“Go for a walk,” it said, the no-nonsense command perched in a prominent spot above Katherine May’s desk.
Ms. May, a British author who wrote the best-selling memoir “Wintering” about a fallow and difficult period of her life, had come across more hard times during the height of the pandemic. She was bored, restless, burned out. Her usual ritual — walking — had fallen away, along with other activities that used to bring her pleasure: collecting pebbles, swimming in the sea, savoring a book.
“There was nothing that made the world feel interesting to me,” Ms. May said in a recent interview with The New York Times. “I felt like my head was kind of full and empty at the same time.”