One upside of being a perennial early adopter is that I’m frequently the first Joshua Newman to sign up for some new site or app. So, along with this domain, I also own @joshuanewman on Twitter, and @joshuanewman on Instagram, etc., etc.

Similarly, in what’s perhaps the most mixed of all such blessings, I also own joshuanewman@gmail.com. Which means that, quite frequently, I get emails intended for some other Josh Newman. Recently, I’ve been getting mortgage documents for a Joshua who’s buying a lovely-looking beach house in Australia, and concerned messages from another Joshua’s son’s math teacher about declining trigonometry test scores. And, each time, I write back politely to the sender saying that I’m probably not the Josh Newman they’re looking for, but wishing them, and the other Josh, the best of luck. Always happy to help the brotherhood of Joshua Newmans!

Or, at least, I was until today, when I received a Domino’s order confirmation meant for a Joshua Newman in Alverstoke, England. That Joshua had ordered a large Tuna Delight. Which, in turn, sent me Googling. And, much as the name implies, it turns out that the Tuna Delight is, indeed, a tuna fish pizza. One that, even more inexplicably, also includes sweet corn:

To which I say: no.

British Josh Newman, stop that shit; you’re dragging us all down.

Another year down. And a rather strange one at that.

Yet for all of its terror and tragedy, my 2020 was also full of some wonderful moments. I hope yours was, too.

I’m reminded of Horace’s 11th Ode (as translated by the great Irish poet Derek Mahon, who we sadly lost this year):

Don’t waste your time, Leuconoe, living in fear and hope
of the imprevisible future; forget the horoscope.
Accept whatever happens. Whether the gods allow
us fifty winters more or drop us at this one now
which flings the high Tyrrhenian waves on the stone piers,
decant your wine. The days are more fun than the years
which pass us by while we discuss them. Act with zest
one day at a time, and never mind the rest.

So, decant your wine indeed, and join me in a toast to a better 2021. Or, at least, to one with some excellent days and moments within it. Cheers.

From both direct experience, and a huge amount of published research, I know I should be sleeping about seven and a half hours a night. But, all too often, I don’t.

This week, I’ve had to be up at 5:00am daily. Yet the idea of conking out at 9:30pm just seems untenable – especially as I’m often at work until 8:00pm, and still want to wedge in dinner and some time with Jess once I make it home.

So, instead, I’m just wildly sleep-deprived. And, as a result, my productivity slowed yesterday, and today more or less screeched to a halt. Fortunately, with my newly pared-down to-do list, I at least now feel behind on a shorter backlog of tasks. But I’m still less than thrilled. And I’m doing my best to rally. Including writing this blog post.

Arguably, my time would be better spent right now on a quick nap. But I’m worried I’d wake up groggy enough with sleep inertia that I’d still be garbage at working, yet nonetheless more likely to stay up tonight past a sensible bedtime. So, for the moment, I’m just doing my best to slog ahead. As they say, no sleep till inbox zero.

Woke up this morning to discover that someone had been on an Apple store and Cash App spending spree overnight with my debit card. Sweet.

Fortunately, Simple was awesome, quickly unwound the transactions, and is sending a replacement card my way. But, in the meantime, I’ve been rearranging dollars to keep backup options working until it does, and dreading the process of replacing the card number every single place that info is saved online.

On the plus side, at least we have the long weekend ahead. After the stress of this fiscal adventure, and a particularly crazy, work-heavy but sleep-limited week, I could most certainly use a break.

“Is freedom anything else than the right to live as we wish? Nothing else.”
—Epictetus

“We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.”
– William Faulkner

A professor, a CEO, and a janitor are walking through a forest, when they come across a magic fairy.

“I will give each of you what you most desire,” says the fairy. “But first, you must do someone else’s job successfully for a day.”

“I’ll be an elementary school teacher,” says the professor immediately. “How hard can it be to teach six-year-olds to read?”

With a poof, the professor is teleported into a classroom.

A half hour later, the desks are overturned, the kids are screaming, crayon is scrawled all over the walls, and Jimmy, the class’s pet guinea pig, lays dead in a pool of his own blood.

“Get me out of here!” says the professor. And with another poof, he’s back in the forest.

Convinced he can do better, the CEO asks to become a waiter.

