I have been watching a friend struggle with chronic illness for the past several years. Her medical history was daunting before I met her, but as with most chronic health problems, the passage of time has seen further deterioration and complication in her situation.

Medications have side effects and interactions, the pharmacy often doesn’t have the meds she’s prescribed, and even if she were robustly healthy, the sheer volume of case management she has to do would be daunting. The mental health toll of insurance refusing coverage for needed procedures, doctors not returning phone calls, or appointments getting postponed when prescriptions have already run out… it’s a form of torture inflicted on somebody already cursed with chronic pain.

When I think about how did we get here, the answer is simple: We decided that efficient medicine (profitable medicine) was good medicine. We decided that education that meets external objectives was good education. We decided that monetized productivity is a cardinal virtue. I cannot tell you how many apps and programs out there purportedly help authors write books faster and more efficiently.

I touched a few weeks ago on the problem with setting achievable goals (we pretty much doom ourselves to mediocrity), but lately I’m more focused on the harm that comes from over-emphasis on measurable outcomes. When the focus is on measurement–how much profit, how many words written, how many students passed–we lose track of our qualitative experience.

Were all those thousands of words I wrote any good? Did I graduate “successfully” from high school with no friends and a lifelong aversion to reading? Is my company bodaciously profitable only because its policies and products are dishonorably designed and created (looking at you, ChatGPT)? As long as we’re looking at “data,” and “bottom lines,” and “objective numbers” for our sense of a situation, we are distracted from the uh-oh feeling, the sheer joy of a beautifully written scene no matter how short, or the harm done when we teach the curriculum instead of the child.

Measured outcomes pull us  away from our internal experience of a situation and yank us into emphasizing an external assessment of what we’re dealing with. That’s how our brains work. If we see that a YouTube video we loved has earned mostly a thumbs down score from previous viewers, we are less likely to give it a thumbs up. Our experience loses validity in the face of “what the numbers say,” even though we know those numbers are probably, even purposely, polluted by trolls and bots.

Accountability is a fine concept in moderation, but not when it pushes honesty, integrity, and joy into the periphery of our perception. You cannot measure those factors, you cannot test their efficiency, and you certainly cannot monetize them convincingly, but I fear to dwell in a world where they no longer guide us as individuals or as a society, because we are instead too mesmerized “by the data.”

How are you doin’ just fine despite any numbers to the contrary? Where in your life do you enjoy an abundance of some unquantifiable wonderfulness? I am wealthy in unstructured time, solitude, quiet, health, access to books I enjoy, meaningful relationships, animal friends… I’m such a tycoon, despite the numbers!

PS: The web store discount for this month is Truly Beloved, priced at $.99 for all of October. I chose this title  because Daisy and Penweather’s story is set at a bleak time of year, and heaven knows we’ve all faced, and some of us are facing, more than our share of bleak horizons.

I have been thinking lately about how we cope with adversity, especially the open-ended, no-clear answers kind. Then I found myself a guest in my sister’s house, which is small and lovely. Every wall has art on it that is meaningful to her, every room is arranged to maximize light, comfort, and simplicity. The colors soothe and please, the textures are interesting and varied.

Images and mementos of loved ones abound, as do comfy chairs, her late husband’s art work, and little touches of pretty.

My sister’s house has reminded me of the concept of safe places. I am not so good at making physical havens, but in adolescence, I knew the piano was a safe place. The basic operating principles were not going to change on me without warning, and the premise that the more correct work I did, the more skill I would gain held true. My horse Buck was a safe place. Nobody was on hand to criticize my riding, nobody put down my horse because he was fat and shaggy. We could be happy without fear of criticism.

English class was a safe place. I would have had to work quite hard to get anything but an A in junior high English class.

In later life, reading and writing have been safe places for me, and when they aren’t–when a work in progress seems hopelessly stuck–I get really rattled. When I can’t find books I literally want to go to bed with, I feel a little lost. (Then I go to author Charles Finch’s FB page and look at his last, “What are you reading?” post, and get good ideas!)

I can do much, much better about making my home look and feel like a safe, welcoming, haven, but another source of that “protected amid the chaos” feeling is loving relationships, and there again, I haven’t been so effective.

