Mr. [REDACTED]-
I’m afraid I have to write again about the lack of appropriately sized stoneware bowls available in the ubs.amazon portal…
This is the line that convinced me the exchanges between the now nameless recipient of Amazon’s, I guess I’d say, experimental generosity, and her unnamed point of contact belong in their own coda chapter of my upcoming book on consumer law. Whether the man on the other end of these is subcontracted to Amazon’s experimental services division or perhaps some obscure arm of some Bezos foundation, I don’t know. It’s certainly a strange case. Too far out of the mainstream of conflicts between providers of products and services and their customers to factor into the meat of the book. But it’s still very much in line with my main theme: how fuzzy the old quid pro quo of I-give-you-a-product-and-you-give-me-remuneration has become in the age of the digital megacorporation that takes part of its payment out of their customers’ privacy. It’s an edge case, but such an edge case in how the legal language of yesteryear is inadequate to fully cover the modern agreements that organizations enter into with their customers! It has to be examined somehow, and I think the sensation and headlines it will create could take my book from middling law school text to something that enters the general conversation.
I’ve got an old friend and colleague at Amazon. He sent me these emails on deep background, if you will, as proof of a boast he made (yes, we were drinking) that I “didn’t know the fucking half of” how complex consumer law is about to get. I’ve argued to him that redacting all the names, as he did before he sent any of this to me, is sufficient to protect everyone’s privacy. But his position currently is that the very existence of Amazon’s, now abandoned, Universal Basic Stuff experiment needs to be kept a secret. Why? Perhaps they’re worried about precedent, or perhaps he is actually concerned that Mr. Bezos will, as he put it, “rip off [his] head and punch [him] in the lungs through [his] throat.” When I asked how much time had passed since this concluded, he answered not very much, but that he didn’t think he’d be safe to share these documents publicly for “twenty or maybe a hundred years.”
To recap what we discussed when we spoke, here is what I know in the way of background information: Around the time Andrew Yang was running for president and getting some press with his UBI proposal, some Amazon moonshot division came up with an experiment. But I think the timing here implies it had been at least in the works before Yang brought the term into the mainstream. This whole narrative appears to take place before the COVID pandemic, I can’t imagine it wouldn’t have come up in a correspondence this confessional. Yang had spoken on UBI before COVID but didn’t start getting a lot of press about it until a few weeks into the pandemic. One wonders what became of any of these people during whatever months of lockdown their city experienced. At any rate, since one of the standard Milton Friedman objections to UBI is always that people might blow their money on drugs or booze or whatever, what if your thousand bucks a month was a credit, spendable only on certain stuff? If you weren’t worried about food or clothes etc., you’d have more of your income to spend on rent and health insurance and transportation. Personally it sounds to me like Amazon is just contemplating a friendly takeover of the EBT program but they probably think they came up with an original idea.
My friend tells me they had a lot of groups and variables they wanted to study. Some people got $500 a month. Some got $1000. Some had no limit, were just told to buy what they needed. They had groups who already had a high income, a low income, and no income. Having read through this a dozen times now, it seems participants were initially free to choose from the whole Amazon marketplaceable, but as the program went on that was amended and the selection was limited in some way. I’d guess some sort of algorithm, because the scale of available items still seems quite large. Algorithms doing the work formerly done by people is another factor that figures heavily into my forthcoming book.
Like any experiment, there was a norm, and there were outliers. My friend tells me the project was shelved primarily because even a small percentage of people with a tendency towards what he called “stupid expenditure” could ruin the thing for everyone. He has not, probably will not, provide any data here, but the way he put it was “the definition of ‘necessary’ expands to fill whatever collection of frivolous garbage you set eyes on.”
Ms. Redacted here, I’m told, is an extreme outlier, going so far as to insist that the terms of the “contract,” and this is where my interest was piqued, actually entitle her to whatever she decides is necessary. Can the legal concept of a “reasonable person standard” survive several generations of citizens persuaded that our own feelings about right and wrong, truth, or even reality are the only reasonable standard by which anything can be judged? Perhaps a larger question: can a profession devoted to fair or impartial adjudication survive in a culture that increasingly seems to believe agreeing with the wrong people is itself a crime?
But I’m getting ahead of myself, and into what I think are some of the legal implications of Amazon’s situation with Ms. Redacted. Better for you to read the full accounting yourself.
