Nate.spot

Your brain needs to offload just as badly as your butt does. I know it sounds boring to sit in there, alone, naked from the waist down, staring at the wall. But that's the point. Our hellish attention economy has produced a generation of anxious and overstimulated (and probably constipated) people. Quiet reflection is an "ancient technique" that we pencil into our schedules and even pay money for. But you can do it for free, and you don't even have to set a reminder. Just wait for that natural…

If I spend more than a few days in a new town, I start to poke around for a breakfast diner. It's a sort of greasy time bubble where everyone sets aside their differences to gorge on eggs and coffee. Eggs, coffee, bacon, pancakes. Notes to a song that we (and our physicians) know by heart. I take comfort in the knowledge that I can walk into almost any diner and order the same exact meal. However strange and unfamiliar a town might be, the diner is neutral territory where we all know the rules.…