Good morning, good day, good afternoon.
I’m Kevin, also known as cliophate, and welcome to issue #1 of Into The Rabbit Hole. In case you need a refresher: Into the Rabbit Hole is a curated newsletter packed with all the fascinating, bizarre, and captivating “rabbit holes” I dive into, sent every second Monday. (There is also an RSS feed if you prefer keeping your inbox clean.)
This marks the first email I’m sending as part of this newsletter, and things aren’t fully set in stone yet. Expect a few changes over the next couple of issues as we find a flow that works for both me writing and you reading.
Thoughts
Lately, I’ve been tired a lot.
I know from experience that I need around eight hours of sleep to feel fresh, but life happens, and I am a night owl in a world made for morning larks. Seven hours is my absolute minimum, and I am only seldom in bed for less.
And yet, I very rarely wake up feeling refreshed. So for the last two weeks or so, I’ve been wearing an Oura ring. The ring is a second-gen I got from my dad, who upgraded to the third generation (but he barely wears it, so I might test that one, too).
I wear the Oura nearly 24/7. The only times I take it off are when I take a shower or when I go to the gym — a ring and weights are not compatible. Otherwise, it’s on one of my fingers for the rest of the time. Plural, as I switch between the index and middle fingers of both my hands. I am not quite sure I got the right size, I think I would have preferred to wear it on my ring finger, but since this one was free (and they are around 400 eurodollars), I'm not complaining too much.
So far, my experience has been... ok. I only ever open the app to look at my scores, and then wonder what I should do with that information. What does a readiness score of 88 mean when I have a sleep score of 69 (nice!)? I have the same problem with the Apple Watch Ultra. I don't know how to parse the data properly, why I might get rid of it and get a nice watch instead. (I really love this Junghans.)
But when it comes to my sleep, according to the Oura, I sleep like shit.
If the data is to be believed — which I am still not fully doing — I wake up a lot without realizing it. Looking at these past few days, on average I barely sleep 6h30, even though I was in bed for at least an hour more each night.
So I’m very far from my optimal sleep. Which might explain why I am chronically tired. During the first few nights of wearing the Oura, the ring reported I woke up several times per night, something I personally never realized. But now that I know, I'm super-aware of it. Whenever I wake up in the middle of the night, I know that I am awake. And it does in fact happen at least a few times per night.
But in the end, I’m aware that all of this is a bit of a black box. Sleep tracking is hard, and all these trackers really do is interpret the data. There’s also something called STII (Sleep Tracker Induced Insomnia), so maybe wearing the Oura ring is what’s making me hyper-conscious of my sleep issues, and that’s why I’m waking up more often. I plan to experiment with a few supplements to see if they help make my sleep more consistent.
I'm also wondering if changing the type of tracker will report other data. I still plan to test the 3rd gen Oura, and maybe something like a Whoop band.
Tasks
Tomorrow, we’ll be leaving for Gamescom. Chris, our photographer (who happens to be my girlfriend), and I will head to Cologne from Tuesday till Saturday and report live from the show floor in Koelnmesse. (I’ll be writing a pop-up newsletter every evening, local time. You can sign up here.)
I enjoy these high-intensity days. (Here is my crazy packing list.)
While Tuesday is still a slow day as we’ll only attend Opening Night Live (and we're checking out Vision Pro at the local Apple Store), starting Wednesday we’ll have long-ass days, running all over the place, playing video games, looking at new hardware, interviewing people, and eating a ton of shitty convention food.
Since it’s also the only time of year where Chris and I can meet in person, we’ll be working till late in the evenings on the next version of Overkill. We’re working on making Overkill more personal, rawer, and less like a faceless online publication you’ll find through Google and then never visit again. So expect even more newsletters.
I will probably completely crash on Saturday (Cologne is only a two-hour drive from where we live, so we’re home early) and sleep through all of Sunday.
Things
I’m currently reading The Name of the Wind. I’m 60 pages in, and I’m hooked. If you like fantasy, I recommend this. (Bookshop, Amazon)
I'm also reading the graphic novel version of the first Dune book. An Overkill reader recommended it to me, so thanks, reader! (Bookshop, Amazon)
Before that, I read The Stoic Path to Wealth. It’s an ok book. If you know anything about Stoicism or about investing, you don’t need to pick this one up. The whole book could be summarized with “Invest in an ETF and don’t be emotional about it.” If you’d like a primer on both Stoicism and investing, pick this up. If you’ve ever read a blog post about either, you’re good. (Bookshop, Amazon)
Last week, I watched all the James Bond movies featuring Daniel Craig. I’m old enough to consider Pierce Brosnan as my typical James Bond, but I like what Craig brought to the role. (Also, just look at how freaking cool he currently looks with his Leica M10-R, and everything.)
However, I’m not the biggest fan of No Time to Die’s ending. I’m convinced we could have stopped after SPECTRE and it would have been a good tetralogy.
But hey, at least we’re sure that Craig can now focus on playing Benoit Blanc, a role I love seeing him in.
OK, that’s all I got for this first edition. If you have any feedback, hit reply. If you want me to look at something, hit reply. If you want to say hi, hit reply. If you want to tell me how much you hate me, hit delete.
Back to packing for tomorrow, see ya,
clio