Beyond what’s in the one-sided correspondence that I’ve been provided, all I know of her is that she was in one of the wealthier test groups in terms of HHI, “well, well above the median,” my contact insisted knowingly. For some reason, it seems Amazon’s legal or compliance folks (or possibly the facilitator was acting alone here) were unwilling (or believed themselves legally unable, I myself speculate?) to terminate her individual participation in the experiment, even as things escalated so bizarrely. As you’ll see, they shut it down for everyone. My friend didn’t give me any specifics about any of the internal conversations at Amazon, beyond his cryptic “The shit got weird.”
I’d bet most men, as I did initially, would find Ms. Redacted the villain in all this. With a dollop of scorn for both Rasputinas: “Diana”, and of course the lawyer (no one likes a lawyer until they need one) who seems to have whispered advice in her ear. But with your point of view, the kind of work and clients you mentioned taking on, I’m hoping you’ll see it as I have come to after several readings. Keep in mind the other side of the conversation has been withheld. Why my friend found it too risky to send the facilitator’s side of this months-long correspondence, but acceptable to send Ms. Redacted’s side, I honestly don’t know. I’ve asked. Seems he feels safer sharing the consumer’s words than anyone employed by or acting on behalf of Amazon. It’s possible the side we do have is selectively edited, since it’s all digital communication. With it’s candidacy for publication in my book still an open question I can’t afford to invest in the forensic email team I might normally employ to verify it. They probably couldn’t tell me anything from the documents I have anyway. My friend appears to have copied all this and pasted it into a blank document rather than forwarding emails or batching files as pdfs. But since someone has taken the time to carefully remove any mention of names, places, anything that could be used to identify anyone (though you’ll notice he missed one, a single instance where she refers to what appears to be her husband with the mis-spelling “Jsaon”), and has also left in her quotes from and references to Amazon’s side of the exchange, and these are not exactly flattering, from a legal exposure perspective, to Amazon, I am reasonably confident that at least Ms. Redacted’s side of the thing is genuine and complete.
So there you have it. Thus ends my cover letter, as it were, on this application for your services. Bluntly, I want you to persuade my friend to provide the full files, or at a minimum give permission to publish this part of the record. I think you’ll agree the contribution to legal scholarship, even as an edge case, would be thought provoking. Even if none of this would have made a court case strong enough to support the paperwork, it’s a useful thought experiment about the future. In my opinion, people need to see this and consider the implications of the godlike status these corporations are approaching, and what that implies for their speech, and their relationship to the customers they serve. Can you even call Ms. Redacted a “customer” in this case? In the coda chapter I’m working on about it, the conclusion I’m driving toward now is that her participation in a Universal Basic Stuff program that she describes casts her more as a subject to a sovereign, or, if we dare think it, a plaything at the whim of an omnipotent. A sinner in the hands of an angry god.
But see for yourself.
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Mr. [REDACTED]-
Oh my God, THANK YOU!!! so much for this opportunity! When I filled out the survey re:this a few weeks ago, I don’t think I really understood what it was about. Maybe that’s the point of those surveys.
Anyway THANK YOU again and it’s all very exciting, I can’t wait to do my part to contribute to this project and to find out more. I think I filled out all the paperwork but let me know if I missed anything.
Thanks again!
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Mr. [REDACTED]-
Ok, I think I got registered and set up and I took some time to “explore” the ubs.amazon.com portal, as you suggested.
Since I’m not sure what specifically you’re asking for by “initial thoughts,” I guess my comments are mostly about the layout. It’s rougher than the regular Amazon I’m used to, if that means anything. But the main pieces are all still here. I spent time clicking around “Home, Garden, & Tools,” “Toys, Kids, & Baby,” and “Beauty & Health.” I also looked at “Food & Grocery.” I had never really thought about buying groceries from Amazon, but if I’m going to be in this, and there’s not a limit, I mean why not? That’s a “necessity” if anything is, right? I also looked at “Clothing, Shoes, Jewelry, & Watches,” since my husband has a birthday coming up. I don’t know if that kind of thing is “covered” in this program, but it’s the kind of thing I would normally buy on Amazon anyway.
