I needed earplugs. Not like an amputee needs a prosthesis, but like someone who lies between a snorer and a busy street needs a good night's sleep. In other words, it was something I could wait a few days for, and I was tired of buying the cheap store-brand earplugs in overpackaged sets of 10 or 20. I decided to see what I could find online in the way of high-quality, mass-quantity earplugs.

My first stop was Amazon.com. I found plenty of candidates there, but then I remembered that I disapprove of Amazon's anti-sales-tax and anti-publisher initiatives (not to mention the fact that its CEO is spending millions to help build a giant clock). Besides which, I would just feel too silly buying earplugs from a bookstore.

Moving to the drugstore arena, I eventually settled on Walgreens, where I chose a container full of 100 suitable earplugs. Then I realized that if I just spent a bit more, I could get free shipping. So I added a bottle of 60 antihistamine tablets to my shopping cart before checking out.

I try not to buy things online, because of the unconscionable amounts of packaging used and the fuel needed to transport it all. But I figured that a few fluffy earplugs and tiny pills wouldn't consume too many dead dinosaurs or trees. Wrong! It turns out that the two items I ordered got shipped at separate times, in separate packages, and will probably be delivered by two separate UPS trucks.

Hoping to assuage my guilt, I visited the Web site of my health insurer, where I get points for such activities as eating vegetables and getting a flu shot. After inputting all the virtuous things I'd done this month, I had earned enough points for two gift cards, totaling $55. Sadly, the only place to redeem them was Amazon.com.

I always feel a sense of urgency with gift cards: Why should some company get to keep my money without giving me anything in return? Naturally this feeling is magnified when the company in question is one I'd rather boycott. So I immediately went shopping. I could have selflessly spent my gift on Kindle books for my kin (I'm the only one in the family who's Kindle-free). That would also have eliminated any shipping-related guilt. But no, I decided instead to shop for shoes. After looking at hundreds of flats, loafers, slides, slip-ons, and sling-backs, I finally ordered a pair of sandals almost identical to the the ones I've bought twice before. The price was high enough that I didn't have to buy anything else in order to get free shipping.

UPS says that my earplugs and antihistamines were both placed on a delivery truck in San Pablo, Calif., this morning. I just hope it was the same truck. I'd hate to think that three vehicles would be visiting my building this week just to satisfy my so-called needs. Well, maybe they would be coming here anyway. One of my neighbors used to get about a dozen boxes a week from HSN and QVC (rumored to be sent by her mother). It's always reassuring when someone else's behavior is even more shameful than my own.

No matter how many hours I spend helping nonprofit organizations accomplish their noble missions, I still feel like a worthless bum. Is this because I have yet to find an organization that can truly benefit from my unique talents? No, I really think it's all about the Benjamins (sorry, I have no idea what the cool kids call money these days). Not that money per se is the missing ingredient, but as long as people don't have to commit oodles of cash to obtain my labor, the whole exchange seems rather pathetic and one-sided.

Even those who praise my work would not be devastated if I vanished, because there are dozens of other desperate folks clamoring to work for free. When 10 to 15 percent of the population is un(der)employed, the competition for even unpaid jobs can be fierce. Millions of people engage in volunteer work as a way of staying busy while also beefing up their résumés, and many believe in the fairy tale that getting into an organization as a volunteer may lead to a paid position.

Maybe the key to fulfillment as a volunteer is to pick one cause and throw yourself into it, rather than splitting your time among several activities. It's that passion thing again, that thing I can't seem to get the hang of. Take my monomaniacal husband, for example. Or, if you don't like him (you'd be in good company), take the woman who spends about 20 hours a week in the cat room at Animal Services. Her activities go way beyond what volunteers are expected to do; some of what she does even breaks the rules, but no one seems to mind. Heck, she acts as if she runs the place. So what if her ubiquitous, officious presence keeps some other volunteers away? All that matters (to her anyway) is the personal fulfillment she gets from devoting herself to a cherished cause.

