Reflections

It is Saturday as I sit here and type this. My final posts will be written and published on the road. I still have not answered some of my biggest questions, but I do have some actions I can take next. First, I think I will start a blog series on my main blog, that will be more open-ended and authentic. I will try to be a little less polished and authoritative. The conversation to me is more interesting than the answer. Don’t get me wrong, I love having the answers to why things work the way they do. However, I appreciate engaging with people more.

Also, it frees me up to share more often because it nerfs my perfectionism.

Note: Someone asked me recently about the expression to nerf something. As far as I am aware, it comes from the video game world where a weapon in a game would be overpowered (OP), and the developers realizing it would change the game device (weapon, spell, charm, tool, character class, etc…) to be less effective. Like a nerf version of a sword. I might look cool, but it was no longer so dangerous or effective.

Therefore, my first reflection is that I want to write more often, probably 2-3 times per week, but be more open. Perhaps I will focus on the weekly question.

The second thing is that I am going to share more of me. There’s an idea that you must focus on one topic and be known for one thing. The truth is all my interests are part of who I am and they are interconnected. Also, Keith Roberts, the creator of the Oak Journal, who I am lucky enough to call a friend, told me to have four to five core messages. Well, he might not have said messages, but interests. I think most of us have more than a single interest, although we might have a single career.

And in the spirit of Tiny Experiments, focusing on only one thing is just another form of rigid linear thinking.

Lessons Learned

I would say that along the way, creating this blog has had an impact on some of my other habits. For one, my morning pages routine did get decimated. I have many blank pages in my journal. I just can’t do all the kinds of writing I want to do in the amount of time I allocate in the morning.

However, I have also learned, or at least I have had my own learning process confirmed. Being patient and persistent makes knowledge and methods available to me that I feel should have been available from the moment I started, but for whatever reason, they did not become apparent or available until I spent some time working with the tool, material, or domain. For example, I now know that I can publish micro.blog content directly from inside of Obsidian. So my new writing process has taken that into account. I learned how to upload images from my phone to Micro.blog using the iOS app, and then I can paste the links directly into the Obsidian draft of the blog post and they work. There are a few more steps, but my overall frustration with the process has dropped dramatically. It is still easier to use this system with MarsEdit on my MacBook, but only needing a portable keyboard and my phone opens the universe to me for publishing blog posts easily.

That strikes me as very cool.

I have not decided if I will continue to use this platform, but I feel like there could be room for something here. Matthew Dicks blogs his personal life constantly and has for years. However, there is some risk as his entire life was turned upside down by people who edited his blog posts with malicious intent and then blackmailed him and his employer with it. There are reasons people are not always open and vulnerable. Sometimes, vulnerability means exactly what we fear it means, and not what Brené Brown tells us it means in its best use. When you are vulnerable, you are in fact open to being hurt.

Shopping

As part of my one-bag travel, I am always on the hunt for products or clothes that make the experience better or more effective. One thing I have struggled to find (until today) is sandals. I had some Xero sandals, but I did not like the way they fit, and they are extraordinarily flat. Now, the whole point of the Xero shoes is to have a shoe that feels barefoot, but there’s sort of a point where it’s a little too flat and I just never felt good about wearing those sandals. Teva’s, sort of the granddaddy of the sports sandal, are surprisingly thick. In general, they have very thick curves souled and thick straps making them heavy and surprisingly bulky.

Aside: Arch Supports Are Stupid Until you hear someone point out how dumb something is, it can be hard to realize when a piece of marketing hype is just stupid. One of my favorites is “Arch Support”. Or perhaps it is one of my favorites to ridicule. You see, arches provide support, they don’t need support. Think of the arch de Triumph in Paris, or the famous arch in St. Louis. Arches do not need support. They are support structures. I am not a doctor, but I am an engineer, and the arch is a marvel of engineering the way it distributes force from a top to the sides. That is what arches do. Now, according to the shoe makers - who may or may not have doctors advising them - weak arches are likely the cause of having arch support and not conditioning your foot to do its job. In other words, walking barefoot causes your arches to flex, which stretches the ligaments and builds up the muscles that hold the structure together. But, part of the key is to switch from heel striking to landing on the ball or pad, or side of your foot. Most shoes with heels, or thick padded soles encourage heel striking (letting your heel hit the ground first). A more natural way of walking is for the ball, pad, or side of your foot to touch down first. I was surprised how much this changes the way I walk, from body position to the entire motion of my leg, yet despite that, I have been a fan of zero drop style shoes for years now.

