Not everyone needs a front-row seat to your life. Some people get the balcony, and some don’t get tickets.

Access is something you are allowed to decide, and most people never decide it on purpose. It just accumulates: whoever asked, whoever was around, whoever has always known. The result is that people with no real investment in you hold detailed information about your worst weeks. Distance is not unkindness, it is the ordinary difference between a friend and an acquaintance.

Sort your people into rough tiers this week, privately and without cruelty. Ask who has actually earned the details of a hard thing. Practice a true but shorter answer for everybody else.