763rd Friday Blog Roundup

Memory has clearly been on my mind this week, and it has everything to do with my newfound love of birding. Everyone thinks I’m being sarcastic about birding. But I am really serious: I am going all-in with birding. Like passionately doing everything except waking up early to go on bird hikes. I’m not there yet. I need to be convinced that waking up early is worth it.

So the whole memory thing is that you can watch a bird only until it flies away. If you’ve invested in a great camera, you can capture a close-up of the bird, but most of the time, you’re memorizing things such as the marking patterns and behaviour in a small window of time, and somehow retaining it until you can get to the bird guide.

I am terrible at this.

Number one, birds do not stop moving, even when you’ve asked them to hold still. Also, I tend to only be interested in tiny, cute birds. Tiny, cute birds are harder to see within the foliage and they move around. A lot. And they’re hard to track while they’re moving. So this all points toward a perfect storm of frustration.

I am now attempting to go about it the other way, memorizing birds I may see in my area at each time of year, and then seeing if the bird I’m seeing matches the criteria I’ve kept in my head. That whole memorization thing. See, so thought-consuming.

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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:

• “La vie sans enfant non choisie, côté face” (Des méandres aux étoiles)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Searching for Our Silver Lining has a post about owning your narrative. This is the post’s main opening: “Each and every organism that walks this earth has its own story to tell. This statement in and of itself isn’t terribly profound, but where it becomes reflective is when a layer is added that often most of these stories are repressed. This repression is often not done to be actively malicious but is a consequence of someone else viewing the sharing of an individual story as being threatening to their own. Despite our individualities, our stories are intertwined. Sharing is often not easy.” Um… YES. I was sucked in from those first sentences, and it only got more interesting from there.

The Uterus Monologues has a post, written in third person, about observing a group of mothers in a cafe. She writes, “She never can resist watching these women. It’s never the same group, but that hardly matters. The group changes, the age of their babies changes, but the way they make her feel doesn’t.” It is such a powerful piece of writing.

Lastly, One Step at a Time writes about a decision. Her husband died one year ago this week. She explains depression, “She talked about ourselves as if we are a bucket. If little stones hit us, we can recover easily. But if something really big happens to us, it leaves a big hole. And that’s when we become susceptible to other things to fill it up.” She has gotten a new therapist and made the decision to move. She writes: “I have many fears about moving. But I am more afraid of standing still.” Sending her many good thoughts as she keeps moving.

The roundup to the Roundup: Birding takes memory. 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 October 4th and 11th) 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.