I have a confession. I am a creature of habit, a slave to the clock, a woman who has, on more than one occasion, wept genuine tears over a misplaced day planner. My friends call me predictable. My therapist calls it “adaptive structuring.” I call it the only thing standing between me and a life …
I used to believe creativity was a wild animal. A magnificent, unpredictable beast that would only grace me with its presence if I sat very still in a darkened room, burning expensive sage and waiting for the muse to strike me like a bolt of divine lightning. I thought routine was the enemy—a cage for …
I have a confession. Every morning, I brush my teeth for exactly two minutes. Not because I’m a dental hygiene fanatic, but because my electric toothbrush has a built-in timer that buzzes every thirty seconds to tell me to move to a different quadrant of my mouth. I stand there, foaming at the lips like …
I have a confession. Every morning, I brush my teeth for exactly two minutes. Not because my dentist—a lovely man with an unsettling passion for gum measurements—told me to. But because my electric toothbrush has a built-in timer. It buzzes every thirty seconds, ordering me to move to a different quadrant of my mouth. And …
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 …