I decided, out of a mixture of curiosity and mild exhaustion, to spend a week answering familiar questions with three small words: “I don’t know.” Not because I had nothing to say, but because I wanted to see what happened when I refused the quick, comforting move to certainty. The experiment...
May 11, 2026
• by Élise Laurent
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I keep a running list of half-started things: a novel with three earnest first chapters, a notebook of collaged ideas for a zine, a website draft that still uses Comic Sans because I was distracted, a sourdough starter that somehow survived a week in the back of the fridge. They live in different folders, drawers and the quiet corners of my head. Like many people, I feel both guilty and slightly...
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There is a small ritual I have come to practice at gatherings: I leave one chair intentionally empty. Not always, and not as a rule, but often enough that friends notice. Sometimes it’s a conspicuous vacant place at the head of the table; sometimes it’s a spare seat at the far corner. The empty chair is neither an oversight nor a sign of scarcity. It’s a deliberate gesture that lets a quiet...
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I keep a small stack of half-written letters in a drawer — not because I’m a sentimental hoarder, but because the very act of leaving a sentence unfinished feels, to me, like a deliberate pause in how I hold someone in memory. Some of these letters were started in anger, others in gratitude; some were meant to apologize, others to explain. None of them were sent. Over time I’ve noticed that...
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I keep a tiny book on my bedside table that I call, without much ceremony, my regret ledger. It’s a humble object: a slim notebook, cheap and cheerful, where I write down one regret from the day before I go to sleep. One line. Sometimes two. That’s it. No inventory of moral failures, no diary-length excavation. Just a single, clear record of something I’d do differently if I could rewind...
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I had a dream last week about a tea shop that sold memories by the cup — not the sentimental kind, but tiny, perfectly framed recollections you could sip and reconsider. I woke up with the image still warm in my mouth and the inevitable question: is this worth writing about, or was it just a delicious one-off from the sleeping brain? I now have a short, reliable process I use when a dream hands...
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There are mornings when my mind arrives before my body does: a jumble of small emergencies, a to-do list that feels like an avalanche and a vague, gnawing dread that I forgot something important. On those days I tell myself I need a system, a ritual — something small enough to do habitually, but precise enough to quiet the static in my head. What’s stuck with me is a two-minute habit I...
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I have a small ritual when I go to a local coffee shop: I try to ask one tiny, quiet question that nudges the ordinary transaction into something more human. Not every attempt turns into a conversation, and that’s fine—sometimes the question just makes the barista smile, and that small exchange is its own kind of kindness. Over time I’ve learned which questions open up space for connection,...
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When I recently found a folded index card at the back of a kitchen drawer—edges browned, handwriting a little spidery—I felt the sudden clarity of someone else’s small ritual. On the card was a recipe for lemon drizzle cake, written in my grandmother’s hand. I hadn’t thought about that cake in years, but holding the card, I could almost hear her humming as she zested a lemon, see the...
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I learned a little conversational trick years ago — not from a book but from a series of awkward dinner parties and stubborn interviews where everyone seemed to be playing verbal tennis. When a question landed on me that I didn't have a neat answer for, I began to say, deliberately and aloud, "I don't know". Not once, but three times, with a brief pause between each. It felt oddly humble,...
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There is a single drawer in my flat that I have kept untouched in a way that feels almost intentional. It is not the bedside drawer of lip balms and medication, nor the kitchen drawer with spatulas and stray takeaway chopsticks. This is a slim, wooden drawer in the hallway console: a curated jumble of small objects — a ticket stub from a late-night cinema, a Polaroid of a rainy morning, a brass...
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