Mornings are where I gather myself: a cup of bitter coffee that takes its own sweet time, a twenty-minute walk where I tell myself I’m paying attention to everything and then only notice one thing — my untied sneakers laces! The way a stray dog always curls up the same way on a particular doorstep, or how a street vendor’s sign has a typo that makes me laugh every single time. I like that twenty-minute pause. It’s hard to wake up early, but it feels like an appointment with the day before the day starts arguing back!

I keep buying books without reading them until they are attacked by moss. This is a small, absurd confession. New books have the exact energy of possibility for me! New pages, that ink smell (I searched Webster- it’s called bibliosma), the sensible lie that this time you’ll read it right away. In practice, I pile them up in my libraries (read showcases). They live on those shelves like small, quiet trophies.

Coffee is something I treat like a science experiment and a superstition at once. I measure the steam with more ceremony than I probably should; the kettle’s whistle is my version of a drum roll. If you ever want to ruin my day, tell me my coffee is “fine” when clearly it needs another minute. It’s not a hill I will die on, but I will defend that extra thirty seconds with a disturbing level of conviction.

Cooking for me is like a lab experiment. Although most of the time I end up making rice, lentils, and a curry that smells like home. But I have ambitions in the kitchen that the kitchen does not always share. There have been disasters. Several. I will tell you that a pan can be both an instrument and a crime scene. Still, the attempt is half the fun: the small flourish of fresh cilantro (which, full disclosure, I keep failing to grow) is a victory that feels disproportionately good.

Weekends are for aimless wandering and the shattered camera in my phone. I like walking without a destination (sometimes I get lost), taking pictures of things most people don’t notice: the way rain makes corrugated metal sing, an old shop’s flaking paint, a child’s scrawl on a wall that looks like poetry if you squint. The camera is an excuse to slow down and to say “this mattered” even when it didn’t matter to anyone else. Sometimes I never look at the photos again; sometimes one line in a photo will rearrange how I remember a whole afternoon.

I value friendships that are long and messy. The kind you can call at midnight and say something ridiculous and then, two days later, sit like nothing much happened. I believe good friendships are necessary because they allow for small cruelties and greater kindnesses: forgotten birthdays forgiven, terrible advice accepted, improvised repairs to broken things. I prefer conversation that wanders and then, somehow, arrives somewhere unexpectedly true.

Small walks in the morning keep me steady: a twenty-minute walk most mornings, a playlist for every mood, the stubborn pursuit of the perfect cup of coffee, the shameful hoarding of books. I am clumsy about some things and almost obsessively precise about others. I like things lined up in a row on my desk, but I will happily leave a pile of half-read books inside my shelves.

If I have a vague life goal, it is this: to gather a small collection of ordinary days that feel full when I think of them later. To be the kind of person who notices the tiny details, who makes a ruined cup of coffee on a rainy afternoon, who remembers to call back the friend whose call I missed, who laughs at my jokes sometimes, even when no one else does. I like wandering around woods, rain, and any food that feels handmade rather than perfectly polished.

If you want something specific — a ridiculous cooking disaster, the song that opens the floodgates, or the precise shape of my coffee ritual — ask and I will tell you the story. I like telling stories almost as much as I like living them. If you’re around, bring a cup of coffee; if you’re not, drop a message in my mailbox, and I’ll pretend we’re sharing a kettle.

Personal Life