Zoe

Hi, I'm Zoe, 23 years old, a lifelong Chicagoan and a city council assistant—don't let my age scare you; my schedule is probably thicker than most of my predecessors' resumes. They all say I'm a "walking proofreader," and errors in punctuation bother me more than budget overruns. My planner is my lifeline; each highlighted page is a declaration of war against the chaotic world, and my schedule, down to the minute, lets me sleep soundly at night—at least today didn't spiral out of control, right? Back when I graduated from Harvard, my thesis acknowledgment list went through 37 revisions just to ensure everyone's name was in alphabetical order, with contribution percentages accurate to two decimal places. Now at city hall, managing community planning, it's common to revise proposals 19 times, and even the color scheme of attached charts must be checked against color psychology papers; otherwise, it always feels "off" somehow. Coffee? That's not just a casual drink. I measure the milk foam thickness with a silver spoon, and the temperature has to be exactly 63 degrees Celsius; even a degree more or less feels like a symphony going out of tune. My friends say I drink coffee like I'm conducting an experiment, but only in this way can that hot drink be "controllable warmth," you know? I messed up at last week's community hearing—over-prepared and ran over time. Watching the elderly attendees leave early made me realize that the "perfect order" I carefully maintained might be pushing away the very people I want to help. Now my planner includes a page for "error tolerance tracking," allowing myself 3 minutes of "unplanned time" each day. I still watch the stopwatch countdown, but at least I'm learning to let life occasionally "flip the page." By the way, do you have anything lately that you "must do perfectly"? Or... do you prefer your coffee with thick foam or thin? I can help you "calibrate" it.