To answer your last question I guess my “overall impression” is wow, this is going to be quite a ride, and I feel so lucky and blessed to be able to participate in this. I know there’s a lot of people in this world who are really having a harder time than me, and you look at all this stuff that you’re just going to give me, and you think, wow, what did I do, honestly, to deserve this? I mean my husband and I work hard, and we try to be good people, and raise our children to be good people, and yes, we don’t have ALL the things that some people we know have. We’ve definitely got some friends who you think, there’s no WAY they bought that house and are driving that car without some family help, because you don’t know their exact salary but you can kind of guess from their jobs and it can’t be that much more than we’re making. We’re not rolling around in it at night even though, yes, we are comfortable.
Actually I also wonder what is the policy on using some of this stuff as gifts? I mean if we decided to share our good fortune with this less fortunate, is that allowed? I don’t want to push boundaries I’m just asking what the rules are.
I guess those are all my reactions so far. I look forward to the next assignment and a chance to “use” the portal.
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Mr. [REDACTED]-
Thanks for answering those questions, that is good to know. It almost seems TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE! Honestly I feel a little like one of the kids in the Willy Wonka factory, like this can’t be real, and I’m going to do something wrong and it’s going to break and I’m going to get in trouble. So, I can buy my husband a watch for his birthday? I could buy a homeless person a blanket? I mean it sounds like I could buy a homeless person a watch!? I don’t mean to push boundaries, again, it just seems too good to be true. But if you say so.
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Mr. [REDACTED]-
OK!! Thanks for clarifying! And again, I cannot express how EXTREMELY GRATEFUL I am to be included in this.
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Mr. [REDACTED]-
From the options for Assignment 2 I chose “Describe the experience of buying groceries.” I never really thought about groceries as something to experience, but here goes. More like a chore I had to knock out as fast as I could between work and getting to the daycare quickly so I didn’t have to pay the overtime penalties.
Obviously it’s amazing and so generous to be able to try this out without having to pay for it. You can totally see how someone who couldn’t afford groceries would have their minds blown here.
The big thing is it’s a lot of clicks. When you walk up and down the store aisles you just grab something. You can see two or three things at once and you pick one. In the portal I’m typing the products, one at a time, then you click on one, scroll, then read something. Then you have to click back out to look at the next product, do the same thing again. But I was like, wait, was it more or less sugar on the last one, and had to go back to the first one again. And this was the case for most of the products on my shopping list, so I think it literally took longer than driving to a grocery store.
None of that takes away from how awesome this is and how lucky I am to get to participate. The built-in shopping list function was good. I could see myself maybe adding things to the list over the course of the week and doing all the comparing, and then it’s done a little at a time, and when I’m ready I just click “buy.”
Also, not to complain because I know some people would love to have this problem, but it is kind of frustrating to spend all this time comparing labels with all the clicks, and then you find out the thing is sold out anyway, and you’re getting a text from someone who is pulling stuff from shelves who’s like “Do you want this instead?” But I haven’t read the label for the other one so how do you know? I just accepted everything they said because I felt so guilty telling someone who is literally shopping for someone else’s groceries for a living to look at the labels and choose the one with the fewest carbs per serving. I mean this is what I am feeding my child and I’m 100% responsible for what she puts in her body and it matters, so I didn’t like feeling pressured into just accepting something because it would be so in poor taste to be texting back and forth with this person about grams of sugar.
Which does remind me of a question I had while I was doing this. Does the person shopping for my groceries know I’m part of this experiment? Like do they have any idea that it’s an experiment? Or do they know I’m not paying for this stuff? Or am I just another customer as far as they know? Because I did shop at Whole Foods a lot already before this, and I checked out the delivery service a couple times but my husband [REDACTED] was like “Come on, it’s like three miles from here, we don’t need to pay extra for that” even though he’s almost never the one who has to actually go and get it. But I did use the order ahead thing where I picked it up in the store. And I don’t remember getting as many texts about stuff being out of stock. So I was wondering if maybe there was a signal that I’m part of this experiment so that they’d know to give the product to a paying customer if someone else wanted it. Again, I’m not complaining, just looking for clarification on this.
Also I don’t know if you have access to our shopping lists or receipts or whatever, but if you do you probably saw that I did go ahead and buy that watch for my husband’s birthday I was talking about. He’s mentioned probably a hundred times when we’ve walked past ads for Omegas that he’d love to get one some day, and I’m always like well why don’t you? And he always says something like “That’s a second half of life purchase” and then sighs. I’m not at all pretending like it’s an essential like flour or vegetables or the baby food pouches, but you did say it was OK. And it’s all going in the cart through the same portal. It does feel nice to be able to give him something I know he wants that we would have felt was an unnecessary splurge.
