I can cook but I don’t have time to cook, still, will you marry me?
Something that got viral in 2016 was Instant Pots.
Viral in the sense that it got popular. Popular meaning in everybody's home.
Just overnight.
Everybody wanted them.
It was a marketing genius.
It does what a pressure cooker does but a little more. There were many more similar products in the market and Instant Pot is just the brand name. They got so popular people identified any other product as Instant pot itself.
Plus 'Instant pot' was also good for SEO.
When they launched, they sent one pot to every influencer they could. So influencers who never wanted a pot as well suddenly started using it because they were curious about it. More influencers made videos on it. More people got curious to try it. Some influencers requested them to send them a pot as a gift so they can make videos too. Some directly bought it themselves to record.
Over time because it is safer than stopwatch pressure cookers, and it's faster, plus you can cook almost anything, and it's just one utensil to wash at the end of the day, it was in everybody's home and everybody's love after their spouse.
With all this momentum, search interest in the Instant Pot shot up in 2018 and built to a peak in January 2020. Melissa Clark noted in a 2017 New York Times piece that the word “love” appeared over and over in the device’s “15,000 or so” Amazon reviews; as of this writing, it has nearly 50,000.
"It is versatile. It can pressure cook, saute, slow cook, steam, and whatnot." (A Quora user)
And most of all, it is affordable.
And: as the popularity grew, more people started sharing recipes to cook food on Instant pots.
So it was a magical utensil and it felt like God was behind this.
But things are changing.
"More recent data would suggest that the Instant Pot's popularity is on the decline. Search interest for the device in June 2021 was the lowest it's been since 2018, and its big spikes in interest — which happen like clockwork every winter — failed to hit the same highs in 2020 and 2021." (Source: A recent post by Eater.com)
Over time, you don't enjoy it anymore. You miss the process of cooking, tasting while cooking, meddling with it as you cook, and the concern to stir it from time to time while you watch Netflix.
Meaning: over time you lose the soul, you lose the process. And you don't enjoy this happening.
If you are in a restaurant, excuse me
A French phrase I love is tête-à-tête, which means head-to-head.
It has two literal translations:
when you are sitting and discussing with someone else with no other witness around.
when you are in closed intimate moments such as dinner, movie night, or other non-coital moments with a special someone.
Today I don't have any historical story.
It's a story about you.
Yes, secret Joe is you. It's a nickname I gave you. Happy?
Your life is just like an instant pot. You think if only one shot makes you viral or solves all your life's worries, it would be so cool. But even if you get that shot, over time you'll stop enjoying this process. You will get bored. Life is fun because of mess.
So how to fix that? Understand your real desires. In understanding is power.
The way you figure out your real desires is by sitting face-to-face with you. Yes, head-to-head in front of a mirror. Have paper and a pen with you. Face yourself and think. Come to the present moment. If something feels important, write it down. Do this for at least 20 minutes. Review it at night.
You might need to do it from time to time.