Kirsten's Notebook

When I was kid, I spent a lot of time playing the Sims 2. The Sims 2 taught me that spending 10 minutes on some "fun" activities is a lot more fun than spending 10 minutes on other fun activities. For my Sims, spending time sliding down a pool slide, watching sports, or having sex was more fun than doing the crossword in the paper. Crash Course Study Skills calls these more rewarding activities "high-density fun." If you think of yourself as needing a certain amount of fun every day, there are a couple ways to do it - you could do it inefficiently by tweeting every 5 minutes all day, or you could do it more effectively by studying for 4 hours and then closing your books and meeting up with your friends. High-density fun is clearly more rewarding, but this year in particular I've had trouble having lots of fun - it's been a tough year for that! There have been a couple of reasons: 1. I've been really down because of the pandemic, and when you're down...

I set a goal a few years ago to read 24 history books before my 30th birthday. It seems a bit arbitrary now, and I can't remember exactly why I decided to do it, but I've just turned 29 and I've nearly finished. ( Nearly - I've been stuck on my final book Merchants of Grain  for months though!) Honestly, I've read more history than I expected. The reason why I was because I've been trying to set myself up to avoid getting stuck. Ways I avoid getting stuck: I can quit a book at any time. If I quit a book after reading a good chunk of it - maybe 50 or so pages - I think of myself as having "read" that book. (I feel differently about fiction.) I can read a book in any order. I normally read front to back, but not always, especially in books with lots of pictures. I especially seek out books with lots of pictures for this reason and jump around reading the captions and titles before deciding if I should read more of the text. I am wary of aspirational book...

When you're young, there are endless possibilities in front of you. Maybe you'll work at a charity or run your own business or become Prime Minister. Maybe you'll run into Emma Watson one day, at the hairdresser's or the park, and the two of you will get to talking and eventually get married. Anything could happen! As we get older, we commit to a particular path, and the possibilities become fewer. Around the time you propose to your girlfriend, you give up your dream of marrying Emma Watson or any other woman, or your dream of any of the cool things you might have done later in your life if you were unattached. And even though you love your girlfriend, giving up on those other possibilities can really hurt. It can be a kind of grief, mourning the deaths of all the people you never got the chance to become. And to avoid that grief, sometimes we avoid making choices. Especially irreversible choices. The choices we make allow us to tell certain stories about ourselves. Fo...