Pain asks me to “do something.” I wanted to learn how these figurative demands affect my Everyday Living. So, I created a new topic in my commonplace book: my pain metaphor.

Monitoring my health symptoms sometimes feels like I’ve met the wolf that ate Little Red Riding Hood’s grandma. The responsibility is daunting and monstrous, and I forget why I’m doing it. One day, I figured I would track my symptoms on paper to identify patterns. I learned that this strategy is called “control journaling.”