You also probably saw that I got two watches, which I want to explain. Again, not pretending this stuff is necessary. But when I was looking at his watches I saw all these other ones. And mixed into the search results were some women’s sizes. Honestly I didn’t ever think that a high end watch was something important to me. And in a sense it’s not. I mean it’s not like an accessory I fantasize over the way he does. But when I was doing the groceries, and I was thinking about the stingy way he never let me do the delivery before, even though he has no problem taking his suits and shirts to the dry cleaners every couple weeks (or asking me to do it!) when I just use one of those Dryel bags at home for my stuff. So there’s me still doing the groceries, and thinking of getting him something so nice, and I was like, well, it’s free, and it’s pretty much a stand up for yourself thing, too. Then I felt guilty about it, like I was taking advantage of Amazon’s generosity, and like maybe this was pushing the boundaries way too much. But then, honestly, I started feeling guilty as a woman for feeling like a splurge on him was right and one on me was wrong. So I did it. But I’m conflicted still about my watch, but not about his. And part of me feels like that’s fucked up. I’m sorry to curse in this but that’s honestly part of my experience, which you asked for.
Also think it’s worth telling you what I DIDN’T buy that I thought about. I was totally surprised that some pretty high end food was available. While I do always try to buy organic when I can, we don’t really entertain people a lot. When I’d walk through Whole Foods I would always do these slow strolls past the cheese wall and the olive bar or past the fresh pasta. Also the section with all the unwrapped handmade soaps. I never bought any of it because there’s this voice in my head that’s like, this adds up, you know? And I’ve always eaten dry pasta. And just put the Target bottle of hand soap in the bathroom. But to make a confession: I have always pictured myself as the kind of person who puts a little dish of fresh olives on the table for people to pick at while we talked and I made dinner. Or just casually put a rustic looking board of French cheese and crackers out like it was any old thing to pick at, and I’d take the cork out of a half empty bottle of wine carelessly, and someone who’s over is like, Huh, they just live like this. Or have a nice bright soap dish made from those blue Portuguese tiles with a chunk of handmade soap, where you can tell from the angles that it was cut from a larger block and it’s not packaged. I always imagine myself that way, but we don’t LIVE that way. So I was really tempted to buy that stuff. And I even went on a little quest for the right dish for the olives on the table and the rustic cheese board and the Portuguese tile that I could use for the soap. But I stopped myself. I was like, this is not the purpose of the experiment. I felt like it was running away with me. And I guess I was kind of proud of myself for not completely abusing the experiment.
That’s all for now, I hope that answers your questions, sorry I rambled on forever.
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Mr. [REDACTED]-
Thanks for saying all that. I re-read my response to you the next day after I sent it and I was SO EMBARRASSED. I just went on and on and your question was like one sentence. I actually considered sending you another note apologizing for the first one. So I really appreciate your kind words about my being “one of the most thorough” responders, even if I think you’re being a little euphemistic. I also really appreciate you reassuring me that there are no “rules” and saying that thing about the “purpose of the experiment” being to see “where I take this.” Growing up a girl, I guess I always feel like I’m maybe doing it wrong, or taking advantage, and then you add to that I know we’re privileged, in the grand scheme of things, and feel kind of guilty about the watches. But it means a lot that you’re willing to take the time to be so clear about it all being OK. I promise to be shorter in the future!
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Mr. [REDACTED]-
Wow, looks like we’re getting into the philosophical questions now.
This will “affect my life” in a few ways, I think. It seems ungrateful to say it would affect “a few small things,” but I don’t believe it will “change your life entirely” either. I guess medium? A moderate amount? Let’s be honest, we don’t need this kind of charity the way a lot of people do. When you think about all the people in the world who have nothing, I know we’re at the top of the pay scale. If you only had enough money to choose between rent and food or healthcare something like this could really change your life. But still, we spend a few hundred dollars a week on groceries. We probably spend a few hundred every month on stuff like light bulbs or socks and underwear. The other day the washing machine leaked and my husband could fix it but we had to throw out a rug that got gross with soapy water. None of those destroy your budget but they add up. Now we have this place to go where all that stuff is paid for. So they won’t chip away at our budget over time.
