Old Dog + New Tricks = Life Hack

One day, in the thick of middle age, New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik had an epiphany. Society urges us to achieve. At all costs. What if, instead, we simply did things for the sake of doing them?

In the fall of 2013, a few days after my marriage imploded, I was so despondent I contemplated ending my life. Instead, on a whim I can only understand in hindsight, I signed up for a level zero improv class and taught myself guitar. The goal was never to become a professional actor or a rock star. I’m mediocre, at best, at both. The goal was simply, in…