Aaron's Status

6:14 am

This is just some stuff that’s on my mind on this beautifully crisp autumn morning at 6:30am.

Look, I realize that Amazon is enshittifying the world, enslaving us, sucking our blood, killing our babies, etc., etc., but systemic monopolies will not be broken up by consumer choice, so try not to sweat that too hard.

I wanted to change out the chargers in my car (the kind that plug into the “accessory port” previously known as a “cigarette lighter”) for fully USB-C ones, because my friends it is finally time. Finally every single one of our entertainment devices and phones is USB-C in this household.

So I ordered a couple of Anker two-port USB-C car charger dealies, and three new USB-C cables with nice braided sheathing. From Amazon, of course. Where else are you going to go, fucking Best Buy? Amazon said they’d come the next day, which is amazing.

Imagine my surprise when the chargers dropped on my doorstep just hours later! Where the shit does this stuff come from? How can Amazon coordinate deliveries within hours? Who is suffering from chronic stomach ulcers and anxiety attacks because of this?

As I was coming downstairs this morning, barely awake, at about 5:30am, a guy in an Amazon vest was dropping the USB-C cables on my porch in the dark. It’s just nuts.

Habits

I bought a year-long subscription to the piano-learning app “Melodics.” It was a recommendation from a friend at work who is a classically trained performance violist and producer, so that felt like a strong enough signal for me.

So far, I have dramatically, measurably failed to do a lesson every day. Or even every couple of days. I usually tell people that I’m good at establishing habits, but that might only be true for trivial ones. Like, I’m good at always putting my camera’s lens cap in my back left pocket. This is how I manage to never lose them.

I’m good at building these in-the-moment habits, but less good at creating a daily habitual action. I keep telling myself it’s because I don’t have an established time of the day for piano… That might still be true, but is that the real cause for this challenge?

Is it something else? Is it friction? Is it disconnection from the goals? What will I do to square all of these things up?

I guess I should work on figuring that out.