So I think we can all agree that good gossip - by which I mean the exchange of non-terrifying information - is in short supply these days. Just last week, Francesca and I had a phone call which consisted almost entirely of me relaying a play-by-play of how, exactly, I managed to lose one of my AirPods while said AirPods were physically located inside my ears. (This is a true story.)

It was riveting.

But our conversation this morning was a new level of scintillating, as it involved a tale of how I managed to almost die last night. From the virus currently terrorizing the world? Of course not. From a steak.

We awaken every day to a fresh batch of news stories, all speaking to us of a new reality that would have sounded impossible - the stuff of sci-fi stories - just a week (a day?) ago. We open our inboxes and scroll through a steady stream of messages from businesses, family, friends, all offering tips! and tricks! on how to deal with our new circumstances. This morning, one such email advised me to take advantage of this time to learn a new language. Another suggested that I start doing online yoga daily so that, when this is all over, I emerge from my home a lithe, well-muscled butterfly.

"Stay safe" has become the new email sign-off.

We are, at this very moment, living through a situation that is completely unprecedented in human history. That is a simple fact, albeit an overwhelming one to consider - especially given that for many of us, this whole thing still feels fairly theoretical. The enormity of the crisis is only magnified by the constant and unrelenting cycle of news and social media: We may be self-isolating, but we are still being flooded with a virtual avalanche of information - some of it accurate, much of it not, and all of it unsettling.

About a year ago, in Indonesia

A little over a year ago, I took two weeks out of my life to fly to Indonesia with my dad. The trip was logistically near-impossible to manage, and financially unconscionable for the both of us, but once we'd conceived of the plan actually executing the thing didn't even really feel like an option. For two weeks, Dad and I fell completely off the grid, and did nothing but play with manta rays and read books and talk and talk and talk.

My parents and I have always traveled together, once a year at least. I was an only child, so they had a habit of throwing me into the proverbial (or literal) backpack and slinging me along with them wherever they went - riding motorcycles up to Canada, hang gliding on the sand dunes in North Carolina, diving wrecks in the islands. Sometimes when we travel it's just me and my dad - as in Indonesia - and sometimes it's just me and my mom, but more often than not it's the three of us.

The family ornament we chose to sum up 2019

Well. THAT was a year.

I'm ready to be boring for awhile, please and thanks. Because 2019 was a lot of things - oh god, so many things; all the things - but a snoozefest it was not. I published a book that resulted in the most emotionally intimate and exhausting book tour of my life. I wrote two more that'll be out next year (you can preorder one of them now), and put my seventh (!!!) into contract. I started a new marketing side-hustle, and actually work out of an office (IMAGINE) a couple of days a week now. I moved. Again.