This might be the problem I have with my in-laws. They’re good and mostly happy people but they’re incredibly… simple? Visiting with them is one of the most excruciating things in my life. All they want to do is talk about complete drivel. Gossip about the neighbour’s garbage cans or their visit to Costco.

I’m not judging. It makes them happy. Great. But spending hours there I just feel my brain dying. It’s not for me.

But the opposite happens at my family’s dinner table. My poor wife once commented, “my brain began dying about 30 mins into you and your brothers discussing the philosophy of his Supreme Court brief.”

Furthermore: my incessant “need for cognition” is kind of screwing me up. I can’t sleep without medication anymore. My brain will not go to sleep on its own. I think and think and think. My wife puts on a stupid firefighter show where nobody ever wears helmets and passes out in ten minutes.