I need a lot of privacy and solitude, but that alone cannot restore my equilibrium when I’m overwhelmed by the click-bait, guaranteed mega-negativity news, or by personal issues. My neutral corner is for getting to neutral. For getting to positive, resilient, and brave, I need safe spaces characterized by beauty, comfort, and kindness. If I get enough of that in my life, I can be pretty darned fierce in the face of set backs, hefflalumps, and whoozels.

How are you doing for safe places and havens? Do the old reliables still work, or have you fashioned some new ones in recent years? Are you working on creating any more?

And oh, lookee! Pretty soon time to make that ARC list for A Gentleman Under the Mistletoe! Wheee!

Authors are exhorted in workshop after workshop to ensure that in every scene, the main character has a goal. The character must be moving toward some objective, whether it’s to consummate wedding vows, find a particular library book, or overtake the villain’s carriage. Similarly, people approaching retirement are instructed to retire to something, not just from a job.

And lately the questions, “What am I moving toward? What am I moving away from?” have caught my interest. The whole “learn to be a therapeutic riding instructor” project is born in part out my need to feel like I’m moving toward the best version of myself, acquiring new skills, gathering new insights. Still growing. I’m also prone to move-away goals: Stay away from large gatherings, stay away from cluttered mornings, stay away from privacy pirates. Still patrolling the parapets of the self I treasure.

I tend not to set overt goals. I did not look around my writing life on a conscious level, and think, “Well, the published author thing continues to delight, but the artificial intelligence barbarians are at the gate, the pirates steal every book the day it comes out (with the affirmative support of the very wealthy AI barbarians), and the subscription model interposes powerful corporate money-suckers between author and reader–money suckers far greedier than any traditional publisher has been with me. Might have to build a fall-back plan for when relevance as an author has been obliterated.”

All of those arguments are painfully valid, and yet, what I was aware of, when I decided to pursue instructor certification, was that at the barn, I have energy. I, who am the spuddliest couch spud every to spud, could do 10,000 steps at the barn and barely notice the effort until I got back into the car. I like and respect the people there. I have wonderful, lifelong associations with horses and horse barns. Why don’t I move in that direction, but along a new path? Could be fun, could be a way to continue to make a constructive contribution.

That kind of decision is typical of me. I don’t make plans or do annual reviews or read the market in any conscious process. I think about stuff, and ponder, and question (“Why not take a look? Drop in for a session? Do a trial run?”), and then those small, noncommittal actions move me off in a specific direction. If the baby steps go well, the steps get bigger, and so on. One of the reasons I decided to try the weight loss drugs was because the apparent mandatory step–one shot a week, quit whenever you feel like it–was so small. No commitment, no publicity. Just a little experiment.

All of which is to say, that I don’t think goals are all that important for me. Every goal is an opportunity for failure, or worse, an opportunity to get sucked into a mis-guided investment of time, effort, and ego. I am more comfortable thinking instead of directions, paths, progress, learning experiments, and satisfaction. I may never, ever achieve certification as a therapeutic riding instructor, but I have already learned tons, and I am inspired to keep moving in this direction, and that is enough.

What are you moving toward or away from? Are you a goal setter or more like me–a wander in that interesting direction and see where you end up-er?

* The phrase translates to, “And yet it moves,” and is attributed to Galileo. According to tradition, he’d just finished dutifully recanting the evidence he’d gathered for the sun-centric theory of the known universe to the delight and relief of Inquisition (the Church had congratulated him on his brilliant science years before, but oh, well). He looked up at the sun, thumped his heel on the earth, and said, “And yet it moves.” History is silent on the question of what he did with his middle finger in that moment.

Taking the first few micro-steps toward certification as a therapeutic riding instructor, I’ve bumped up against a hint of the same frustration I felt with corporate America (three Fortune 100s and a pair of Fortune 500s way down on the resume page). By decree of the national certifying organization (not by fiat of the particular barn where I’m in training), riding lesson plans are supposed to adhere to SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound).

Example: In the course of a one-hour lesson, the student will ride a serpentine pattern of five cones at the sitting trot twice without knocking over or missing any cones. Assuming the student can manage the sitting trot and do some steering (neither is as simple as you might think), this goal probably qualifies as specific, measurable, achievable and so forth.

Criticism of the SMART goal approach usually leans toward its tendency to reward plodding and complacency. If every goal is achievable and relevant–no moonshots, no frolics, no experimental products–many opportunities for growth and positive momentum will be lost. We will tend to set goals that are “in the bag,” or nearly so, lest we risk failure (cue scary music). In reality, this spiffy management heuristic often actually undermines good performance rather than enhances its likelihood. We “successfully” aim low over and over again when asked to set SMART goals.

