Bliss Point

February 12, 2025

3-Item Status

• Current Location: Milwaukee, WI

• Reading: Thirteen Ways to Kill Lulabelle Rock by Maud Woolf

• Listening: Trust Me by ena mori

If you have a moment, reply with your own 3-Item Status.

Quick Notes

• New Work:

  • This week’s Let’s Know Things is about Planetary Defense

  • Yesterday’s Brain Lenses essay was on Professional Callings

  • Last Friday’s email for Writing & Such was about Writing Voices

---

Bliss Point

There’s a concept in the food world, “bliss point,” that refers to the perfect balance of salt, sugar, and fat to make a food optimal (usually in the sense that people can’t stop eating it).

The idea here isn’t to create the “perfect food,” but rather to maximize the satisfaction experienced by the person who’s eating it.

So while there are countless ways to define “best” when it comes to food (including but not limited to cost, creativity, and authenticity), this metric is measuring the response of the food-eater, not the food itself. And the preferred unit of said measurement is how much the consumer wants more of said food because the experience is just so good that it’s difficult to stop.

This concept was originally of interest to the US Army, which wanted to ensure soldiers were receiving rations that encouraged them to eat enough calories each day, but it was more fully embraced when it was brought over to the Big Food world, where major food conglomerates started tweaking their product formulae to hook their customers, rather than just appeal to them.

It’s of course possible to abuse this sort of research: dark patterns built into digital interfaces are arguably similar, as they nudge us toward doing things that are good for someone else (often companies trying to sell us stuff), but not for us.

It can be useful to think in similar terms when considering how to rebalance one’s habits, relationships, and work, though, as it can be productive to view aspects of our lives through a lens that considers not just multiple metrics, but the balance of those metrics and our response to their agglomerated totality. Not just work, not just environment and rituals—everything added together.

I would argue that it’s ideal to use something like eudaemonia (or some other measure of deep fulfillment) as one of the gauges we watch, too, rather than fixating exclusively on more superficial versions of enjoyment and pleasure. Otherwise it’s possible to balance our habits, spending, and indulgences really well, but only for short-term benefit, never considering the impact such near-sightedness might have on our older selves.

That, in turn, could lead us along dark pattern-like paths: our lifetime of earnest efforts ultimately plunking us down into a context that’s maybe kind of nice, but which never profoundly gratifies.

If you enjoyed this essay, consider supporting my work by becoming a paid subscriber, buying me a coffee, or grabbing one of my books.

---

---

Interesting Links

• How to Disappear Completely

• A Devastating Nerve Disease Stalks a Mountain Village

• The Rise in ‘Flaking’ Out of Social Plans

If you want more links to interesting things, consider subscribing to Aspiring Generalist.

---

I ate way too many of these (dairy-free! As long as you replace the butter in the recipe with oil) cinnamon roll blondies from Trader Joe’s. They’re what got me thinking about “bliss point” today. Just astoundingly good.

---

What Else

I’m making good progress on my book! Halfway done with the rough draft, and I recently remapped the chapter outlines to account for the plot changes I’ve made while writing (and as the characters have evolved); so the rest should theoretically be a little easier than what’s come, so far.

Lots left to do, though. Some significant re-writing of dialogue for one of the characters, some necessary tidying-up of the pace and plot elements in the first two chapters (I was still figuring out both while writing those initial chapters, and now they contrast with those that follow).

I’m excited about the whole enterprise, though. Really enjoying even the somewhat tedious aspects of it. And I can’t wait to share this with people, though it’ll be a fair bit longer before it’s ready even for alpha readers, so no breath-holding please.

---

Say Hello

New here? Hit reply and tell me something about yourself!

You can also fill me in on something interesting you’re working on or something random you’re learning about.

I respond to every message I receive and would love to hear from you :)

Prefer stamps and paper? Send a letter, postcard, or some other physical communication to: Colin Wright, PO Box 11442, Milwaukee, WI 53211, USA

Or hit me up via other methods: Instagram/Threads, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, or snooty Doom.

A pixel parable.