Light and Momentary

The happiness paradox

In her book The Happiness Project, Gretchen Rubin writes that happiness doesn't always make us feel happy. This is so true in my experience. For instance: I hate putting pictures in albums. Hate hate hate hate hate it. And yet it's such a delight to look at the albums afterwards, and also a delight to watch my enthusiastic kids looking at the albums, and a further delight to bask in my husband's appreciation of my having made the albums. It's worth it for the long-term happiness, even though it is a short-term pain. (A RIOT, one might say: a Reliable Inducer Of Tooth-gnashing).

On my list of fun things I wanted to do this summer, I put the 5-mile race that happens every July in Gladlyville. It's definitely a race, not a fun run. I will be finishing at the back of the sizable pack. I've thought about it for years, but this year I finally wrote it down as a summer goal and ponied up the registration fee. I am feeling undertrained and a little whiny, but I am telling myself this true thing: happiness doesn't always make us feel happy. Time to set the alarm and call it a night.

21st-century problems

Oh, internet, I am configuring a printer. It is taking so long, and involving so many mysterious whirring noises at widely varying pitches, that I am expecting the printer to spit out a a copy of the Stone Table instead of the print head alignment pattern test sheet. (It's not actually a 3D printer, but we're talking a lot of mysterious whirring.) 

"Ending," it says, when I shut it down in disgust. "Please wait a while." Thanks for that, helpful printer. 

Now that I have restarted it I would like to connect it to my wireless network. It seems to require me to push and hold a button on the router with one hand while also pressing a button on the printer. How, I ask you, am I supposed to blog at the same time?

...Oh, tralaLAAA, I think I have persuaded the printer to see the wireless router which is sitting six inches away from it.

You know, it seems like printing should be a solved problem but it keeps on feeling like an intractable problem. The last time we acquired a printer I painstakingly configured it to give me fancy-dancy printing options. I could sit on the couch in the living room and print in the office with the push of a button. I could hypothetically send a document from my office (work) to my office (home) and print it remotely. (Although, full disclosure, I never tried that after I set it up and that maneuver seems unlikely to work on the first try.) I was even feeling hopeful that I could figure out how to scan a receipt and send it straight to Evernote, although I also believe that the US will end capital punishment in my lifetime and those two beliefs may be equally optimistic.

But then, not long after I got it all working, something broke somewhere. Did it happen when I upgraded my OS? Did we replace a router and blow the printer's little mind? Did we forget to invite Eris to the wedding so she sowed some discord over the wireless network? (<-21st-century epic in the making, folks.) No, I've got it: perhaps it tried to print a Stone Table and clogged its innards forevermore. I'm not sure if the White Witch herself could have untangled that particular networking issue.

I have been writing a half-sentence and then trying to figure out the next step, writing a half-sentence and trying to figure out the next step. This process may explain a few things both about the coherence of this post and the state of my unconfigured printer. I told to go ahead and download its firmware update. "Preparing," it told me. "This will take a while."

Awesome. Thanks for the heads-up.

Maybe I'll do a little campaigning against capital punishment and see if the printer fixes itself while I'm away.