But Grace, you say, pie in the sky, “I  had a good time with my pony,” isn’t going to result in a lot of progress either. These are riding lessons, not riding frolics.  Oh, fair enough, but SMART goals have no basis in science when applied to physical activity. They were the brain child of a management consultant who saw that vague goals in a business context could result in wheel-spinning and lack of accountability. He meant well, he had a good point.

And now we have hundreds of peer reviewed studies proving that if the aim of his methodology was to inspire improved performance, his methodology seldom works as intended, and often has the opposite result.

We’re still using his methodology. We are still using, even insisting on, a lot of bogus methodologies.

Public school teachers are supposed to develop lesson plans that incorporate different learning styles, when in fact, the myth of learning styles (myth is the American Psychological Association’s term) can be detrimental to effective teaching. Not-for-profits are still politely handing out the Myers-Briggs personality “test” at the annual off-site when that too has no basis in science whatsoever.

I am very lucky, because the instructors and mentors at my barn clearly grasp that there are prescribed rubrics from the national organization, and we respectfully comply with them and grasp what they are trying to achieve. And then there is a child who just wants to enjoy an hour with a dear old pony, and with a little ingenuity and determination, the two agendas can be complementary. All good!

But I realize as I consider this topic, that part of the reason I never climbed corporate ladders very well–at Fortune 100s, not for profits, or anywhere in between–is my fear of the kind of collective inertia that propagates myths, fads, and out-dated models. It’s hard enough for me to give up my own biases and wrong-headed notions (what very few I have, right?). I don’t have the chops to deal with treasured ignorance of institutional proportions.

I am not the person who in a group context can say the emperor’s tushie is showing, so I just tend to avoid empires as much as I can.

How do you cope with situations where the group is on the wrong path and content to remain there? Do you leave the group, back up a few steps, mutter to your besties? Say nothing and swerve the issue?

PS: The first batch of e-ARC’s will go out/has gone out this weekend for A Gentleman of Unreliable Honor. If you’d like one, email me at [email protected] and let me know what device you read on. I can’t send files to everybody who asks, all the time, but I will get out as many as I can.

We have abruptly entered my favorite time of year–autumn. Maryland might still get some hot days, but those are likely to be outliers now that we have less sunlight. Nights are down in the fifities or cooler for the foreseeable, which suits me Just Fine.

As reliably as I lose energy and mood in summer, I get it back in the fall, and I’ve pondered why this should be. Maybe I store up enough Vitamin D by the end of summer to feel a little better? Maybe I sleep better in cooler nights. Maybe the length of daylight suits my circadian rhythm, or all of the above.

I also think a significant benefit to summer’s end is greater quiet. At least in my neighborhood, we aren’t mowing grass, bush-hogging, making hay, weed whacking, doing road work (why does this always involve jack hammers?), or blaring truck radios at nearly the rate we do in early summer. I don’t have to keep fans roaring, and if I do turn on a mini-split for some air movement or heat, it’s much quieter than a fan or AC.

I suspect I am particularly sensitive to noise, but too much of it is bad for us. Excessive noise has been linked to hearing loss (no surprise), and it also negatively impacts heart disease, Type II diabetes, sleep disturbances, stress levels, mental health, attention deficits, learning delays, and birth weight. Danish researchers have linked excessive noise to an increased likelihood of dementia, which ought to be enough to make anybody turn down the volume.

Maybe my appetite for quiet is why I’m drawn as an author to rural historical settings: They were quiet. Think of those first moments of a power outage, when you are immediately aware that the lights have gone out. You also notice–albeit fleetingly–that the fridge isn’t humming, the florescent lights aren’t buzzing, the washing machine and dryer are silent, the heater/AC/fans/streaming/playlist are all muzzled too. That’s the world Lord Julian and the Windhams live in. That much quiet.

No wonder those folks could write wonderful poems and stirring declarations and letters we still quote today. They had big, deep quiet to boost their focus and concentration, to calm their hearts, and settle their immune systems. Maybe quiet was one of their super powers, did they but know it. It’s one theory, anyway.

Of course, they also had backward medicine, backward laws, and lacked a lot of truly lovely mod cons, but if I could get me some more good old-fashioned profound quiet, I’d take it.

Is there some aspect of life 200 years ago that you wish we had more of today?

