All over the United States this month, new high school graduates are moving into their college dorms.

It’s a migration that’s exciting and, for many, has a feeling of inevitability. However, freshman year of college is not thirteenth grade. Higher education is a separate endeavor from secondary education, a non-compulsory privilege. Whether it’s today, tomorrow, November, or sometime next summer, some of the members of the class of 2021 are going to figure that out. They’re going to realize that they do not want to participate and they don’t have to. Welcome to adulthood, friends!

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My niece, age four, was practicing her letters. It was not going well.

“This is is the [most] tewwible W I’ve evew seen!” she said angrily, already imposing unrealistic expectations upon herself at her tender age.

This is normal behavior for a four-year-old, but it is nonetheless painful to witness. As an adult, I wish I could have helped her to understand that it’s okay to create letters that aren’t perfect—there is no reason that she should feel bad about herself. But that’s not the kind of thing you can tell somebody. They have to figure it out for themselves.

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Like a lot of people, I can get lost in my phone.

I’ve noticed that this happens most often when I’m tired—first thing in the morning, late in the evening, or when I’m finishing up an onerous chore and wondering what to do next. The default “next” is to pick up my phone if I’m not being thoughtful about how I’m spending my time.

My phone—or any other quick source of dopamine— can easily mask what I really want. It can even make me forget what I wanted. In my pursuit of the short-term reward, the long-term gets lost. This may be a means of finding pleasure, but it’s no recipe for joy.

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How do you transport an unregistered car to a new state in order to get it registered?

As it happens, there’s a plan for that. For instance, the state of Maine offers a ten-day transit permit that functions as a temporary registration.

And that would have been great for me, but the flimsy transit plate blew clean off the car somewhere in South Carolina only a few hours into my trip from Atlanta to Maine. So I got out the screwdriver and put on my old Georgia tag and hoped for the best.

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I haven’t knit or crocheted anything since December.

This isn’t particularly noteworthy except when you consider that I spent dozens of hours per week doing fiber crafts in October and November, completing a cowl, two sweaters and most of a third, multiple washcloths and dish towels, a Christmas ornament, some mittens, a hat, a vest, a doily, a lace trivet, and a market bag.

In short, I was devoted, and then I just stopped.

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