I’ve been joining a dance class online, and my feelings about it move like a sine wave. There is an in-person option, but I’ve been sticking to the online stream for now despite the people projected on the screen dancing about a mile away. I wanted to make sure I was good enough to join them.

So, for the first part of the wave: I found a local dance class! And then the drop: What if I’m not good anymore? And then the crest: I am so glad technology exists and can join from my living room. And the drop — I don’t remember any of these moves. Up and down. Up and down. I stopped trying to copy the steps and just moved around, doing my own thing because no one could see me. I felt horrible about myself because I was out of shape, and nothing felt familiar.

I sat on the living room floor and watched the tiny figures on the screen all twirling around, the choreography as muscle memory.

I was going to drop the idea, but I discovered that the head of the dance troupe posted the dance list earlier in the day. I could grab the songs, look up the dance steps on YouTube, and learn them before the session. That was the crest of the wave. The drop came when I went to learn the first dance and realized that while I picked up choreography pretty quickly as a teenager, it was a lot harder to remember the steps when my brain was half on the dance and half on the fact that I needed to make dinner, do work, schedule stuff for the twins. Or maybe I was better as a teen about compartmentalizing and not worrying about schoolwork until it was time to worry about schoolwork.

Baby steps: I decided to learn one dance. One set of choreography per week. Not to push myself to learn more even if I had the time because one dance was sustainable. The class is off this week, so we’ll see if my new plan works next week. Who knows — maybe I’ll feel confident enough to go in person soon.

I saw a lot of people sharing this list of 40 pieces of work/life advice for a good reason: It’s good advice. Especially the first bit when it applies to work: Most decisions are reversible or have a brief shelf life if you choose. It is better to do something and get started because you may or may not waste time reaching your goal, whereas you will definitely waste time dithering on a decision.

And number three. Carolyn Hax always talks about how you can choose to see people in a neutral light rather than assuming ill-intent, and when you do, you realize how often someone’s decision is all about them and not about you at all. There was nothing you could have done to get a different response, and their decision says nothing about who you are.

And number fifteen. Especially re-reading your journal. That feels more like the point of the blog than people reading the words now. I love looking back at what I thought at other stages of life.

And thirty-nine. You can learn a lot about yourself and what you want/need by sitting with those uncomfortable reactions.

What spoke to you?

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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I didn’t realize that I had feelings about sharing food at restaurants until I read this newsletter essay about sharing food at restaurants.

I am team not sharing. If I order X, I want X and do not want to feel like I also have to try or eat Y. I mean, yes, I’ve gone into situations where I plan with another person to split our two meals so we could each have half of the other option. But unless I’ve done that, I’m not inclined to choose X off the menu and then have someone tell me when it gets to the table that they’re going to take half of X, and in exchange, I can have half of Y (something I likely didn’t want).

So are you team sharing-is-caring or team I-ordered-what-I-wanted-to-eat?

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts connected to businesses or sponsored posts.

I am not a good photographer, and I don’t currently have a camera, but I love pictures, and I use my phone daily. I promised myself that I would learn some skills — how to better use the tool I have, how to frame the image, etc — between now and the end of summer. If you have advice (remember – I only have a phone as my camera), please pass it my way.

I’m starting with these 20 tips if you want to learn with me. I’ve set the video to start at the tips (about 11:15 minutes into it).

I went from making no plans to see the eclipse — despite everyone I know having solid plans to see the eclipse, so it wasn’t as if it wasn’t on my radar — to asking Josh if he could come home from work early because we really need to see this eclipse. This meant digging through the drawers to find our old eclipse glasses from 2017 and writing frantic texts to the kids about how they need to procure new eclipse glasses.

Ha — though with the 2017 eclipse, I talked about having seven years to do things better. Forgot that memo until this week.

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Stop procrastinating. Go make your backups. Don’t have regrets.

Seriously. Stop what you’re doing for a moment. It will take you fifteen minutes, tops. But you will have peace of mind for days and days. It’s the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.

As always, add any new thoughts to the Friday Backup post and peruse new comments to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

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And now the blogs…

But first, second, helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week. To read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• None… sniff.

Okay, now my choices this week.

Finding a Different Path writes about separate waiting rooms because it really is the best idea in the world. (Though, side note, I got tea on my computer for laughing during this line: “I guess because I didn’t ‘fess up to shaving my bellybutton? WTF.” If that doesn’t get you to click over, I don’t know what will.) She unpacks many different offices and finally ends up somewhere good. But it highlights what offices and doctors need to do differently and what they get right.

Lastly, A Blank New Page talks about a conversation with a 93-year-old woman who asks if she has children. The woman also did not have children and shares her feelings about it. She writes, “How calmly she asked me this question back then. How calm her own comment on it was. And how liberating it felt for me, how good, how accepted, understood and yes – how calm I felt.” Love this.

The roundup to the Roundup: Eclipse! Your weekly backup nudge. And lots of great posts to read. So what did you find this week? Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between March 29 – April 5) and not the blog’s main URL. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week. Read the original open thread post here.