I really envy people whose self-esteem doesn't depend on having a job. For us approval addicts, there's nothing like that employer-employee relationship to say not only "Here's your paycheck" but also "We're glad you're on our team." If I could just get that approval from myself, I could happily continue volunteering, doing needlework, writing songs, eating bonbons, or whatever struck my fancy. I might even write some fiction (though that's a pretty grueling business to be in these days).

It's hard to get anything done when your opinion of what you do depends entirely on what you think other people think of it. Guess I'll add this to my list of issues to work on (if that's OK with everyone).

Listening to Car Talk while cleaning the floor, I realize that the main reason I decided to give up my car is the same reason why I should give up my home: I can't be trusted to take care of it properly. With the car it was a matter of not having a clue about how it worked—I couldn't have changed a tire, much less fixed anything under the hood. But I don't have that excuse on the home-cleaning front. Keeping things clean doesn't require much technical knowledge, just a lack of laziness. Every few weeks the filth starts to bother me enough that I make a half-hearted attempt to banish it, but I really wish that someone else would keep it under control.

In Portland, many years ago, we had a pair of Lutheran ladies who regularly cleaned our house. When I asked them how much the initial visit would cost, one of them said, "That depends on how far down it is." I didn't know what she meant until the first day, when they spent about four hours just scrubbing the kitchen floor. (In my defense, we had recently purchased the house, so we couldn't be held fully reponsible for the besmirched vinyl.) Since then I've paid various people to clean the various places I've lived. At all those times I was gainfully employed and therefore (1) had an excuse not to clean my own house and (2) had the money to pay someone else to do it. In fact, the main reason I fled to the workforce was to escape housecleaning duty.

Now that I'm old, redundant, and lazier than ever, I will probably never again have a paid job. I had hoped, when I became a thousandaire in December 2007, that my money would support me into my old age. Who knew that the economy would collapse? (Actually quite a few people knew. They just didn't tell me.) Now that I can't afford hired help, it seems that I have only one option: I must learn to coexist with filth. (As my teenage self once said, "The only thing I hate more than dirt is cleaning.") I'll try to adopt the attitude of filmmaker Michael Glawogger, who claims to find beauty in the most horrific situations. Or I could just remind myself that at least I don't have to clean the Port Harcourt abbatoir.

Data from the 1940 U.S. census make it clear that we have literally moved away from the idea of living with other people. Seventy years ago it was considered normal for a 24-year-old man to live with his parents, even if he had a wife and kids. It was also quite common for the elderly to live with relatives, and a household would often include lodgers or a housekeeper. Very few people lived alone.

Eric Klinenberg discusses our changing living arrangements in his book Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone. The first part of the book deals mainly with youngish, employed, urban singles who have made the choice to live alone and couldn't be happier. Later we learn about not-so-happy singles—mainly men—whose poverty and mental or physical condition have left them little choice but to live alone in tiny rooms or apartments. Finally we meet senior citizens who, usually by choice, are "aging in place" (this chapter, while it mentions social services available to seniors and the infirm, strangely ignores the whole village movement).

I could be imagining this, but it seems that Klinenberg, himself a few years shy of middle age, views the solitary life as a healthy and sensible choice for the young professional but a dangerous and often unwanted option for those 50 and older. My suspicions are reinforced by the differing levels of detail in the descriptions of his interviewees: We get almost no physical description of the elderly subjects. (One exception is Dee, "a petite, light-skinned ninety-year-old African American." An earlier passage describes "a light-skinned African-American Jew in her early forties"; I don't recall any mention of dark-skinned people.) By contrast, almost all the younger people have noteworthy physical characteristics.

