Sit content
A new streaming interface is navigated to find two very different and thought provoking shows that lead us to consider the concept of contentment.
Netflix recently changed their user interface. Although their reasons for doing this are to improve navigation, recommendation presentation and overall user experience, we think it is awful. If you are a subscriber, you may not have it yet as it is being rolled out over a few months, but it will eventually find its way to you.
We don’t find it viewer-centric or that intuitive. As you enter the streaming service you are confronted with one oversized tile displaying a title. To the side and below it are a small selection of alternative titles that vie for attention.
In an attempt to entice you to click on the show a loud and obnoxious trailer automatically begins. In dubbed English even if it is a foreign language offering. It is not easy to navigate around the platform nor to find suitable content. It is just horrible.
“A dog’s breakfast has more thought put into it than this new interface from Netflix,” muttered Matthew. He has years of experience designing and testing user interfaces, so he should know.
Chantal had the job of finding things to watch. She had to work through the intense discomfort of trying to find her way around the new look Netflix. Despite her clumsy clicks and lip tightening frustration she has had some wins.
Open mouthed shock
Over the course of last week we watched a thought provoking, somewhat disturbing miniseries and a light, fantastical and, as thought provoking, film.
Spoiler alert to anyone who has not seen the selected shows and may want to, there may be more revealed than you would like.
Painkiller is a six episode miniseries that focuses on the birth of the opioid epidemic which began in the late 1990s in the US. The emphasis is on Purdue Pharma owned by Richard Sackler and his family and the manufacturer of OxyContin.
It is not so much the pill itself, basically heroin reimagined, but the way it was marketed, pushed, sugar coated and presented as America’s answer to pain relief that left us open mouthed with shock.
Although knowing full well that the pill was very addictive the company embarked on an aggressive marketing strategy to position Oxycontin as the pain relieving pill for everybody. The people of America deserved to be painfree and Oxycontin was the way back to normality.
Money messes minds
Purdue Pharma employed a force of young, good looking, mostly women, sales reps to pressure doctors into prescribing more and more and higher doses of the drug. Obscene amounts of money oiled the cogs of this hedonistic machine which in turn brought in mountains more. Greed blinds and corrupts.
“The money messed with my mind,” says new recruit, Shannon Shaefer, whose conscience and own experience with the drug leads her to help those trying to bring the company to book.
The money messes with everyone’s minds. Purdue Pharma was run by what were no other than super pimps and drug kingpins. The sales reps were no more than drug pushers, prostitutes and druggies they scoffed at. Doctors become drug dealers, over prescribing on an astonishing scale, fueling the addiction frenzy. There were few immune to the intoxicating smell of the Yankee Dollar.
The trail of destruction was devastating. To date over 600,000 people have died from opioid overdose in America and not one person responsible is in jail. It was sanctioned mass murder on a grand scale enabled by those who should have been the gatekeepers.
Believe in Yesterday
The intensity of the Painkiller series left us shaken and in need of more uplifting entertainment. An old favourite bobbed across the interface: Yesterday. It was one of the last films we saw in the cinema before lockdown, so it was with some nostalgia that we chose to rewatch it on our home screen.
Jack Malik, played by Hamesh Patel, is a struggling musician. His childhood friend, most enthusiastic fan and self appointed part-time manager, Ellie Appleton, played by Lily James, consistently encourages him not to give up on his dreams.
On his way home after another disappointing evening singing to an indifferent and tiny audience, there is a blackout and Jack cycles into a bus. He wakes up to find that, bizarrely, he is the only person who remembers The Beatles. And Coke and cigarettes.
Of course, he starts singing their songs, who wouldn’t, and gets noticed by none other than Ed Sheeran. Jack stumbles into accepting the mantle of this new prolific song writer and is signed up to a bull terrier of a manager in Los Angeles. His fame and fortune is engineered in glass wrapped boardrooms filled with clever marketers, while his real love is left at home.
Not to give it all away, Jack is encouraged to visit someone who advises him to be with the one he loves and to be authentic and honest. Jack chooses happiness over fame and riches.
Sit content
These two stories offer perspectives from the opposite ends of a continuum. On the one side, the drives, desires, and thirsts for winning, wealth and power that were so keenly destructive and lacking in responsibility. On the other, the choice to let all of that go, accept responsibility and settle for a smaller life of integrity and love.
Who ended up happier? Who more content?
A recent social media post of ours flashed across Chantal’s LinkedIn screen. On the image a quote by Walt Whitman from Song of Myself read:
“I exist as I am, that is enough,
If no other in the world be aware I sit content
And if each and all be aware, I sit content.”
How many of us believe that we are enough? When you know that you are enough no matter what you have or who you are, it settles you. It lifts the weight of worry and intercepts the gnawing doubt. It is the necessary step to contentment.
Being content says I accept who I am, flaws and all, and can rest in the knowledge that right now is good. It is not about being complacent or over confident it is about embracing that you matter and have meaning beyond the honeytraps of wealth and status.
Can you, for a moment or more, sit content?
Until next time.
Yours in feeling,
Chantal & Matthew
Credits for this issue — Images: 5th Place
Written by
Chantal Dawtrey
Supporting women, especially in midlife and beyond, to navigate life transitions · Emotional fitness coach
Chantal supports women, especially in midlife and beyond, to navigate life transitions. She designs and delivers data informed digital programmes that build organisational emotional fitness. She helps people move beyond habitual patterns into greater awareness, agency, and well being.
With over 15 years of coaching experience and more than two decades in facilitation and human development, Chantal partners with individuals, teams, and organizations to build emotional resilience, enhance self-awareness, and develop sustainable well-being strategies.
Her primary focus as a coach is supporting women, especially those in their 50’s and beyond, to navigate profound life transitions with clarity, steadiness and self-reconnection. Finding answers to questions about identity, purpose, belonging and desire to an emergence, a reclamation and a return to self.
If you're going through a transition and would like support, let's talk.
Matthew Green
Reducing the Certainty Deficit in high-performing people and teams · Emotional fitness coach
Matthew works with athletes, performance teams, and anyone who wants to reduce the Certainty Deficit in their situation or context.
The Certainty Deficit is the space between what you can do and what your body will let you do when it counts. It is context-specific and situational. A person or athlete can have zero deficit in one situation and a significant one in another.
The body holds beliefs that keep the Certainty Deficit in place. These beliefs run deeper than self-talk and faster than any conscious strategy. When they shift, the ceiling shifts, and new possibilities arise.
Matthew is also an emotional fitness coach who supports individuals to live and lead from a place of inner clarity and stability. The work is somatic-first, practical, and grounded.
If you're seeing a pattern that current approaches haven't shifted, let's talk.
My origin story: Why elite athletes underperform when it counts
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