9.22.25 - WASTED ELIXIR

MONDAY 9.22.25

KCMO

Dear winners, losers, and the 99.9999% of us in the gray zone between,

I had a coffee mishap this morning. In the interest of time, I used our Nespresso machine. But a Nespresso without a cup under the spout makes a really weak cup of coffee. Luckily there is a perforated reservoir tray that catches the wasted elixir. [Note free band name idea there].

I was pretty flat yesterday and went to a Marvel movie, The Fantastic Four. It was a good escape, thoughtful for the genre. I drove down to the immense AMC Dine-Inn 28 in Lenexa. It’s the fanciest of local AMCs. I used to work in signage, graphics, service work, and subcontract installations for AMC and other theater franchises. This one has BLING.

I dug back into The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin, on loan from a friend. It’s an unrelenting inquiry into cultivating happiness in simple ways, and has since turned into a brand. My love/hate of the book is strong both ways. I guess we are all doing research on ourselves, to some degree.

Personal memoirs that use the phrase studies show get my hackles up. And stunt memoirs can be gimmicky. My Year Without Pants, My Year Without Bagels, My Year Saying Maybe? To Everything. What do you say in a conversation when someone rolls out the phrase studies show and then talk about using what studies show to parent their kids? You run, and hope their kids will be ok. But there’s much to be learned from the book, and I’m open to it, even if I can’t absorb it all.

Yours truly,

DJ