A year into the pandemic, I write about the shoes I’ve worn basically every single day for 12 months in Friday’s footwear-focused column.

Since I have a New Year’s Day column this year, I asked readers their thoughts about 2021: Will it be better, or more of the same? Those thoughts and more in Friday’s column. Also: Happy New Year.

I take a look back at my life, and our collective lives, at year’s end. The photo is of me literally shaking my fist at 2020! That’s Wednesday’s column, the last of 2020. Coming Friday, New Year’s Day: a sequel of sorts, in which I look ahead to 2021, but with help from you readers.

Candidly, essay columns like today’s are a challenge to write, and they’re not quite my metier. Usually I’m left thinking that I wish I were smarter and more clever, because the results don’t match up with my hopes, or with similar-type essays in other publications. In other words, I have trouble focusing what I want to say, or finding one great point that I can hone in on. But I try to write a column like this now and then regardless, especially during the virus, hoping some element of them will connect.

Thanks for reading me, now and throughout the year, and stay safe.

Because now and then it seems like a coronavirus column is called for, I asked on Facebook if anyone was affected by the 10 p.m. curfew. It probably says something about the newspaper-reading demographic that of 49 replies, all 49 said no. But they said so amusingly. I write about their responses and my own early bedtime in Sunday’s well-rested column.

In a reader reaction roundup, people comment on my weekend escape from the heat to Santa Monica, on my watching the complete Twilight Zone, and on the 50th anniversary of the first Ontario Motor Speedway race, all in Wednesday’s column.

Marking six months of the stay-at-home order (issued March 19), I write a column I’ve had on my mind for a while, one in which I remember elements of the Before Times. I probably didn’t cover everything; in fact after filing the column I almost immediately added two short thoughts that occurred to me, about art museums and shaving. Perhaps some other insight will occur to me in the coming days, as I think about doing something and realize I can’t. Anyway, here’s my somewhat different, somewhat wistful Friday column.

I threatened a couple of months ago to write about “The Twilight Zone” if anyone had interest, and I can’t say the three or four yes votes represented a landslide. Then again, nobody said don’t do it, so it’s true that the sentiment was 100% among those who cast a ballot.

A month or more ago I wrote a draft of a column, let it age as more pressing topics came and went, and returned to it this week as the six-month anniversary of the shutdown nears. So, Sunday’s column: How I watched the entirety of “The Twilight Zone,” why we love it and how it relates to these times. Hope you like it!

Did you make it through this weekend’s withering heat? (If you didn’t, I guess you won’t be commenting.) I survived, but that’s because I left the IE for the coast, a weekend getaway that is the subject of Wednesday’s column.

I write about my lifelong antipathy for the drive-thru and learning to get over it, sort of, during coronavirus in Wednesday’s column. This is a column that’s been on my mind for months.

I recall random things about my kindergarten through sixth grade teachers, the ones who set me off on a strong footing in life, in Friday’s column. Hail, elementary school teachers! Photo that appears with the column is of my fourth-grade class. As a bonus for you blog readers, above is my third-grade class. Can you spot me?