How to stay in touch without completely burning out

This post is part of our Monthly-ish Tips series.

I got an email from a client-turned-colleague-now-also-friend not long ago. It was a spontaneous reach-out and she really nailed it in terms of balancing competing priorities, like how to stay in touch in a genuine and meaningful way without inflicting more video call fatigue—or just plain fatigue—on either of us.

I’ll call her “PJ.” Here’s what PJ wrote:

Please think twice before you ask this question

This post is part of our Monthly-ish Tips series.

There’s a particular question that I have come to hate being asked, starting in about March of 2020. I resist it slightly less now, but only slightly. I’m sharing my further reflections on the matter, not because I like to divulge my idiosyncrasies on these pages (though there is that), or because these Weekly Tips are sometimes my public therapy journal (that, too), but because I think it really matters in terms of how we’re connecting with each other these days—or not.