My friend Tyler is almost a year into a round-the-world sailing trip.

However, he’s in the midst of selling his sailboat and buying a different one. A trimaran, acquired in New Zealand. (He did not sail to New Zealand; he got there by plane.)

One of the things I admire about Tyler is that he doesn’t have a lot of rules for himself. He has lived off the grid. He’s lived on the grid. He does what he wants.

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One of the stories my Auntie Anne loves to tell is from the early days when my parents were dating.

She recalls visiting my dad’s apartment in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where everything was perfectly in place and organized.

Here’s the detail that causes the most glee in the sharing of it: My fastidious father had a copy of TV Guide sitting on top of the television in a leather slipcase, open to the current day.

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The kids are back in school, and I miss them.

Life goes on at The Little Middle School—surprisingly normally, given the masks. And I’m not there for any of it. I’m over a thousand miles away, alone and waiting for my second shot.

It’s fine — I wouldn’t even really have time to engage with the students. I will stay busy the entire day and not get to the end of the work. I will provide support to the teachers from afar, and that will have to be enough.

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Every day, I wake up and look at the coronavirus statistics reported by The New York Times, trying to make the number of new cases decrease with the power of my mind.

Y’all, I’m so sorry — for the most part, it doesn’t seem to be working. At least, it’s not happening as fast as I would like it to.

I’m frustratingly powerless. The recent mass shootings in Atlanta and Boulder emphasize the scope of this lack of influence. All I can do is what I can do in my own little life. And even that is not going the way I planned.

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A friend of mine has taken up the guitar, at long last.

On some level, she wanted to prove to herself that she could do it. She wanted to overcome a lifelong block about her potential as an instrumentalist and heal the damage that was done to her self-concept many years ago when she tried and failed.

But mostly, she is doing it because it’s fun. She’s not out to save the world.

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