Wherever Kylie wound up professionally, she also had to remember that life is not work alone. The big lump of Kylie's professional unhappiness had expanded well outside the workplace, squeezing the things she most loved to the margins, if not out of existence completely. Singing was one of her passions—one of the new strengths she'd defined was, "I feel strong when I accurately express an emotion through song." Long ago Kylie's desire for order and stability had led her to leave music as a profession, a decision she didn't regret. But she needed passion in her off-hours as well; she needed to get music back into her life. Even if she did end up leaving the paper, she would take advantage of the company's resources while still there and post on a message board for fellow musicians. She was hiking as much as she could. When she was living in rural Michigan, she had loved gardening; now she noticed there were untended plots by her Manhattan building, and she was going to plant flowers in them. "I've been finding my way back to the person I was a long time ago," she told me.

Incremental changes like these, Marcus feels, are far from small. They're powerful, because they're deliberate and insightful and true to ourselves. "Even if things seem like a disaster, don't leap," Marcus says. "Build a bridge and walk over. Build it out of today. In everybody's week, there are things they look forward to." Our unhappiness might make those things seem insignificant, like nothing more than scattered planks and nails. But start hammering them together, and you'll find yourself, as Marcus says, with just the bridge to transport you from a place that you loathed to a place you can't wait to return to.