Time Out

When too many chores press, my first impulse is Just get everything done! It isn’t easy to step back from a lengthening to-do list. Duty and logic push onward. Meanwhile a delicate light flickers out.

Yet how much I miss brighter days working on poetry for hours. After stepping away from notepad or computer, I would feel serene, as if returning refreshed from a respite in a far and lovely land—what neuroscience might call the playground of the brain’s intuitive right hemisphere.

No wonder medicine links creativity to good health.