After a breakup, you get back hours you’d been giving away. Spend a few of them on things that were only yours.

A relationship takes up time as well as feeling, and when it ends the hours come back all at once, which is part of why the days feel so strange. Some of that time had been quietly borrowed from things that were only ever yours: a sport you stopped, friends you saw less, a room you never used. The emptiness is also space.

Put two of those hours a week into something that has nothing to do with anybody else. The old hobby, the long walk, the friend you let drift. Choose it before the time fills itself with scrolling.