The first day back to work after a break can be tough, but it’s even more difficult when it’s subzero out. Sometimes, you just need to add a little sparkle. My office...

When things aren’t going your way, it helps to have a reminder of your strengths. Based on a book by Andy Selsberg, “You Are Good at Things” celebrates the tiny victories: knowing just how high to toss a baby before it gets dangerous, deciding which doughnut you want with briskness and confidence, or trying on cheap sunglasses like you’re in a movie montage. Dan Castro’s animations made me smile on this chilly morning.

Photo: Awol Erizku

Photograph by Talia Herman for The New Yorker

Illustration: Liz Climo

Image credit: Eleni Kalorkoti

I’ve kept a journal on and off since I was 14 years old. In addition to journaling, which documents my most personal thoughts, I also keep work notebooks. The structure of my notebooks is a little fuzzier: they serve as a catch-all for ideas, resources, people, and places. It’s amazing to revisit them to get a snapshot of where I was and what I was thinking about at that moment in time. And yet it’s not a particularly accessible or well-organized system. If I want to share these thoughts more widely, I’ll need to take a page from David Sedaris’s book and take his advice: “Jot things down during the day, then tomorrow morning you flesh them out.”

House finchnigel. Credit: Wikimedia Commons