I say "almost all," because it's really only the women who are well described. Klinenberg seems especially obsessed with their hair. Amy is "a youthful thirty-eight, with long brown hair and sharply defined features." Sherri Langburt is "thin and fashionable, with a heart-shaped face, long brown hair . . ." Kimberly's "shoulder-length brown hair frames a pale complexion and a sweet but somewhat sinister smile . . ." Ella has "long blond hair, big blue eyes, and muscular arms." The creepiest description doesn't mention hair at all (". . . her soft brown eyes seeking out understanding and her mouth slightly open, making her appear somewhat vulnerable or exposed."), but this is an aberration, explained perhaps by that distracting open mouth.

The men's looks are left mainly to our imagination. One exception is Ray: "short and pudgy with neatly combed straight black hair and slightly yellowed teeth." Most of the others—Hoang, Steven, Tim, Rick, Greg, Miguel, Bob—remain, like the elders of both sexes, featureless.

Why does Klinenberg feel the need to paint a picture for us only of the women, and mainly just those who are his age or younger? Maybe he's been taken in by the images that all those happy singletons have worked so hard to construct. Most of them say that living alone allows them to be themselves, as opposed to doing what's expected of them by a partner or roommate. Examples of activities precluded by cohabitation include staying in one's pajamas all day, working out at the gym late at night, and eating the same food for four days in a row. These people need to live alone, because otherwise someone might find out who they really are.

Getting back to work on the census (I'm helping to transcribe it as a favor to all the librarians out there dealing with impatient genealogists), I see that the residents of the Wahl Hotel in Louisiana, Mo., included lodgers, hotel guests, and houseguests. They ranged in age from 26 to 75; all of them were white. I don't know what color their hair was or if they looked sinister, vulnerable, youthful, or pudgy, but luckily I have a good imagination.

People (and dogs) run to get high. Then, when deprived of their daily fix, they become anxious and unable to handle the stress of daily life. Running isn’t necessarily better for you than other addictions, because it can cause various types of musculoskeletal injuries; these are often what force people to give up running for long, stressed-out periods.

I’ve never been comfortable with the idea of dependence, so I avoid both drug addiction and regular exercise. For the same reason, I have frequently torn myself away from friends, family, and workplaces, choosing to leave proactively rather than wait around to be rejected or abandoned.

Recently I stopped taking a drug that may have been doing me some good, because I knew that if I were ever forced abruptly to give it up, I would experience unpleasant withdrawal symptoms, followed by a lasting inability to cope with stress. I wonder if there is any stress-reducing technique that does not carry the same risks. Yoga, counseling, work, interaction with people and other animals: All these activities are subject to the whims of others, the fragility of one's own body, or the wheel of Miss Fortune.

The technique that comes closest to offering guaranteed availability is meditation, because all it requires is a functioning brain. (After your brain stops working, a little stress isn’t going to kill you.) A degenerative disease like frontotemporal dementia could interfere with the ability to meditate, but by the time that happens you may not care. Of greater concern is the kind of intransigent, self-defeating brain that just refuses to meditate properly.

Perhaps it’s best to give in to one’s dependencies and addictions and just take the consequences. I’ll think about that while I go for a long walk to a place where I can pet some cats.

Steve Almond (author, appropriately enough, of Candyfreak) maintains that “literary endeavor has supplanted therapy as our dominant mode of personal investigation.” If true, this is no surprise.

It was inevitable that we would all become writers, because (1) we admire good writers and (2) we find inspiration in what we read. If admirable writing alone doesn’t compel you to pursue the writing life, throw in the truism that good writers write about what they know, and you’ll find that the most inspiring books are, on at least some level, about being a writer. The suggestible reader then gets the double whammy of wanting to emulate both the author and the protagonist (which, in the case of autobiography, are one and the same).

But has writing really supplanted therapy? Between 1987 and 2007 “the percentage of Americans who use psychotherapy each year has remained remarkably stable.” In more recent years I would think that mental-health parity legislation would have caused the number of visits by people with insurance to have gone up, not down. The ascendancy of psychotropic drugs may have cut a little into the talk therapists’ business, but I think it’s also contributed to a reduction in the stigma associated with seeing a therapist: If you had a serious mental illness, you would be taking drugs for it, not going to chat about your problems once a week.

