But after walking for a while, away from the road that dead-ends into the flats, I started to feel really alone. At one point, I thought I saw a shimmering pool of water in the distance, but as I approached, it proved to be a mirage—an actual one. I’d always thought they were just fictional devices. As I kept walking, I thought about that blackjack dealer, and how bone-deep terrifying it is to be a child and know that you cannot decide what adults do to you.

Sarah called out to me. I turned around. She was so far away I couldn’t hear what she was saying at first, but she was waving me toward her, and so I walked back until I could hear: I was getting in the way of a drone shot they needed for the show; could I walk over to where she was? So I did. I stood next to her, and watched the drone flying over the salt flats. Our gazes entwined. I felt calmer. I was thinking about the people I used to be, and how they fought and scrapped and survived for moments like this one. Looking with Sarah, the salt flats seemed to change—they no longer had the menace of indifference about them.

I give the Bonneville Salt Flats three and a half stars.

HIROYUKI DOI’S CIRCLE DRAWINGS

ONE WEIRD THING ABOUT ME is that I have signed my name over five hundred thousand times. This effort began in earnest back in 2011, when I decided to sign the entire first printing of my fourth novel, The Fault in Our Stars. To do this, I signed sheets of paper that were then bound into copies of the book as they were printed. Over the course of a few months, I signed about 150,000 sheets. Sometimes I listened to podcasts or audiobooks, but often, I just sat there, alone in my basement, signing my name. I never really found it boring, because each time I was trying to realize some ideal form that I have in my head of what my signature looks like, and I can never quite achieve it.*

Paying attention to the very slight variations of repetitive behaviors engages me in a way I struggle to explain. There is a very specific itch within my brain that repetitive action scratches. I realize there may be some connection there to my having obsessive-compulsive disorder, but then again, lots of people enjoy doodling, which is what my signing boils down to. Doodling is good for brains—it relieves stress in ways similar to pacing or fidgeting, and it can help with attentiveness. A 2009 study published in Applied Cognitive Psychology found that people given license to doodle recalled more information than non-doodlers, perhaps because doodling requires just enough brainpower to keep the mind from wandering.

I wouldn’t say I enjoy repetitive tasks, exactly, but I do benefit from them. Sometimes, when I feel burnt out and exhausted and I don’t know what to do with myself or whether my work matters or if I’m ever going to do anything of use to anyone, I ask my publisher to send me ten or twenty thousand sheets of paper, and I sign them just to have something specific and measurable to do for a week or so. I don’t even know whether those sheets end up in books. I hope they do, and I hope they make readers happy, but to be honest, I do it for myself, because it makes me . . . not happy, exactly, but engrossed. I think engrossed is what I really want to feel most of the time. It’s such an ugly word, “engrossed,” for such an absolutely beatific experience.