Mary Laura Philpott thought she’d cracked the code: Always be right, and you’ll always be happy.
But once she'd completed her life's to-do-list (job, spouse, house, babies -check!), she found that instead of feeling content and successfil, she felt anxious. Lost. Stuck in a dailygrind of overflowing calendars, grueling small talk, and sprawling traffic. She'd done everything "right", but she felt all wrong, What's the worse failure, she wondered: smiling and staying the course, or blowing it all up and running away? And are those the only options?
In this memoir-in-essays, full of spot-on observations about home, work, and creative life, Philpott takes on the conflicting pressures of modern adulthood with wit and heart. She offers up her own stories to show that identity crises don't happen just once or only at midlife; she reassures us that small, recurring personal re-inventions are both normal and necessary; and advises that if you're going to faint, you should get low to the ground first. Most of all, Philpott shows that when you stop feeling satisfied with your life, you don't have to burn it all down and set off on a transcontinental hike (unless you want to, of course). You can call upon your many selves to figure out who you are, who you're not, and where you belong. Who among us isn't trying to do that?