There wouldn’t be any way to say this to some of the really poor people in your experiment. When you grow up with a comfortable life but without a LOT of money you have this list of things you don’t even realize that are just, like, I need that, I need that, I need that, and I’m going to have to work for them. Then you work for them, and you get them, and right away, like within a week, the list starts getting longer and you can’t even control it. My husband and I felt proud of ourselves to buy a house in a better neighborhood than we grew up in. The mortgage cost we expected and planned for. But the furniture that was fine before doesn’t really fit in a place like this, so then we had to start thinking about replacing it over time. And we wanted this neighborhood for the schools but our oldest isn’t even in a real school yet, and all his friends are in music classes, so then you need that. And people invite us over to their houses for cookouts and it feels like we need to invite them over too so we’re not just these mooches who only eat at other people’s houses. So then you need appropriate outdoor dining tables and chairs and a sun umbrella and you have to buy enough beer for everyone AND enough wine for everyone because you don’t know whether people are going to want beer or wine, and obviously the meat and vegetables and potatoes are 3x the cost for 3x the people. And it just keeps going. The couch looks stupid all by itself so you need throw pillows. And the coffee table looks Amish with nothing on it so you buy candles. Pretty soon you’ve got this list that’s so long you think, we don’t NEED to live like this, we’re spending way too much. But you look at the list and you can’t find anything that you can just get rid of with no consequences. Plus some of the people we know seem like they must have had some help, you know? Like their parents gave them the down payment for the house so they’re starting out $100,000 ahead of us even if we’re making the same salary.
My husband actually gets angry about this sometimes. He takes the trash and recycling out. When there’s a bunch of boxes and bags and those plastic shells that are impossible to open he sees them all in a pile and he gets so mad. He’s like, we don’t need this junk. Why do you keep buying this stuff? And when I see all that trash piled up it does look kind of bad, but at the same time I’m like I bought a candle, and I have a full time job, so lay off me, OK? But when we sit down and look at the budget he’s right, we spend more than we say we will all the time. I don’t complain when he spends twice as much as I do on lunch so he can go out in the city in the middle of his workday, and I keep hoping that will earn me some credit so he won’t complain that I bought our daughter next year’s winter coat NOW when it was ON SALE. But he also earns more of the money so to some extent he’s going to be protective of it.
Anyway, my hope is this “experiment” will take some of the fire out of that fight. And some of the guilt out of buying that stuff we don’t literally need but that I feel like we do kind of need.
Looking back at your actual question, I don’t know if that gives you the “criteria” I’d use to evaluate how this will change my life. Is what I’m saying “specific” enough? Maybe the way I’d put it is it will change my life based on how much stress it takes out. That’s how you’d evaluate it for someone who’s actually destitute, right? Did this reduce the stress of just getting through life. The scale is different. I’m not pretending my stress is the same as theirs. But the feeling’s the same. I think so anyway. Right?
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Mr. [REDACTED]-
That helps a lot. I know about the basic idea of a universal basic income because I looked it up at the beginning of this. I guess I would have described it as kind of socialist, or like it would encourage people to just do nothing if all their basic needs were met for free. I appreciate you saying this is “not charity.” But what you’re saying about it “freeing people up to take risks if their basic needs are met” makes a lot of sense. I can’t imagine my husband would stay at a firm if his same income were guaranteed if he started his own practice. Not sure I’d ever start my own PR firm, so not sure that applies to me. 🙂
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Mr. [REDACTED]-
Hard to believe it’s been a month already! I think the strongest “pattern I see emerging” is the way my husband makes a frown face every time he looks at the trash and boxes piled up by the door for him to take out. He always manages to make sure I see him make a face, too. But it’s not costing us anything so he can’t say anything! I think it’s driving him crazy that he can’t complain about my spending anymore because this is actually saving us money. I think he understands if it came in a box or a bag from a delivery person, I would have bought it at a store otherwise. Whenever I start explaining he’s just like I know, I know, I know. But wow does he make a sour face.
I’m partially kidding about that one even if it’s the most reliable pattern. Otherwise what I’ve usually been doing is using my computer during lunch every Wednesday to pull up the portal and check the cart. Most of the week when we run out of something, or I realize I’m going to need something, I use my phone to put one thing in the cart at a time, and then I leave it there. It’s too many clicks on the phone so I do it on my computer at work usually. But once everything’s in the cart, I try to run through the days of the week in my head, like, Okay, anything I’m going to need for Friday night? What are we doing Saturday, do we need anything? I put it in and look at the “Place your order” button.