Unfortunately, many of the people who need therapy the most (e.g., those suffering from recession-related depression) have no insurance. What these people may have in abundance is time, which they can devote to writing.

Almond describes the phenomenon of therapy seekers going to writing workshops, but he ignores the other side of the coin: therapists who encourage their clients to write. In fact, many of the budding writers he encounters may have started out doing exercises recommended by their therapists. Then, perhaps, they discovered that a week in a writers colony could cost less than months of psychotherapy.

I remain skeptical about writers workshops, camps, groups, etc., figuring that most of the writers I enjoy probably never attended one. Many writers do have friends or groups that give them the impetus to keep writing, but this is not necessarily a a good thing. When Flannery O'Connor was asked if she thought universities stifle writers, she said she didn't think they stifle enough of them. I agree, and I consider myself among those most in need of stifling. That’s why I limit myself to a venue where hardly anyone is likely to suffer from my self-indulgence.

It’s the week before final exams. In the local coffee shop, two students discuss their notes on a semester’s worth of readings. In the last 20 minutes I’ve heard them “do” Shakespeare, Faulkner, Eliot, Pynchon, and now Achebe. What kind of class, I wonder, includes such a diversity of writers?

Living in close proximity to thousands of college students can have its drawbacks. There are the obvious irritations, like loud conversations under one's window at 2 a.m. Then there are the more subtle annoyances, like being reminded that one is no longer bouncy, care-free, idealistic, and studying world literature. One could of course choose to do or be all those things, but the fact remains that one is no longer young.

Apparently college towns are all the rage now for retirement, but living among the young can be depressing rather than rejuvenating. Perhaps that’s why even those who retire to college towns choose to live among their own kind.

When my neighbor gave me a certificate good for a free month of classes at the local yoga studio, I appreciated the opportunity to try something new, but I had to overcome a lot of skepticism. One of my reasons for previously avoiding yoga was that, in addition to requiring special clothing and equipment (my reason for avoiding most exercise regimes), it has an off-putting spiritual component. My neighbor assured me that this particular brand of yoga tones down the spirituality. Instead it turns up the heat, both literally on its students (to 105 degrees F) and judicially on anyone whom it suspects of being an unauthorized purveyor of this multi-million-dollar discipline.

On top of the legal and spiritual issues, I had to weigh the health benefits and risks of yoga. While some people do sustain injuries (including many that doctors say are due to high heat), the general medical consensus is that yoga helps to reduce stress and improve fitness. The fans of superheated yoga claim that all that sweating removes toxins, but this seems to be a myth (though I once knew a biochemist who swore by saunas as a hangover cure). In fact, I would imagine that the heated air is a favorite place for microorganisms to travel between hosts.

Then there are the environmental consequences of all that heat. Not only are thousands of yoga studios consuming tons of fuel to achieve those high temperatures, but the millions of people using those studios leave a huge footprint (and not just a wet one). After each session, multiple sweat-drenched towels must be laundered, along with your “costume” (a term I like for its implication that everyone is just playing at being a yoga practitioner). Then there’s all the water you must drink to replace all the sweat, and the shower you need afterward to wash away the sweat and suspected toxins. And, as with all exercise for its own sake, there’s the question of whether the energy produced shouldn’t somehow be harnessed for the greater good, or at least to power the lights.

Taking all this information into account, I concluded that any benefits of hot yoga are outweighed by its risks, discomfort, and harm to the environment. I still had that coupon though, and how could I judge the experience without trying it once myself? Yesterday this convergence of my novelty- and bargain-seeking tendencies finally overcame my objections.