So there I am, in the passenger seat on my first ever ride-share app experience, dreading the dentist appointment that awaits me (it went fine). Within five minutes of me getting into the car, the driver and I agree the ride share business model is disgraceful. All the risk is on the the driver and the passenger, but the app is keeping at least half the revenue, if not more.

Boo, hiss, wurra-wurra. My driver soon told me that the only reason he took the ride–one way, with a pick up fifteen miles into the countryside–was because his acceptance rate would suffer if he turned it down, and he’d be penalized for not taking the crappy rides. This of course, got all my Big Brother Needs A Time Out leanings fired up, and from there the discussion went on to how my driver came to the US a little over a year ago.

He was absolutely, 100 percent legally admitted here, along with his wife and two small children, but as his country had no active US embassy, obtaining the visas he was promised by the US government meant illegal border crossings, illegally re-entering his own country, and months of living at risk, while losing his life savings and walking an unimaginable tightrope of mistrust, suspicion, and risk.

But he and his little family made it here, in large part due to sheer courage and persistence, and in some small part due to luck (speaking five languages might have helped too). He’s working his tail off, as is his wife, and they regard themselves as a success story–as do I. What is more American than overcoming the odds, starting fresh, and building a dream to hand on to your children?

Where my driver came from, I would not be allowed to read in public, much less publish books, much less go to the dentist without an adult male escort, assuming I was allowed to go to the dentist at all.

I gave that guy a mighty cash tip, because the app lies about all tips going to the drivers. Less than 80% of tips through the app go to the drivers. GRRRR (though, yes, I know, I might have fallen for the biggest serving of baloney dished out thus far in history… but I don’t think so). I got out of the car 45 minutes later having substantially revised my opinion about ride share apps.

They are a horrible business model, exploitative, invasive, blah, blah, blah…. but the experience I had with that driver was wonderful. He distracted me from my pre-appointment anxiety, delivered a swift kick in the behonkis to my vast cultural privilege, and gave me a timely re-adjustment of perspective on what even legal immigration can look like in the US.

I dealt with the dentist appointment from a humbler, less egocentric place than I would have otherwise. I was reminded that the world is full of good, kind people, who–even in the midst of adversity–are honorable, considerate, and well meaning. The ride-share-app business model still stinks in my humble, but as trips to the dentist go, that one will long remain my favorite.

Has life ever presented you with an unplanned redirection of your outlook? A detour that led to a worthy destination? I’m already building my ARC list for A Gentleman of Unreliable Honor, so do chime in with your comments.

My house is old by American standards, a log cabin that dates back at least 180 years. The upside is, the basic bones are sturdy. With reasonable care, this dwelling should still be standing in another 180 years. The downsides are legion.

Nothing is plumb, a lot is out of code. Maintenance is neverending, and replacing parts installed thirty years ago invariably results in jury-rigging what has already been Rube Goldberged three times over. My neighbor was kind enough to attempt such an operation on the wall mounted heater in my kitchen. The electrician who did the replacement work had not tended to the aesthetics at all.

My neighbor figured we could frame the heater with bead board and improve the look significantly for very little cost. He got to work and found that, welp, the general approach was valid, but the little bead board frame thickness was enough to create a gap where the juice was turned on and off, and…

As he’s describing this workaround to the jury-rig to the do-over, I about come unglued. My hamster wheel starts going at warp speed. His simple plan had been too simple, and I must have heat in the kitchen (frozen pipes no fun, burning wood no good for the planet), and why wouldn’t he anticipate that moving the contacts farther apart would be a problem, and I am going to explode with upset…

His ultimate fix was simple: Pull the whole box the heater sits in a quarter inch forward inside the wall. The contacts will touch, the appearance will be the same as if the box wasn’t pulled forward a bit, all good. But there I was, going into hyperdrive, telling him to just pack up his tools and abort, abort, abort…

Fortunately, my neighbor is a kind, patient man, and he gave me the time and space to calm down and sort myself out. I knew I was egregiously and badly mis-reacting, but the sense of upset was very real. Something was going on with me.

What in the world could be… and it hit me: I’m getting a tooth pulled this week, and that after having a major filling repair, a new crown, and a pile of “stuff in your mouth” diagnostics earlier this month. I’ve already had eight teeth pulled–four when I was a kid to “make room” for braces (which turned out to be the exact wrong thing for my mouth), and my wisdom teeth. I had braces for five years, and every single appointment resulted in significant pain. I dread the dentist (understatement font).

