This Unquiet Mind

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Kristen Martin

The Year in Binges

2025 was a year of emotional streaming and emotional eating. My husband and I are both despondent and outraged over what’s been happening to our country, which may be one reason why he always comes back from the grocery store with cartons of ice cream. We snack a lot

Be Seen, Be Heard

I’ve been teaching myself piano for three years, and I’ve noticed something about the way I play. My fingers tend to approach the keys from an oblique angle, almost coming at them from the side rather than from above. They do not land with confidence; they approach timidly,

Merry Christmas from the Midcentury

Long after I stopped believing in Santa, but was still a kid, there was a magical visitor to my suburban neighborhood that I looked forward to every Christmas. It was a caroling wagon: some kind of motorized vehicle, blurry in my memory, that was draped with lights and ridden by

Belief in Magic and Fear of Failure

On cognitive distortions in parenting

No Monkeys. Still a Circus.

I’m on a videoconference call at work when my cat suddenly jumps onto my desk, entering the frame seemingly from nowhere, superimposing his head or tail onto the graphic background I use to shield my drab office space from view. He startles me, because I sit with my back

Sing-a-Long Mommy

I love to sing. I’ve got a large bank of songs in memory, and every day I come across something that evokes a line or a melody. It’s hard for me not to vocalize what tickles my brain at that moment. My husband uses the phrase “our house”

The Games We Play

In 2017, a girlfriend and I went to visit our mutual bestie in Colorado. We drove through the Rockies, drank microbrews, ambled along the pedestrian mall in Boulder, and visited the Denver Botanical Garden. In downtown Denver, we stopped by a game store to look for a new board game

Loving New York

The dreams are starting again, sooner than I expected. In this dream, I board an overnight flight across the county and start a fresh day in New York City. Ascending the cracked, smelly subway steps into the noisy city air feels like a homecoming. I’ve barely slept, but who

Second Acts

I wouldn’t mind being Ina Garten in my next life—a queen of simple, delicious cooking and entertaining whom Tina Fey suspects is only a figment of middle-aged women’s collective imagination. I’ve watched Ina’s cooking shows for years and just finished reading her memoir. She’

Blues

Last weekend I spent most of my time in bed, or so it felt. I couldn’t muster the spirit to be a housekeeper, a cook, or a mom to either my pets or my child. Laundry was in smelly piles. The cat was constantly flicking fleas off himself and