'I Can't Stop Punishing Myself in Small Ways!'

If you want to develop good habits, you have to honor your most frivolous desires.

Morning Glory with Black (1926) by Georgia O’Keeffe

Dear Polly,

I can’t stop punishing myself in small ways.

When I moved to the U.S. a decade ago, from halfway across the world, I felt like an alien in so many ways, a stranger to this new place and all of its contexts. I had no one — just my mom, my aunt and my younger cousin who I lived with in San Franc…