And I dread this tooth extraction, because it’s different. This tooth has to go, after a root canal, because it’s done. It cannot be saved. Doesn’t hurt, still works, but doc says it has to go. Evidence of intermittent infection. Warranty expired, no replacement parts available (though we might do an implant). I am scared of the procedure, scared of having to use my first ever ride share app, and scared to think my tooth is a just harbinger of a lot of changes to come.

So I nearly lost my marbles because the guy trying to do me a home improvement favor had to rethink his approach by a quarter inch.

I am that good at hiding my own upset from myself. If you’d asked me, I would have said all this dental work was a nuisance–and it’s not fun–but I would not have acknowledged that helplessness, incompetence, feebleness, dependence, and even death were thumping on my composure that hard. This is the year I qualified for Medicare, and that… Medicare is for doddering old people, isn’t it? This is the year when significant weight loss has resulted in a very wrinkled appearance in places that were never wrinkly before.

Maybe this hasn’t been such an easy year (so far), and all of that upset and anxiety got stuffed into a quarter-inch gap, and I nearly didn’t see it.

Have you ever stashed an upset almost out of sight? Gone into hyperdrive over a minor speed bump only to realize, on reflection, that you’ve been managing a roller coaster?

(PS… Lord Julian’s fourth tale, A Gentleman in Pursuit of Truth, has recently joined the audio book offerings on the web store.)

I can well recall two little pieces of paper taped to the inside of my dad’s bedroom closet door. One said, “Look sharp, feel sharp, be sharp.” (This baffled me as a kid. My dad was old and bald. To whom could he have been giving fashion advice?) The other said, “Can I do without, fix what I’ve got, or use something else?”

That my smart and serious Dad had to resort to asking himself a question like that caught my interest. On the one hand, he clearly sought a dapper appearance. On the other, he disapproved of unnecessary spending. His question–Can I do without, fix what I’ve got, or use something else?–was a guardian angel defending him from the error of wasting money.

I have since kept my nose in the wind, sniffing the breeze for useful questions. “What is the problem we are trying to solve?” can cut through a lot of squabbling and subtext or illuminate mis-matched agendas in a group. “What is the smallest, easiest step I can take in the direction I want to go?” can get me off my duff when I’m feeling daunted and despairing.

I had occasion to think about my trove of useful questions when I recently attended a presentation by Adrienne Freeland about a program that combines horsemanship education with learning about grief. The pairing is unusual, but according to program participants, highly beneficial to those who’ve lost a loved one.

I wondered when I read the marketing description for Adrienne’s presentation what could have inspired her to blend these two apparently distinct circles? The answer is… a “dreadful” experience in a grief counseling situation. Adrienne had sustained yet another loss in a life overly full of bereavement, and had signed herself up for a program dealing with loss of a loved one.

The program convened in a musty courthouse basement, on rickety, mismatched chairs, gathered around a folding table. She endured the first session, then asked herself, “Could I put together something better than this?” and got a resounding yes for an answer.

Her story resonated with me for the way her deep disappointment became a catalyst for action. I can point to any number of authors whose writing careers started in disappointment. There I was, depending on one of my desert island keeper authors to take me away from a particularly stressful phase of my life, when I got out the new release I’d been saving for a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency moment.

The book was a howling dud (to me. I’m sure it sold splendidly). I was soooo disappointed.

“Can I do better than this?” My answer was not a resounding yes, but it was positive enough that within a few years, I could support myself with the results. So I now include in my collection of useful questions, “Ok, I’m disappointed. Maybe bitterly disappointed. Could I do a better job than this person did? How? What would set my mousetrap apart? What is my disappointment telling me about how to achieve a better outcome? How can my disappointment inspire me?”

Has disappointment ever inspired you to take on a challenge and get it done right?

I’ve sent out my first batch of Advanced Reader Copy files for The Mysterious Marquess (and the web store ebook and Amazon print version are already available), but if you’d like an ARC, email me at [email protected]. If I have any ARCs left, I’ll send one along.

One of the many things I love about growing older is that I occasionally stumble into situations where I can combine skills and experience gained in different parts of my life.

Fr’instance, people who ride horses competitively occasionally put together what is called a musical freestyle or kur. This involves choreographing a mounted routine to music, such that your horse performs a series of required movements, set to the music of your choosing in the pattern you devise. The results, when they go well and you are among the best in the world, can look something like this.

