Ideas

There’s a kind of ridiculous intimacy in keeping tiny regrets. They don’t announce themselves — they’re the half-smile when you realise you could have said something kinder, the quiet twinge when you opted for punctuality over a conversation, the small ache that follows leaving a book unread on your nightstand. For years I treated these little regrets as minor annoyances, the detritus of a lived life. Then I began to collect them,...

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I remember a scene from a film more clearly than I remember a conversation I had last week. It’s a strange admission, but it’s become a kind of litmus test for how I think about other people: which version of someone lives in my head — the messy, contradictory person I actually know, or the distilled, edited character that filmcraft hands me? Over time I’ve noticed that the ways filmmakers compress, highlight and repeat moments teach us...

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Ideas arrive in odd ways: in the margins of a newspaper, halfway through doing the washing up, in a conversation that started about nothing important. Some I keep and scribble in a notebook; others evaporate by the time I reach for a pen. Over the years I’ve developed three quick, forgiving tests I run in my head before I decide whether an idea deserves a second look. They’re not rigorous frameworks — more like little thought-rituals that...

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There’s a particular ache I recognize now: the sudden rush of warmth when a song from my teenage years plays, the way a scent can unspool an entire afternoon from a decade ago, the urge to pull an old sweater from the back of the wardrobe because it feels like a familiar shelter. Nostalgia has a voice that’s both tender and persuasive. It tells you what was good, what was simpler, what you were once capable of being.But nostalgia is not a...

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I’ve been collecting small domestic oddities for years — a chipped teacup inherited from an aunt, a bent teaspoon that survived a move, a child's drawing folded so many times it became a soft square. At some point these things stopped feeling like clutter and started feeling like a private archive. That archive became my mini-museum: a curated corner of home where ordinary objects are given attention, context and a little stage light. If...

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Sometimes a conversation begins with weather or an awkward joke and drifts into polite non-commitment. Other times it opens with a strange, specific question — and the room rearranges itself. I’ve come to love that second kind of opening: the single odd question that acts like a key, unlocking a richer exchange. It feels more like an invitation than a line, and it nudges people away from rehearsed answers toward something a little more...

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There’s a particular flicker I pay attention to now: a small, insistent question that arrives out of nowhere — the kind that makes you pick at an idea like a loose thread on a sweater. It could be about a movie line, a smell, a stray headline, or why a neighbour always hangs the same plant by their window. Those tiny curiosities are where I start. They’re not dramatic; they’re patient. Over time I’ve learned to turn them into essays...

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I keep a small ritual: whenever I’m stuck on a problem or drifting through a new topic, I force myself to ask what I’ve come to call a “stupid question.” Not the rhetorical kind—those with obvious answers or meant to be flattering—but deliberately naïve, sometimes embarrassingly simple questions that would make me sound like I’d never learned anything. Over time this habit has felt less like a gimmick and more like a mental floss:...

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Some mornings I wake with a head full of errands, a tangle of obligations and a nagging sense that the day will be "too much." Other mornings the sky seems to afford me a breath: the first cup of coffee tastes decided, my steps feel steadier. What makes the difference? Over the years I’ve noticed a tiny ritual that shifts the tone of the whole day: keeping a three-item mental list as soon as I wake.It’s not a to-do list polished for...

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