In early 2017, I had a great idea.

It was small, it was clear, it was an expression of something I’d been wanting to articulate for a very long time. It arose in a moment of focus and helplessness early one fine spring morning, as I puked my guts out on the back stairs of a bus that was barreling recklessly along the zigzag oceanfront roads of County Clare, Ireland.

There were only two words to it: smallness exercises. Winnie the Pooh had his stoutness exercises, and I would have my smallness exercises. In a society obsessed with bigness, I would dwell on the virtues and pleasures of smallness. I would do it for my own sake, and share it with others. Humility, straightforwardness, quiet – qualities whose worth are chronically underrated, and whose value can only increase as they become more rare. I could think of dozens of small things I wanted to champion, in my small way, and I got started nearly as soon as I stopped retching.

And then…

Nothing.

Why? Because I let something small get in the way.