So back to my sandal adventure, my son’s partner, Shelby, recommended Bedrock sandals. This particular brand has a Vibram sole, the same kind they use on hiking boots, but they are relatively thin, with a decent “lug” which gives them good “grip." They are zero drop (flat) and they are light. These are the best compromise I have found for a travel sandal that can earn a permanent spot in my one-bag travel kit.

There are two styles of Bedrocks, a thicker model and a thinner. I purchased the thinner variety, and my initial impressions are extremely positive.

I also had one of those strangely serendipitous shopping experiences where REI had a shirt I liked, but never in my size, and as I was walking out of the store, I literally said, “I wish they had this in my size,” and the shirt on the top of the pile - that was not there the day before - was in my size. So I grabbed it and I bought it before I changed my mind.

So it was a good start to the day, and I got back to the house before anyone else besides my wife was awake. Stealth mission complete.

More Reflections

So, getting back to video games and addiction. One of the problems I have with the word addiction is that people use the word both casually and seriously. One example is the new game Balatro. And by new, I mean this is not a classic game that has been around for decades. Balatro is a roguelike deck building game that uses poker-like elements for gameplay.

But first, some definitions:

• Roguelike: A “roguelike” game is characterized by procedurally generated levels, turn-based gameplay, tile-based graphics, and permanent death of the player character. These games often emphasize strategic decision-making and replayability.
• Deck Building: A deck-building game is a card game where players start with a small set of weak cards and gradually acquire more powerful cards to build a stronger deck as the game progresses. The goal is to strategically improve your deck to achieve victory.
• Poker: Seriously? I don’t need to describe this, do I? But just in case, ChatGPT generated this: Poker is a card game where players bet on the strength of their hands, aiming to win chips or money. It involves skill, strategy, and luck, with players trying to form the best hand or bluff opponents into folding. The most common variant is Texas Hold’em.

Okay, a number of people describe Balatro as addictive. But is it really? First, it passes my two critical criteria.

1. You can buy it.
2. You do not have to be online to play it.

But then why is it addictive? And is it really? Well, one thing about the game is that it is definitely compelling. But is it something you can set down when you want to?

In my experience, yes; however, I hear (and read) from a lot of people that the game is “addictive.”

In my experience, what makes the game so compelling is its well-balanced play and replayability. It does not appear to have any of the devices or mechanisms that are common in addictive games.

Basically, in an addictive game, the core mechanic is luck. A boss. Of mine once explained the difference between gambling and risk-taking.

In gambling, there is nothing you can do to change the outcome in your favor. When you are taking a risk, you can influence the odds of a good outcome in your favor through research, hard work, and discipline.

In a gamble, you are along for the ride. Pull the slot machine lever, throw the dice, hope you get the right cards. But with a risk, you get to make choices in how you deploy your resources, or trading one object for another.

When games lean toward manipulative, in my experience, they tend to hide information. If you think of Tetris, it showed you the next piece, but also their primary mode of difficulty was speed. As you advanced, the game got faster. However, with gem matching games, they drop batches of gems, and the boards themselves “appear” to be randomly generated. You really have no idea what is coming next.

Roguelike games, with their random generation, seem similar; however, usually, the random elements are largely cosmetic or aesthetic. The layout of the map, but the types of enemies you fight are largely consistent, and getting past them requires skill. But in manipulative games, the difficulties err on the side of never quite being something you can master because, like in a gamble, they don’t want you to experience the consistency of developed skill; they want to keep your brain in a mode of experiencing experimentation. They are designed to produce a variable reward, not a consistent reward based upon skill.

Interesting, Balatro will show you the entire deck of cards remaining to be played in a hand. This single piece of information, allowing you to calculate odds by showing the deck (something they would never do in Las Vegas), is a pretty compelling argument to me that the designers of Balatro are trying to help you improve your decision-making.

Taking calculated risks to achieve rewards is a valid form of decision-making. And decision-making that balances available information, resources, outcomes, and probabilities, is a skill. In fact, it is one of the most important skills in being an entrepreneur.

Also, once you recognize certain hands can produce certain point yields, your decision-making can become faster and more consistent.

Consequently, I am inclined to believe that Balatro is what I would call a good game. That is a game where:

1. The developer is trying to entertain the player.
2. The developer is not trying to steal attention and sell it to someone else.
3. The game builds skills that can produce reliable or consistent results.
4. You can voluntarily put the game down when you need to or want to.

There may be other attributes that I’m not considering, but so far, I feel like this analysis works well.