I love to bake, so I made vanilla bean and blueberry muffins for sick hospital children. Just kidding! All of that is true except the sick children part.

I thought I was going to write fiction but I fell backwards into non-fiction. It started when I got locked out of two apartments in one day and I told the story to some friends, one of whom worked in the 'Village Voice' and asked me to turn it into an essay.

I got out on the street and started crying the kind of hysterical tears made justifiable only by turning off one’s cell phone, putting it to the ear, and pretending to be told of a death in the family.

Every time I open the drawer, it's a trip down Memory Lane, which, if you don't turn off at the right exit, merges straight into the Masochistic Nostalgia Highway.

For a long time I wanted to draw, but I could never get the proportions right. My still life sketches were the artistic equivalent of someone who has misjudged the space constraints of a postcard, the handwriting shrinking uncomfortably at the bottom.

Alaska is what happens when Willy Wonka and the witch from Hansel and Gretel elope, buy a place together upstate, renounce their sweet teeth, and turn into health fanatics.

I have definitely had experiences where I can feel the shift from simply living my life to being slightly outside of my life and taking notes.