Yesterday, I discovered that as the calendars flipped to 2025, a college friend passed away in her sleep. She had been battling cancer, and a positive update she shared on Christmas Eve made me think that I should reach out to her since I was on winter break and we hadn’t spoken directly in a long time. Sadly, that conversation will never happen.

I’m reading 4,000 Weeks by Oliver Burkeman, which is all about time management because our current life expectancy is roughly four thousand weeks. It's ...