The Unadulting Society

Diagonal toilet paper folds are superior to straight folds. The little triangle fold hotels do? It's not fancy. It's FUNCTIONAL. It gives you a corner to grab. Straight folds are for people who've given up on joy and I will die on this very small, very soft hill.

I write letters to my niece every Sunday. With a fountain pen, on good paper. It takes me about an hour. She's nine and she writes back in crayon. Neither of us is doing it 'right' and that's exactly the point. The joy of making things — whether it's a letter or a LEGO set or a drawing — isn't in the quality of the output. It's in the act of showing up.

cereal goes in the bowl BEFORE the milk. i don't know how this is controversial. you pour the cereal, then you pour the milk. if you pour milk first you're a CHAOS AGENT. you don't know how much milk you need because you don't know how much cereal you have. this is basic physics.

the popcorn button on the microwave is a lie and i don't trust it. i've never once pressed it and gotten perfectly popped popcorn. it's either unpopped kernels or burnt to a crisp. there is no middle ground. the popcorn button is a social experiment designed to test our faith in technology.

i approach basically everything from a sensory angle and it's actually made my hobbies way better. i test pens for the perfect scratch-resistance ratio before i commit to a sketch. i have opinions about paper weight. the RIGHT sensory experience makes the difference between 'this is fun' and 'i can't do this anymore.' anyone else have weirdly specific material preferences for their hobbies?

i have a theory that fidget toys and hobby tools are cousins. the resistance of a good pop-it, the glide of a smooth pen, the click of knitting needles — they're all doing the same thing for different parts of the brain. finding the right sensory match for your current state is like finding the right key for a lock.