My friends suggested therapy, but my insurance didn’t cover it. I decided on improv — modern comedic improvisational theater, which happened to be developed around the same time as exposure therapy. What better way to get over decision paralysis than total immersion, squaring off with the unknown for three hours a week? It wasn’t doctor-ordered, but self-prescribed. The thing was, I had never particularly enjoyed improv. I often found it unfunny. And I held the snooty writer’s belief that if you were going to inflict your work on others, you had better sit yourself down and edit. But maybe the real fear was simpler: What if I couldn’t hack it?