This week, another celebrity who loudly gave up on Twitter returned to Twitter.

That’s perfectly understandable. The pain of being criticized by legions of strangers is the price she’s willing to pay for the adulation of other strangers. It’s a deal she’s happy to agree to, especially when it comes on the classic intermittent reinforcement schedule that keeps gamblers addicted to making bets.

How many of those zillions of followers wish they were in this celebrity’s shoes?

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There’s a sameness to these days, and I can’t remember what they were like before.

I put on my slippers and comfy clothes and shuffle downstairs in the darkness of my little house, turning up the heat as I go. I write. I eat. I think. I communicate with my team, my clients, my friends and family through various means. I eat some more. I write some more. At some point, I go for a walk outside. That’s the day.

There are moments of joy and satisfaction. Moments of connection. Moments of frustration, sorrow, and mirth. It adds up to a life.

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Our family truck (we don’t have a family car) is really ugly.

A white Ford F-150, it started its life as an AT&T fleet vehicle, so it has a service body with ambulance doors in the back. It has an orange strobe light and a misshapen, rusty rack on the roof.

It has since served as a makeshift workshop, which led to a splattering of epoxy on the side that will never come off.

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I recently returned to Instagram after some time away.

I generally dislike social media, but after months of pandemic life, I really missed those casual connections with friends and the glimpse into their lives afforded by the platform.

Everything was going fine — “fine” meaning that I was able to view others’ posts without going too far down the rabbit hole — when I downloaded a routine update.

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As a teenager, Claire Danes starred as Angela Chase in the short-lived American TV series My So-Called Life. She lives with her attentive parents and her sister in a nice house in a nice neighborhood; naturally, she eschews them and is drawn to the miserable kids with miserable family lives.

In one episode, Angela’s best friend, Rayanne Graff, gets dangerously intoxicated. Rayanne’s mother, previously established as cool and laid back compared to Angela’s very square, anxious mother, is dismissive: “You are too drunk, young lady. Way too drunk.”

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