A friend of mine, who lives in an apartment and has a busy, demanding life, recently got a new dog. Border collie/staffy cross. Within weeks she was frayed at the edges. The dog was naughty and needing. Tearing up the furniture. Clawing at the door frames. Howling when left alone. Growling at other dogs in the park. As frustrating as this was for her, it wasn't hard to understand, once you stepped back. A working dog, bred over generations for stimulation and purpose and space, dropped into eleven square metres and a ten-hour workday. The dog wasn't broken. The fit was.

A friend of mine, three wines into a Thursday happy hour, announced she was "doing a full personality reset" following a recent birthday. Now this was not simply a quest to relinquish some less-than-healthy habits… or a reorientation towards healthier ones. This was a personality reset, like she was going to factory-restore herself and reinstall a better version. I asked what the current version had done wrong. She thought about it for a long moment and said, "I overreact to things that don't matter and under-react to things that do." Which is, if you squint, one of the more accurate pieces of self-diagnosis I've heard from someone holding a chilled red.