The Tyranny of the Blank Page and the Miracle of the Boiled Egg There is a particular horror, known to anyone who has ever tried to make something out of nothing, that arrives around 9:15 a.m. It’s the moment the second cup of coffee has cooled to a tepid, disappointing brown, the inbox has been …

I have a confession. Every morning, I brush my teeth for exactly two minutes. Not because my dentist scares me (though she does, with her tiny mirror and her gentle, disappointed sighs), but because my electric toothbrush has a built-in timer. It buzzes every thirty seconds to tell me to move to a new quadrant …

I have a confession. I’m a woman who thrives on routine, yet I’m also a woman who, if forced to eat the same breakfast cereal three days in a row, will start to feel her soul calcify. It’s a delicate dance, this tango between the predictable and the peculiar. My morning, for instance, is a …

Every morning, at exactly 7:14 a.m., a fuzzy grey paw taps my left eyelid. Not 7:15, not 7:10. 7:14. My cat, Chairman Meow, is a creature of rigorous, unyielding habit. He runs a tighter ship than a Swiss train conductor. For years, I thought his rigid insistence on the breakfast schedule was the enemy of …

Somewhere between the first sip of coffee and the third, I get this quiet, ridiculous conviction that I’m a genius. Not a loud, braggy genius. A pajama-clad genius who believes she can finally organize the Tupperware drawer and write a thousand words on the existential loneliness of a single sock. The whole thing rests on …