Do you have advice on how to be courteous when there has to be a limit on how many people are invited to a gathering, or how to tell people a gathering is already at capacity?

"We're at capacity." I think actually using that language is really good. The thing that I would try to do is if you do have a capacity for your house, try to keep to it. You don't want to say, "Oh, we have a three-person capacity at this event," but then have a 12-person capacity for another event, and it's all at the same location.

This is another one of those places where we can harness a little self-improvement and get better at rejection and just understand that, of course, our friends want to see us, but they're also trying to be safe. That does put it on us to be better about making sure we get together with our friends. Since we can't do one big hang with everybody, we have to have a more concerted effort to get together with our friends individually and paying attention to who we've maybe seen repeatedly versus who we haven't seen yet. I've had those conversations with friends where I'm like, "I feel like every time I reach out to you, I get the 'I'm tired and busy,' yet obviously we follow each other on social media. I see you with everybody else. What's going on here?” Those can be awkward and difficult conversations.

Most of the time, people are just forgetful. It's the way the timing worked out, it is not you. Try not to get caught up in the Oh, I see everybody else together, but me. It's very easy right now to let that depressive brain or anxious brain kick in. You've got to give it the COVID filter and be like, wait a minute, it's actually okay.