A little Octivary update! There are a few things happening behind the scenes, a few things being plotted, and—because apparently I cannot build a decision tool without eventually wandering into the philosophical woods—a small reflection on time, humans, and our limited number of Saturdays.
Tiny Q&A Corner
Q: Why are there no product images?
You may have noticed that Octivary’s product listings currently contain approximately zero glamorous product beauty shots. There is a reason.
I cannot legally use most product images yet unless I go out and personally photograph hundreds of products myself, which would be an absolutely fascinating way to spend several weeks wandering around stores looking suspiciously committed to photographing household objects.
So, for now: no product photos.
I am currently looking into partnerships with affiliate sites that would allow Octivary to display product images properly and legally. Unfortunately, getting approved is its own little obstacle course. Some affiliate hosts have limited product selections. Others have minimum site-traffic requirements. Some want to see an already-established customer base before they consider Octivary sufficiently real, legitimate, alive, sentient, tax-paying, etc.
It is a bit of an uphill battle, but that is okay. Octivary is still young, and I would rather build this properly than start flinging copyrighted product images around the internet like a tiny retail outlaw.
I am respecting the journey.
Mostly.
What Is Up and Coming?
This is the part I am very excited about.
I want to start testing Octivary’s logic in completely different scenarios. So far, Octivary has mostly been focused on tangible products: things you buy, compare, bring home, use, occasionally swear at, and hopefully keep around for a while.
But what happens if the same Choice Compass idea is applied to an experience instead?
Imagine this: it is finally the weekend. The work week has drained every available molecule of planning energy from your body.
You did not make reservations. You did not research anything. You did not construct an adorable little weekend itinerary with stickers and barn board art.
You have simply emerged from Friday afternoon like a confused woodland creature and discovered that you now possess free time.
Great.
Now what?
You have maybe an hour or two before the Official Weekend™ kicks into action. Bzzt bzzt. A friend—or perhaps a particularly intriguing special someone—DMs you:
“What are we doing tonight?”
Ah. Excellent. The question.
Wouldn’t it be neat if, instead of opening Google and beginning the traditional ritual of searching things to do → restaurants → events → weird museum → maybe bowling? → wait is that place closed? → why am I reading a Reddit thread from 2017?, you could use a Choice Compass?
Something that helps you figure out what you are actually in the mood for, weighs the things that matter right now, and points you toward a few experiences that genuinely fit.
That is precisely what Octivary intends to test.
The catch? Experiences are wildly more complicated than physical products. To make this work properly, I would first need to choose a large city, compile a massive list of things people can actually do there, and then dig much deeper into every experience.
Is it good for a date? A group? Going alone? Low energy? Maximum chaos? Indoors? Outdoors? Cheap? Fancy? Something you can decide to do with twenty minutes of warning because nobody planned anything and yet somehow everybody is now looking at you?
That kind of information.
Then comes the fun part: throw Octivary at it and see what happens.
Please stay tuned, and apologies in advance if the first city I test is nowhere remotely close to you. I need a large enough concentration of experiences to properly test whether the logic works before expanding outward.
If it works well? More cities. More experiences. More tiny decision compasses.
The Octopus spreads.
A Moment of Reflection
There is also a bigger reason I want Octivary to experiment with human experiences.
Time.
Or, depending on how philosophical you would like to become today, humanity’s strange little perception of the construct we call time.
Either way, it is one of the most valuable things we have. We spend so much of it working, commuting, cleaning, recovering, planning, worrying, scrolling, deciding, reconsidering, and occasionally standing in the kitchen staring into the refrigerator as though a new life direction might appear behind the mustard.
But our time is limited.
Whether someone believes time itself is real, constructed, linear, wibbly-wobbly, or held together by several exhausted physicists and some duct tape, one fact remains: we do not get to stay here forever.
So the time we do have deserves a little care.
Enjoy your weird little life. Go somewhere. Try something. Sit somewhere beautiful. Eat the ridiculous dessert. Call the person. Take the dog for the unnecessarily long walk. Spend an afternoon with your cat sleeping on you and accept that you now live there.
Be with your people. Be with your fur babies. Make memories with the time that belongs to you.
If Octivary can eventually help someone spend a little less of that time searching for what to do and a little more of it actually doing it, well...
I think that would be a pretty wonderful direction for this strange little project to wander into.
🐙