Well, holy Ned, Batman. I have a degree in music, I accompanied dance classes at the piano for several busy years, and I love me some horse riding. The few times I’ve taken a swing at creating a musical freestyle have been great fun.

Similarly, I love to write fiction, and I love horses. When I can build a horse and rider relationship into a story, I am having big fun. Lord Julian better be careful, because he and Atlas are buds, and I foresee a possible horse thief in their future… Oh nos!

I love languages, and flowers, and children, and beasts, and trees… and any time I can bring these loves together, I get a boost. What occurs to me at this later stage of life, though, is that to develop more than a passing fondness for my various interests, I’ve had to do some deep diving, and then move on. If I’d stayed on that piano bench chopping classical piano repertoire into eight measure phrases for the benefit of the Ballet II class, I would probably never have learned about musical freestyles.

If I’d dodged motherhood, my understanding of children might still be well informed, but it would come from a narrower perspective. If I’d never taken on flower-erizing my own property, I would not grasp quite as easily why deer who nom-nom all the sunflowers in a single night are justification for profanity (they got my first foray into grapes too, the miserable blighters).

If I’d never taken off my grant and proposal writing hat, I would not have had the time or energy to write fiction, because grant and proposal writing consumes all in its path.

To get to a place where I can enjoy combining and synergizing my skills and interests, I had to reach later life, and I had to do a fair bit of letting go and moving on. The reward for moving on is that I can resurrect my enthusiasms in a new context, and keep more of the joy without having to also take on the narrow focus and intensity of earlier life.

Has life ever given you an opportunity to combine interests and abilities? Have you ever moved on from one skill set only to call it back into active duty years later?

If you ride horses long enough, you hear the parable of the thirteenth rabbit, usually to explain why an otherwise steady, reliable mount lost his little horsey marbles over “nothing.” The story goes something like this:

You’re riding along on a familiar trail and a bunny darts across the path. Your horse, who can’t see very well at ground level, stops short, maybe hops a bit, and is reluctant to go forward. You gently convince this half-ton prey animal that what he half-saw was not a copperhead or horse-eating demon, but rather, “just” a rabbit. Your horse minces forward, but he is built by evolution to accelerate away from threats much faster than his system decelerates when the threat has been resolved.

When, five minutes later, another rabbit cuts from the undergrowth, your horse hops again, snorts again, and halts abruptly. You pat him. “Silly horse. It’s another rabbit. Stop trying to mess with me.”

Except the horse is not trying to mess with the rider. The horse never regained the “all quiet” level of functioning he enjoyed before the first rabbit disturbed his peace. Adrenaline, cortisol, and heart rate all remain elevated, and rabbit No. 2 elevates them further as does rabbit No. 3.

At some point, the same stimuli that caused only a stop and hop, if compounded, causes a full horsey meltdown.

I tell you this story not because I expect you be on horseback when the thirteenth rabbit crosses the trail, but because my house has been hopping-bunny central this summer. The well pump and tank needed replacement–both at the same time. My ancient Prius flipped me the oil light and the tire pressure sensor light the same day. I busted a tooth and in the course of getting that repaired was told I need a crown and also an extraction.

The computer died, and figuring out how to plug in the back up hard drive has a been lunar landing. Various pets have had emergent issues (RIP Gus), and for reasons known only to demented laprines, I decided to write my first holiday mystery this summer. Ho-ho, uh-oh.

Each of these challenges is manageable. This is all, as my daughter says, “life life-ing as usual.” But cram them all together, with no time in between to find my balance, and I’m about ready to start bucking and bolting.

Fortunately, this is not my first trail ride, and I know that a good dose of domestic solitude works wonders on my equilibrium. Give me a couple days at home without human interruptions (plumbers in the basement are an interruption), and I will calm way down. Hand me some good books for my end of day reading hour, and I will start to relax. Give me the authority to organize my days at home according to what I find important (not necessarily what is urgent), and my breathing slows.

These things–good books, autonomy, solitude on the one patch of ground I own–get me out of the yellow alert zone, and I can have all of them if I’ll just exhibit some patience and planning. If I cannot have them, though, my limit drops to three rabbits, and one of those is imaginary.

How do you regain your calm in the midst of overwhelm? Three commenters will go on my ARC list for The Mysterious Marquess.