Some Decks of Cards I Thought Would Solve All My Problems

This isn't about Fair Play, but it's not NOT about Fair Play

Photo by Laurie Byrne on Unsplash, chosen for my son because he loves ammonites

Maybe you’ve had this experience too: you’re trying not to look at the chaos inside your home, which mirrors and rhymes with the chaos inside your head. You should be working/paying attention to your kids/eating a vegetable, but instead you’re scrolling through Instagram, wondering how to achieve a tiny fraction of the serenity of a capybara in a pool of steaming water. And then, suddenly, you see it: an ad for a deck of cards that is going to CHANGE YOUR LIFE.

I can’t help it: I love a good deck of cards. Many of my favorite video games fall into the category “roguelike deckbuilders”: Slay the Spire, Monster Train, Inscryption, Dicey Dungeons, I’m going to stop or else this list will just keep going (but did you hear Slay the Spire 2 was just announced? So exciting!!!).

There’s just something about a deck. It’s the tactile feel of shuffling it and playing cards from it, and the way you can know and control the finite total set of options, while still enjoying an element of randomness in which card will flip over next. It’s probabilistic but still feels magical.

If you’ll allow me to be unnecessarily classically inflected about this — if I don’t make one (1) classics reference per post my newsletter will automatically self-destruct — I think the appeal of a deck of cards has something in common with the sortes virgilianae, a form of book-based divination (aka bibliomancy) in which you open the Aeneid to a random line and that line predicts your future somehow. I’m not sure why there isn’t a digital version of this, so instead, please enjoy this mediocre Vice article about a guy who tried to use the sortes virgilianae to make decisions for a week and had a bad time. As a memoirist and classicist I also feel obligated to mention that bibliomancy features prominently in one of the greatest climactic moments in the early history of memoir: the moment of St. Augustine’s conversion occurs when he hears a child’s voice singing a command to “pick up and read,” and he opens the bible randomly to a passage in Romans about setting aside drunkenness and orgies and dedicating yourself to Jesus Christ.

Ok! That’s enough classics for today. Now that it’s out of my system, we should be good to go.

Many a time I have found myself in the position I described at the beginning of this newsletter and have purchased a deck of cards, hoping that the element of random serendipity and spontaneity it represented would perhaps trick my brain into fixing my life in a way that simply telling myself to get off my ass and do some yoga or something can’t.

Here are some of the decks I’ve purchased:

Fair Play

This is, of course, the Big One that everyone is talking about these days. And I absolutely think that, if you’re in a committed domestic partnership, you should get this deck and use it. It can only help your partnership — unless, that is, it ends your partnership:

Our Fair Play Discussion Signaled the End of My Marriage

But I would still argue that’s a good result! Divorce is not a failure.

A lot of people really love the Fair Play deck, and I highly recommend it. Yes, and: I have notes. Because, A of all, who is holding the card for “making sure we keep up the agreements in our Fair Play division of labor and regularly revisit them to make sure they’re still suiting our needs,” and why it the woman 100% of the time? (I’m exaggerating, but also, am I?)

But, more crucially, I haven’t been able to buy fully into one of the core elements of the Fair Play deck: that a single person should hold the “C.P.E.” (Conception, Planning, Execution) for each card. For something like “groceries,” sure: committing to C.P.E. can help prevent the phenomenon my partner and I call “man buying groceries,” where the woman does all the meal planning and gives a grocery list to her husband, only to have him pelt her with ten thousand dumb questions from the supermarket (“95% lean ground turkey or 90%??!”) and make her wish that she’d just done the damn shopping too. A lot of the time, C.P.E. protects the partner who is more prone to hold more of the cognitive load (usually, in heterosexual relationships, the wife).

But then there’s this:

I have been the person holding the C.P.E. for this card before for all of my children, and let me tell you: it fucking sucks and it feels wrong and unfair. I absolutely refuse to ever take sole responsibility for the conception, planning, and execution of anything related to my kids’ special needs and mental health ever again.

Also, in a broader sense, the Fair Play deck isn’t well suited to complex, blended family situations like mine. It does great work in subverting heteronormativity and gender normativity, but it still feels like the deck is imagining a two-parent setup.

Instead

I backed this deck on Kickstarter way back in 2021. It offered a healthier alternative to doomscrolling: instead of wasting endless hours on Twitter, simply flip a card and follow a simple mindfulness-related prompt, like “feel your feet on the floor.” Unfortunately, I quickly discovered that feeling your feet on the floor and doomscrolling aren’t mutually exclusive.

The Nap Ministry’s Rest Deck

This deck is so beautiful. Each of its cards has an affirmation encouraging you to rest and heal from the demands of grind culture. I wholeheartedly recommend this deck, even though I can’t help rolling my eyes at the occasional cards reminding me that I’m a divine being. But also, be aware that grind culture WILL keep pulling you back in and relearning the value and beauty of rest is an ongoing struggle.

Joke in a Box

I bought this after reading about it on

Jami Attenberg

’s wonderful newsletter:

All We Can Do is Thrash

I absolutely love the print Emily Flake made for the newsletter, and she is hilarious. Unfortunately, I have written zero jokes using this deck. Alas.

A deck of cards with nature-inspired yoga poses on them that I bought for my kids at the beginning of the pandemic

The box that once contained these cards is long gone, and I keep finding lone cards that say things like “crocodile pose” stuck in random places throughout my house. They’re cute AND a pretty dark throwback to a time when I suddenly found myself holding the C.P.E. for my children’s education, mental health, physical health, and socialization, and the best I could do was stick a handwriting workbook in front of them for twenty minutes and then demand that we all get into Tree Pose. Good times.

Magic the Gathering/Pokemon Trading Cards

As I said before, I like deck-based games, and at various times I’ve had the bright idea to bond with my children by playing popular card games together. Has this led to quality time and bonding? Yes! Would I be horrified if I had to tabulate the amount of money I’ve spent on these games? Also yes!!!

Actually Curious

My younger sister, a true extrovert who genuinely likes other human beings, gave me this deck and told me she loves to bring it to gatherings and use it to start real, substantive conversations. Its cards ask questions like “How do you find fulfillment?” I have used it to start 0 conversations because I’m nervous to reveal my true self.

The Hero’s Journal Sidequest Deck

I got this one for my 11-year-old daughter, hoping it would be a fun way to help her feel like managing her ADHD and getting everything done that she needs to can be like an epic Dungeons and Dragons campaign. As it turns out, she’s as immune to card-based self-improvement as I am. Go figure.

The thing is: all of these decks are pretty great, actually. Maybe not Pokemon. But the rest of them are, for the most part, delightful physical objects that I can absolutely see the value in. They haven’t worked for me… yet. However, hope springs eternal, so if you have any favorite decks, tell me and I will surely buy them.

Maybe I just haven’t found the right deck? Maybe I need to create a meta-deck, where each card represents one of the other decks, and the meta-deck will tell me which deck I should use that day?

Yes. Surely that will work. This blank deck is the ticket. Farewell to all my problems.