“I can certainly do that,” he says. “You just carry food back and forth. No problem.”

And with another poof, the CEO is in a bustling restaurant during the lunch rush.

“I said dressing on the side!” a woman is soon yelling at him. He drops four balanced plates while bussing a table. Three tables stiff him on the tip.

“This is ridiculous,” says the CEO. “I want out.”

And with a poof, he’s back in the forest, too.

The janitor strokes his chin in contemplation.

“I think,” he says, “I’d like to be an artist.”

“An artist?” she asks.

“Exactly,” he replies.

And so the janitor is teleported into an art studio. Surveying the supplies, he begins to smash brushes and palettes into pieces, then slowly glues dozens of those pieces onto a large, white canvas.

A collector walking through the studio sees the work and gasps.

“What a brilliant, evocative deconstruction of the creative process!” he exclaims.

With a snap, he summons his assistant, who offers the janitor twelve million dollars for the work.

And with a poof, the janitor is transported back to the forest, alongside the amazed fairy, professor, and CEO.

“How did you manage to fare so well as an artist?” they ask.

“Oh, it’s simple,” explains the janitor. “I have a master’s degree in art.”

Though both of my parents wear glasses, I didn’t myself, at least until eleventh grade. At that point, from my customary seat in the back row, I started having trouble reading what teachers wrote on the board. Rather than force a move to the front of the class, I got glasses. And though my prescription is totally pansy, enough so that my driver’s license doesn’t even stipulate a ‘corrective lenses’ restriction, I was thrilled enough by the razor-sharp clarity the glasses provided that I took to wearing them all the time.

A few months later, I got disposable contacts, too. And for my last two years in California, and my four years at Yale, I wore contacts more than half of the time. But when I moved to NYC, I found the gritty city air made contacts wildly uncomfortable for me after just a few hours. So, for the most part, I switched to wearing glasses full-time, defaulting to contacts only when glasses were particularly inconvenient, like when I was working out, or headed to the beach. Eventually, given the expense of disposables, I started phasing them out for workouts, too, defaulting instead to wandering the gym slightly blind.

So I was excited a few months back to discover Hubble Contacts, a subscription web service that delivers daily disposable contacts to your door for less than half the price of other providers.

I’ve been a loyal Warby Parker customer for the past six or seven years; their glasses are stylish, well constructed, and perfectly priced. And though the quality isn’t quite as good, and they don’t offer a home try-on option, I’ve also purchased a number of sunglasses from Zenni Optical. I have a terrible history of losing sunglasses in ocean waves, smashing them in bike crashes, etc. And as the Zenni’s run about $25 a pop (including the prescription lenses!), they’ve been perfect for me. (Jess, who’s also a Warby fan, has similarly used Zenni to stock up on a handful of ‘fun’ frames from Zenni; while you might not want bright red glasses as your only daily wear, at $25-30, the Zennis are cheap enough to be an occasional accessory).

Hubble offers a first set of 15 pairs of disposable contacts for just $3 in shipping cost. With next to nothing to lose, I decided they were worth testing out.

Based on some Googling, I determined that Hubble’s lenses are made from methafilcon A, with 55% water content, and a Dk score (a measure of oxygen permeability; higher is better) of 18. By way of comparison, Acuvue 1-Day Moist (what I’d worn before) have a Dk of 28, Acuvue1-Day TruEye a Dk of 55, and Dailies Total 1 a whopping Dk of 156.

And, indeed, for extended wear, I found the Hubbles just slightly less comfortable than than my prior Acuvues. But, frankly, neither are particularly comfortable for me for more than four or five hours. And within the hour or three window of a trek to the gym, I couldn’t differentiate them all, even when wearing a different brand in each eye.

So, for me, Hubble is a big win. They’re cheap enough that I’ve again returned to wearing contacts while working out. Though, if you’re an all-day contacts wearer, they may be less ideal. Nonetheless, for $3 in shipping, and the prospect of a 50% savings going forward if you decide you love them, it’s probably worth the experiment. Try Hubble out.

Calmly mowing his lawn while a tornado spins in the background, this guy told an AP reporter he was “keeping an eye on it.”

As his wife explained, “he had it on the list to do the lawn.”

This optical illusion makes my brain hurt: