“It can be alarming to realize just how much of life gets shaped by what we’re actively trying to avoid. We talk about ‘not getting around to things’ as if it were merely a failure of organization, or of will. But often the truth is that we invest plenty of energy in making sure we never get around to them. It’s an old story: some task, or some entire domain of life, makes you anxious whenever you think about it, so you just don’t go there.”
