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670th Friday Blog Roundup

Last week, we went to the movies and the woman behind the counter seemed familiar.  I asked her if she had ever worked at a shop in town, and she immediately said, “Was I rude to you?”

I was taken aback, and I said, “No, absolutely not.”

But she kept repeating, “I probably was rude.  That’s just how I was back then.”  I kept reassuring her that I only had fond memories of interactions with her at the shop.  She wouldn’t look at me; she just kept smiling tensely at the counter between us and repeating her assertion that she had probably been rude.

I was thrown off because I couldn’t tell if she had been fired over interactions with customers and she still carried baggage from that situation, or if she had left by her own volition and was in a constant state of inwardly cringing at her past.  All I know is that my subconsciousness associates her with kindness and good times and happiness.  So clearly the way she remembers herself is very different from how I viewed her as an outsider.

I guess I’m saying this because I’m still thinking about it, and that it goes both ways.  That outsiders may judge us harshly without knowing our story.  And, at the same time, we may judge ourselves harshly whereas strangers view us as a source of kindness.

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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 in order 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.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

Okay, now my choices this week.

An Engineer Becomes a Mom has a post about the universe working in strange ways to bring the right thing at the right moment.  In this case, it was a telephone call last spring, and this old draft-post-pushed-live gives the backstory of the moment when someone from her biological father’s family reached out.  I found it incredibly moving.

NotMyLinesYet has a post about all the things missing: from her period to her willingness to interact with her own body.  It’s one of those important, must-read posts that give you insight into the world of infertility.  What we go through physically and emotionally.

Lastly, Anabegins has an eye-opening post about the FOMO that is built into Thanksgiving (and, frankly, every other holiday, too).  Either you feel the pressure to travel to be with people, even with the stress of traffic or high airfare costs, or you make something closer to home and deal with that stress.  Either way, it’s like the upside down of holidays: the part that Hallmark probably doesn’t want us to think about too deeply, but a really interesting question about how we set our stress and emotional-tugging limits.

The roundup to the Roundup: Sometimes we’re better than we think.  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 November 17th and 24th) 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.

5 comments

1 Jenny { 11.24.17 at 10:50 am }

The Gayby Project covers a lot in this update post, but what really stuck with me was the section on raising boys. I loved everything she had to say about it, because it’s not true that boys are “easier” than girls. It’s daunting and, at times, terrifying. https://lyonsferocious.wordpress.com/2017/11/17/6984/#more-6984

2 Lori Lavender Luz { 11.24.17 at 5:35 pm }

Know where I went with it? While she was working at that shop, she was going through something horrible in her personal life. She equates that shop with that period of her life when she knows she wasn’t at her best because of the chronic strain. She FELT awful so in her mind she ACTED awful.

Two in a row from Jess:
http://mypathtomommyhood.blogspot.com/2017/11/microblog-mondays-quote-counterquote.html
http://mypathtomommyhood.blogspot.com/2017/11/2017-thankfuls.html

3 loribeth { 11.24.17 at 9:50 pm }
4 Mali { 11.24.17 at 11:19 pm }

I’m so glad Lori picked Jess’s counterquote post. I loved that.

And I feel so sorry for that woman, who is judging herself so harshly. You’re absolutely right about judgement going two ways.

5 Jess { 11.25.17 at 3:40 pm }

Feeling the roundup love, and feeling guilty that I missed the deadline for last week’s, where I wanted to shout out to Counting Pink Lines’ beautiful letter to her embryos: https://countingpinklines.wordpress.com/

This week I really loved Mali’s reflection on an advice column gone wrong posted by Infertile Phoenix: http://nokiddinginnz.blogspot.com/2017/11/misconceptions-about-no-kidding.html
And Lori Lavender Luz’s thought-provoking post about birth mom privacy vs a child’s right to know their family history: https://lavenderluz.com/2017/11/birth-mom-privacy.html

The shop lady — maybe she’d just gotten out from under something terrible, and she felt she’d been rude because she had a lot of sideways grief. Sometimes I think people who perceived themselves as rude and apologize for it much later have reflected on a particularly crappy time in their life. It is interesting how perceptions can vary so widely!

(c) 2006 Melissa S. Ford
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