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Handwriting challenges aside, I love paper cards. I love the endless stewing involved in picking them out at the store. I love buying holiday stamps at the post office, and I love that 'whoosh' sound the cards make when I drop them into the mail slot.

I'm pretty satisfied with how 'Postcard' turned out. I think everybody did a great job.

For me, the card catalog has been a companion all my working life. To leave it is like leaving the house one was brought up in.

Each year, in my quaint efforts to send out paper holiday cards with personal messages, I probably discard one for every three I actually manage to put in the mail. The reason is that my handwriting is now less legible than it was when I was in the second grade.

Despite living in an increasingly digital world, there are a few things I still like to keep as physical reminders. So every time I see an exhibition, I make a pit stop at the museum gift shop to buy a postcard of something that inspired me.

I love that works of art are printed so that anyone can buy them. The variety of what they put on little postcards astounds me.

I'm a total stationery fiend - I have drawers and drawers of lovely printed cards and wrapping paper.

I squirrel away sealed greeting cards that people give me so I can open them later when I'm having a bad day.

And I always keep cards people send me. I have a whole wall covered with them.

I was creating commitment devices of my own long before I knew what they were. So when I was a starving post-doc at Columbia University, I was deep in a publish-or-perish phase of my career. I had to write five pages a day towards papers, or I would have to give up five dollars.