Last night was one of those nights that find you awake at 1.30 in the morning feeling like it's time to wake up, or at least certain that you will not be going back to sleep.

Instead, you will lay awake and chew on thoughts that will make you feel as if you're running an emotional marathon, even though when you return to the present, you will remember that you have not moved an inch.

That perhaps an hour or two hours, maybe even three have gone by.

And you probably can't even remember what you were thinking, even though it seemed so urgent while you were thinking it.

But you are still physically exactly in the same place you were when you woke up all that time ago.

This seems to be a recent theme on the internal hamster wheel.

Do you ever feel like you've run an emotional marathon, even though technically nothing has

happened? I've been trying to ground these dispatches to the anecdotal events of my life,

the way in which the first big quarantine fight incited a revelation, how Laura, my daughter, running across the street

unattended, invited me to map out the kind of parent I'm becoming.

But you know what?

I kind of got nothing to report today.

I had nothing to report yesterday or the day before, and I might not have anything to report

tomorrow.

I've been taking my coffee the same way every morning and toasting myself the same kind of bread and blending the same kind of

smoothie, then retreating to my room, which sweeps me up into a haze of self-imposed deadlines

and video meetings in all of these conversations that are so difficult because I'm terrible

at saying what I mean in a

direct way. I didn't realize this until quarantine, by the way. I mean, I must have realized it,

but I never paid much attention to it. Re-listen to that sentence even. I'm terrible at saying

what I mean in a direct way. Wouldn't it be easier, more straightforward,

to just say, I'm not direct? Or maybe that's not it, because it doesn't sound right. My thinking

...