already picked up otiose, rachitic, oneiric, diluents, vitrine. And I’ve reminded myself of words I knew, but that were parked too far in the recesses of my brain to be called up for conversational use: parvenu, febrile, palimpsest.
Much like my five year old self, I am now truly smitten with those discoveries and re-discoveries. Though, unlike the words I was excited about 35 years back, these I’m sadly forced to largely keep to myself. Use ‘anatine’ or ‘oneiric’ in conversation with all but the nerdiest and wordiest of fellow readers, and I’d likely get nothing but a confused stare in response.
Even so, I’ll be back to looking up new words as I discover them, and will continue to expand my list. If nothing else, it makes me awfully happy just to read them over, to roll them around in my head, to see how they feel coming to life on my tongue.
Somnambulant
For most of the last fifteen years, I’ve averaged about six, maybe six and a half hours of sleep a night. And, honestly, that always seemed like enough. I woke up before my alarm clock, and felt like I was functioning totally fine.
With each year, I read more and more research about the negative impact of insufficient sleep, the countless adverse consequences that slowly accrue if you don’t hold to seven and a half or eight hours nightly. But, as I said, I felt okay, so I tended to shrug all that research off.
Then, eventually, I came across a study on the cognitive effects – as well as the perceived cognitive effects – of lack of sleep. The researchers started out by getting a group of people caught up on sleep/well rested. Then, for one night, they had the subjects cut back, sleeping six hours rather than eight, and assessed them with a battery of cognitive tests the following day. Further, they then asked the subjects how they thought they had done on the tests.
After that first night of short sleep, the people reported feeling tired, and assumed they had performed worse on the tests than when they were sharp and rested. And, indeed, they were correct.
Then, a second night in a row, they slept for just six hours. Once again, they thought their scores had further declined, and once again, they were right.
Third night, third day, same thing.
But then, the fourth day! For yet another night, the people slept six hours, and for yet another day, they took a battery of tests. Except, this time, the people felt totally fine. As they explained to the researchers, they had finally adjusted to the shorter nights of sleep. They were back to feeling good, and they knew their scores were back up, too.
Problem was, they were completely wrong. Just as before, their scores continued to decline with each day of sleep deprivation. But after the fourth day or so, they simply lost the ability to recognize as much any longer.
That study definitely gave me pause, made me question my own self-assessment of how well I was functioning on my standard six hours and change. Enough so that, despite a decade and a half of habit to the contrary, I decided it was worth some self-experimentation. I made some serious lifestyle shifts, and started sleeping a full seven and a half or eight hours every single night.
And, actually, for the most part, I felt pretty much exactly the same as I did before. But then, every so often, I ended up once again short-sleeping, and I felt terrible enough to realize the necessity of the shift.
I was thinking about that today, because for the past two nights I stayed up way past my bedtime, unable to put down a good book. And while I don’t really regret that (in the words of Lincoln, “it’s been my experience that those with no vices have very few virtues”), I now definitely feel the effects of those two six-ish hour nights. I’m sluggish, foggy, cranky, craving sweets, and ready for a nap. In short, I feel like crap.
And, at the same time, I don’t mind at all. As ever, it’s a good reminder that those extra hours snoozing aren’t wasted. Despite years of convincing myself to the contrary, I really do need seven and a half or eight hours of sleep to be at my best.
With that, I’m off to bed.