Signing up as a student was quick and painless (even though I refused to assume all responsibility for any injuries incurred by me “known or unknown” while using the facilities). Then I took off my shoes and entered the dark, smelly room. Walking across the disturbingly damp carpet, I tried to find a spot close to the windows, but those prime, slightly cooler spots were already taken. The other students silently sat or lay on their mats, waiting for the drill sergeant instructor to arrive. No one engaged in idle or even purposeful chit-chat.

The heat was surprisingly oppressive. Having spent most of my childhood in a place that can get very hot, I had figured that exercising in a 100-degree room would pose no more challenge than, say, riding my bike on a 100-degree day (an activity that once caused me to collapse by the side of the road and wonder why I had thought riding my bike to work was a good idea).

I managed to last the whole 90 minutes, sitting out only a few of the poses. There were several times, however, when I really resented the taskmaster instructor for making me get up from resting on my back. It seems doubtful that I will return to that room (which the founder himself calls the “torture chamber”), but this morning some of my muscles tell me they appreciated the attention. Perhaps I’ll investigate options that do less damage to the earth, have fewer health risks, and don’t help to support a multinational fitness empire.

I don’t feel too guilty about squandering my neighbor's generosity, because it turns out that all new students receive two gift certificates to bestow on others. If enough people quit after the first day, the studio can easily afford to give away two free months for every new enrollee. There may also be a pusher strategy at work: Give them a month of free yoga and not only will they be hooked for life but they'll recruit their friends. Well, I could quit any time I want. In fact, I already have.

Reading about the billions of neurons and gazillions of synapses in our brains, I'm amazed that we aren't all completely bonkers. And with all that electrical activity, how do we manage not to spontaneously combust?

A few months ago I heard a homeless drug addict in a documentary say that the way he stayed healthy and happy was by getting out of his head. That is, he needed to focus on other people and things in order to keep from becoming depressed or deranged. It makes perfect sense, and it usually works, but in the end you always come back to being inside your own brain, which can be a pretty scary place.

I suspect that the main purpose of most human activities, even those that seem to have a loftier goal, is to distract us from our own thought processes. Whether it's work, social engagement, drugs, alcohol, exercise, or various forms of entertainment, the main benefit is a respite from thinking about thinking. My own thoughts are pretty boring, and yet I find myself lately thinking not only about those thoughts but also about what I think about those thoughts, and on and on in endless, boring recursion (whatever that is). Even when ostensibly focusing on an exterior activity or person, I'm constantly examining what I think.

I can console myself with the knowledge that, like so many other conditions I've thought I had, this brain discomfort will eventually dissipate (unless it turns into full-fledged brain fever). For now I feel like my head is going to explode, but that could be related to the blue floaters that I just noticed this week in my right eye. Guess I'll try to focus on those for a while (easier said than done: they're pretty flighty).

You check a book out of the public library and then you learn that the author is giving a talk on campus the next afternoon. The book contains a dumbed-down description of the author's work, but the talk will be mainly incomprehensible. Still, you show up in your shorts and t-shirt and no one asks to see your scientist credentials.

Meanwhile you've been waiting for weeks for the state agency that licenses contractors to send out an investigator to nail (so to speak) the illegal contractor in your building. This being California, the agency is underfunded and overworked, but you wonder: Can there really be that many unlicensed contractors to nail in Alameda County? Then your husband offers a possible explanation: The illegal contractor has a Hispanic name; this being California, the agency may have a policy of looking the other way in cases where it may turn out that the perpetrator is both living and working here illegally.

Meanwhile you've been waiting for weeks for someone at the county courthouse to answer one of your many pleas to reschedule jury duty. You know the courts are underfunded and overworked, but surely someone can at least send a polite "No" to your request. Finally someone calls you and happily reschedules your reporting date. Far from seeming overworked, this person wants to chat about where you're going on vacation (Tennessee), where she's going to retire next year (Georgia), and where she grew up (Detroit). Clearly this is a problem not of underfunding but rather one of oversharing.