That’s where the pattern, unfortunately, gets darker. I look at that button and I’m like, click it. Just do it. You don’t need anything else. Kind of like when you know you should get out of bed, it’s time to get out of bed, but the blankets are so warm, and you’re so comfortable, and getting out of bed just sucks, and your head is like, just do it, now, swing your feet down, go. But your body just refuses to move. That’s what it’s like because I’m looking at that button and telling myself just click it. But browsing around for other stuff is just. So. Nice. I just can’t resist! Sometimes I have something in mind, like I’m picturing a tablescape, as they say, and I’m like, I don’t HAVE the napkin rings that I’m seeing in my head but also napkin rings are stupid…but they’re FREE! Or small serving plates where you can separate different elements of charcuterie so they don’t all have to be passed around at once. And then you need lots of canape forks so there’s one for each plate. And I can. Not. Stop. I just can’t stop looking. And I spend a loooooong time just hovering my mouse over the “Add to cart” button literally going back and forth I shouldn’t, I want them though, but I don’t need it, but why not? Sometimes I am actually mouthing the words at my desk. And I look at the clock and my WHOLE LUNCH HOUR is gone, and I’ve barely touched my food. I mean it’s not like someone is coming to ask me to clock back in, so then I’m like, I should stop this and get back to work. Just click buy and close the tab. But it’s the alarm clock thing again: if I take 2 more minutes no one is going to know.
Sometimes I win this game and I delete the stuff from my cart I don’t need, buy the stuff I do, and get back to work. Or maybe that’s losing. Maybe winning would be, find the middle ground, quickly, buy a couple nice things to keep me satisfied I’m balancing everything, and get back to work. Sometimes I lose and I look at the clock and am like HOLY SHIT IT’S ALMOST 3:00!!! I can’t believe I’ve been debating buying canape forks for over an hour and a half. They are worth way less than I’ve been paid for that hour and a half by [REDACTED]. Or our clients I guess, though not even my SD would call staring at the ubs.amazon portal “billable hours.”
So that’s the pattern. Way less productive Wednesdays.
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No, he’s not a bad guy. In some ways he’s right. I do buy a LOT of stuff that I end up not regretting but realizing yeah I don’t need that. I do wish he’d appreciate just how much work I do. I mean he makes more of the money but I work full time and I’d say I do 75% of the childcare and I’m the one who knows about what’s in our kids’ closets and when they’re gonna grow out of it. It’s not like it’s all stuff for me. And maybe he wouldn’t be the one to buy the stuff that makes our house look nice but I wish he would appreciate that I don’t buy those things just for me, I’m trying to make a home. When we’re old and our kids are grown what are they going to remember from this house? When I was a kid my parents had this porcelain bowl on this tiny shelf next to the door. It had the word SALT painted on it in blue glaze, and at some point long before I was born it had a lid. But we didn’t use it for salt. My parents put their keys in it when they came in, and took them out when they left. And when I came home from college for breaks it was that moment that I put my keys in it that I could take a deep breath and know I was home. When I drove from school to home I would literally think about putting my keys in that salt bowl. I don’t know where they got that thing, and they never intended it to become so important. They got it from some aunt of my dad’s that I don’t remember and they didn’t know what to do with it because they kept salt in the cardboard container it came in like everyone else. So they stuck it on this tiny shelf they also didn’t know what to do with. My mom thinks it’s the funniest thing that I love that salt bowl so much. She keeps offering to give it to me and I’m like, no. It belongs in this house. It wouldn’t be the same to put my keys in it at my house. It being in that house is part of the memory. The point is I don’t know what it is that my kids will remember. It will be years before it even occurs to them that they remember it fondly. But you’ve got to have interesting, quirky things around if they’re going to develop memories like that.
Anyway thanks for encouraging me. It’s good to keep that in mind about the experiment being about “studying all the reactions, good and bad.” Also I never get to just write like this at work. Everything’s gotta be the tight little professional comms paragraphs. This thing is kind of therapeutic is another hidden benefit. It’s like keeping a journal. When we start Phase 2 and there’s just 1 assignment a month I’m going to miss this.
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Oh good to know! I bet I probably have more “to share” than most people, huh! But I hope it’s as “interesting” to you as it is to me and I’m not just word vomiting. But I’ll keep journaling when I think it’s something relevant to the experiment.
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