Some years ago, my family and I moved overseas, to Dubai.
When you move to another country, particularly one like Dubai, other ex-pats warn you to expect a period of fatigue.
You'll feel overwhelmed, tired, even a bit weepy.
It's not the jet lag, though that's probably part of it. It's the heat, the culture shock, the constant taking in of new information, decoding it, and making decisions, the meeting of new people, the heat, the bright light, the rush of the city and - oh yes - the heat.
It's sensory overload.
It makes you forgetful, exhausted, scattered.
Seven years later, I've just realised that I've been suffering from the same thing, in my relatively normal life in my own country. And I only figured it out because COVID-19 turned down the noise and light.
Only briefly, in my case, because I started a new role at work. But enough to make me pay attention.
I noticed, after the first weeks of semi-isolation (I say semi, because no one stuck in a house with their kids is really going to feel isolated), that my mind was much clearer.
I could remember whole conversations from the day before - a miracle!
I felt like I had a handle on day-to-day tasks. I didn't feel like I'd been hit by a truck in the evenings.
And it wasn't just me - many of my friends felt the same.
Being forced to forego the usual rush and bustle of busy family life has been, for many of us, the silver lining on the dark cloud of disease and economic freefall.
The juggling of tasks, the racing minds, the three thousand jobs and errands and logistics to sort out and get done RIGHT NOW - all quietened to a more manageable pace.
And in the relative silence - shhhh, hear that?
It's your own thoughts.
There's one of those 'inspirational' quotes that occasionally turns up on my social media feeds, scrawled in watercolour calligraphy or pasted over shots of ecstatic women on hillsides.
"She believed she could, so she did," it reads.
My personal one has always been along the lines of: "She believed she could, so she stood up to do it but then forgot what she was doing and sat back down again..."
I have seriously considered whether I may be getting dementia, but most of the time I remember what a knife and fork are for and who my children are, so it's probably not that.
Now, I believe I've just been cramming too much into my brain and some of it overflows.
You might feel the same - it's a common by-product of having a job and a family and numerous other involvements and commitments, all of them good, important things that can't be easily ditched.
The problem is, we don't seem to be able to control which bits stay in our heads and which bits go.
The task you needed to finish for work, after you've driven your son to footy training, is just as likely to fall out of your mind as the exact items on the shopping list you scribbled on a notepad, while taking an unrelated phone call, then left behind because you were too distracted.
Now, with no footy training or any other activities, no school, less commuting, and so on, the amount of information and sensory input has dramatically decreased.
It's like you've trying to run through a maze filled with flashing lights and shouted instructions, and you've finally come to a seat in a quiet room with a glowing lamp.
There's been a lot of talk about taking some of this peace and quiet back into 'normal' life, of using these lessons from isolation in restructuring our schedules, post-coronavirus.
That's all very well, but I'm struggling to work out how to do it.
Should I say to my kids: "You know all those things you love and have missed for months, well, guess what? You're going to miss out on them forever!"
Should I quit my job? Should my husband? Should we pare our social life back to bone? Should we homeschool? (Don't be ridiculous.)
The answer to all the above is a resounding "no", for a multitude of reasons.
What I'm left with, then, is the realisation that building the idea of 'rest' into my week should be a priority, rather than an accident or the result of broken plans.
I want to learn to say 'no' - to myself as much as anyone else - before I get overwhelmed, rather than after.
Pre-emptive peace, I think I'll call it, on at least one day a week.
Unless I forget.