I used to live by my to-do list. There are nights when a simple checked box felt like a small triumph — dishes done, emails sent, a chapter written. But over the years I noticed something odd: the tasks I finished were rarely the ones that opened new doors. They kept the machine running. They...
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Travel
I travel slowly. Not the romantic slow-travel marketing kind that means “stay...
Lifestyle
There was a week a few years ago when I packed a bag, booked a cabin in the...
Travel
I remember a winter evening in Lisbon when a plate of bacalhau com natas felt...
Lifestyle
I’ve moved enough times and walked enough city blocks to know there’s a...
I remember the first time I felt uneasily split between wanting to notice something and wanting to keep a conversation alive. It was at a market in Lisbon where a stall sold "tribal" jewelry beside a bookshelf of travel memoirs. The vendor chatted...
I remember once standing on a rooftop in London after a long dry spell, watching the first fat drops hit the hot pavement. The sound was soft, but what stole me was the sudden, sharp inhalation I didn't know I'd been holding: a cool, green scent...
I arrived in the city with a small bag, a cheap travel toothbrush, and a metal tin of watercolors I’d bought on a whim. The tin had twelve half-pans, a tiny brush with a bent ferrule, and instructions in a language I didn’t speak. I expected the...
I’ve killed more houseplants than I care to admit. Some were gifts, some were impulse buys at garden centres because the leaves looked promising under fluorescent lights, and some I honestly thought I could revive with a heroic dose of water and...
There’s a particular kind of attention that comes on board a train. It’s not the directed attention of a theater or the guarded attention of a commuter bus; it’s softer, more porous. You notice the angle of light on a stranger’s book, the...
I remember the first time I stayed in a ryokan—the traditional Japanese inn—feeling oddly exposed and oddly cocooned at the same time. The room was spare: tatami mats, low table, a sliding shoji that blurred the outside light. I fumbled with the...
Walking through a museum, it's tempting to treat the objects as scenery: beautiful things behind glass, a backdrop for selfies, or tokens in a checklist of must-sees. Plaques — those little cards of text next to exhibits — often get skipped or...