Anxiety likes numbers. I only recently realized that a lot of my anxiety fixates on meaningless numbers. I like to know how many there are of a particular thing and then attach meanings—usually sinister, sometimes hopeful, always unreasonable—to these numbers.How many words are in this column? Six hundred exactly. Why are there 600 words? BecauseI once read that 600 words was a good length for a column, I have always written exactly 600. Never more. Never less. But if my wonderful editor suggests I let an extra word in or suggests a hyphen that makes two words become one, does ...