Sometimes I have trouble sleeping at night,
and have got into the habit of listening to my meditation app to help me get back to sleep. In order not to wake Simon, I have to get my little dose of yoga nidra with headphones, which are uncomfortable and hard to sleep with. Hence I was very pleased with myself to discover this comfortable sleep mask with built in headphones.
Fabulous. I was just successfully drifting off to sleep last night when a harsh female voice said “POWERING DOWN!” which jolted me back to full wakefulness. Is that announcement strictly necessary? 99% of my electronic devices will just quietly stop working when the battery dies.
But these irritating little design flaws are everywhere in my life. Computer troubles are a huge topic which I don’t have the time or willpower to discuss right now, do I’ll just focus on the things that interfere with my sleep.
My husband is too much in denial about being a boomer to buy a wallet style phone cover.
Instead, his phone is naked. How he’s never cracked his phone screen is beyond my comprehension. The trouble is, at night he charges it on one of those charging pads rather than plugging it in, so that its uncovered screen faces upwards on his bedside table. That means every notification he gets in the night, usually from his WhatsApp group of opinionated wealthy male boomer friends, posting various offensive memes to general hilarity, flashes brightly, waking me up each time.
Similarly, this multi adapter I bought overseas last year is a wonderful device, nearly perfect in every way – cheap, compact, simple, and tremendously useful. Unfortunately, it also has an extremely bright light indicating when it’s in use. As you can see, I’ve tried to dim the brightness with some tape, to very little effect. Did the manufacturers not think that the things people might want to use the adapter for were things we would want to have around us when we’re asleep, and a bright light might be a little irritating in that situation? Truly baffling.