I like to sit by the window in my bedroom with a magnifying mirror and pluck my eyebrows and, well, if you must know, occasionally my upper lip and chin. It’s an Italian-American chick thing.

So this afternoon I’m happily plucking when I drop my tweezers between the bed and the wall. There are some bags there with files that I’m looking to store in containers over the next few weeks, but in the meantime, there go the tweezers. Dammit, dammit, dammit. I go on a search through the bags, but they are nowhere to be found.

Now I could write this off as random, except for the fact that a month ago my tweezers fell down the bathroom drain and then a week later my backup pair fell in the same spot by the bed never to be found. So I just bought these dandy new tweezers with little red rubber grips to prevent slippage. Uh huh.

I grit my teeth and leave the bedroom. OK. Three pairs of tweezers in a very short span have vanished. What does this mean? What do tweezers represent? I laugh out loud. They represent plucking, plucking, plucking. Pluck, pluck, pluck. Endless plucking. The pursuit of some sort of twisted version of perfection.

Suddenly it’s all clear. Stop the madness. Stop pick-pick-picking. Be kind to yourself. You’re too relentless in your pursuit of perfection. Get a grip. Easy does it. Be kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiind.

I go back in the bedroom. I pick up a bundle of files. The tweezers sit shining on the floor. Didn’t I just look there? I put them in the bathroom cabinet. We both need a rest.