The Day I Tried to Become a Bohemian I once read that Jack Kerouac wrote On the Road in three weeks, fuelled by coffee and benzedrine, the scroll of paper taped together so he never had to stop to load a new sheet. I found this deeply romantic. I pictured myself in a Parisian garret, …

I have a confession. Every morning, I brush my teeth for exactly two minutes. Not because I’m a dental hygiene zealot, but because my electric toothbrush has a built-in timer that buzzes every thirty seconds to tell me to switch quadrants. I stand there, half-asleep, moving the brush from lower left to lower right to …

I used to think creativity was a lightning bolt. A divine, unpredictable jolt that would yank me out of bed at 3 a.m., force me to scribble genius on a napkin, and then vanish for weeks while I shuffled around in my bathrobe, eating cold pizza and waiting for the next flash. I was a …

I have a confession. I am a creature of habit so deeply entrenched in my own little rituals that if you were to map my morning, it would look like the schematic for a very boring, very predictable Rube Goldberg machine. The alarm clock triggers the cat, the cat triggers the kettle, the kettle triggers …

I have a confession. Every morning, I brush my teeth for exactly two minutes. Not because I’m a dental hygiene zealot, but because my electric toothbrush has a built-in timer that buzzes every thirty seconds to tell me to switch quadrants. I stand there, foaming at the mouth like a rabid spaniel, waiting for the …