834th Friday Blog Roundup
Since the United States marked a half a million people dead from COVID-19 earlier in the week, several thousand more have died. Over a half a million people.
It is hard to look back at articles like this one from last year which stated: “If Americans embrace drastic restrictions and school closures, for instance, we could see a death toll closer to the thousands and breathe a national sigh of relief as we prepare for a grueling but surmountable road ahead.”
The vaccine in the article is here much sooner. The deaths so much higher. We knew so little last March.
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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:
- “On Grief Shaming” (Grief Is the Word)
- “Oh Hello, Welcome To My New Space” (Finding a Different Path)
- “#MicroblogMondays: Pandemic Family Day” (The Road Less Travelled)
Okay, now my choices this week.
I have the first post on Finding a Different Path for this week. My Path to Mommyhood has moved spaces and changed names (so update your bookmarks and feed reader). I love this: “The last three (oh wow, almost four) years have been about rebuilding. About standing in the rubble of a dream denied, and figuring out how to pick the pieces up and create a life that is meaningful, that is beautiful, and that is its own path, not a detour.” Welcome to your new space!
Speaking of blog name changes, The Evolving Engineer has a great post about “I Am” statements. After not being able to bring herself to state a series of “I Am” statements, she writes, “Imagine my surprise when, one morning, a few weeks ago, I woke up with a string of I Am’s running through my head. I shared it with my husband, and I shared it with a friend. It felt grounded and light to walk around for a while with this string running through my head.” She captures a turning point moment and shares it, knowing that others may have had the same doubts.
Anabegins captures the collective mood. She walks through ways she is trying to get out of ruts and find happiness. And she ends with an important point: “I guess it’s up to me to find the joy and make it happen.” It’s hard but true.
Lastly, No Kidding in NZ recounts an easy friendship with a person whose life path has differed greatly from her own. Her friend has made the hard times easier, and it has kept them close. But she also notes that after her friend’s children move from the home, there will be “a period of time – maybe 10, maybe 20, maybe even 30 years, when her life won’t be all that different to mine. It’s useful to reflect on that.” It’s an important reminder that things that seem far apart at one point can look close together at another.
The roundup to the Roundup: 500,000. 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 Feb 19 – Feb 26) 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.
8 comments
I was talking with a friend this morning and I think what I hate the most about Covid is the constant resentment I feel for those who don’t take it seriously. I especially resent those who have been lucky enough to get a mild, easily resolved case, who then say “Oh, it wasn’t bad.” It makes me SO ANGRY. Your one data point completely overshadows the other half million deaths and I don’t even know how many people with serious long-term consequences, does it? Nice to know you don’t understand how reality works… And don’t even get me started on how their religious views play in, because these are the same people often posting memes and check-ins about religion.
*deep breath*
My husband I were talking about this last night – our schools were closed for 3 weeks in the beginning. And now almost a year layer, my kids still aren’t back in the building. We are virtual by choice at this point but the fact remains that we had no idea what was coming.
My daughter hurt herself rough housing on March 11. I took her in to the doctor – a surreal experience – on March 12 and then she begged me to take her back to school. I was hesitant because I didn’t want to make her injury worse but she was insistent. I think often about how glad I am that I did take her back – that was the last time she saw her kinder class and teacher in person. What if I hadn’t taken her back? At least that is one thing I can look back on with no regret.
I can’t look back at too much else, though, for the same reasons a stated – resentment. Anger. Knowing this could have gone differently.
Reflecting back a year ago when the pandemic began is so eye opening. The whole year has been such a catalyst for bringing forward all the things there are to address in the country and globally. It highlighted the US’s stubborn “freedoms” whatever that means and as a result, school is kind of a mess, the vaccine distribution is kind of a mess, plus all the systemic racism showing up in the statistics of who is affected the most by COVID. It’s pretty icky feeling all around.
Thanks for the shout-out!
Yep. Same as a.
And I’m now reading articles like “well if we can get it down to flu levels with the vaccine we can open up.” But masks and social distancing have almost eliminated the flu while covid still surges even with those measures (which of course we need but the point is covid is obviously more transmissible and deadly than the flu)…so obviously covid is much worse than the flu. So I’m not eager for things to fully open up when (if?) we each “only” flu levels of numbers. What if the vaccine ends up being like the flu vaccine? Where due to constant mutations, efficacy varies and is often only 40%? Will I have to risk my kids getting covid each year, even after they’re vaccinated? One of many things keeping me up at night.
We just learned our school district’s plan—even though we are still in the highest transmission tier in California (and even though cases have dropped, still a lot worse than last summer)—Calif has relaxed school opening criteria quite a bit (including the fact that if numbers drop to a certain level in a county, even briefly, a school can open up and then stay open even if the numbers go up again) so elementary schools in our district are opening up in early April, hybrid 2 days per week. My kids will not be there. Teachers here haven’t gotten vaccinated yet (unless they are over 65 in certain zip codes). And why go thru all this trouble and expense and disruption so late in the school year??
And I’m disgusted by the wealthy white 65+ In my community who sit in their huge houses and have relatively little risk bitching that certain (hard hit, poor) zip codes in our county plus farm workers (also hard hit and poor) are getting the vaccine first (75+ too, and nursing homes already got it as did frontline health workers)…cmon people! Supply is limited so it should go to those more at risk…the selfishness is appalling.
Thanks for the shout out.
Your post made me so sad for you all over there. Sending hugs.
What a said about the constant resentment. Exactly.
For second helpings, this post from Jess (in her new blog home!):
https://findingadifferentpath.blogspot.com/2021/02/ghost-life.html
I’ve been thinking a lot about a year ago too, only even then I was sitting here saying “it’s going to be so much worse than they are saying.” But, that’s because I was reading about China, and Italy- and my complete and utter distrust of how our government was handling it- and even that didn’t prepare me for how bad it has been. I also was thinking how it was this weekend that was the last time I was with my people- 51.5 weeks ago the last thing I did was go to my niece’s Bridal Shower. It was so much smaller than we expected because the bay area had started lockdown this week0 and a lot of people didn’t come. We started lockdown 2 days after the shower. A year without people. I am so broken.
So painful to look back and to see what could have been if the pandemic had been taken more seriously. It is criminal how many people have died. I echo the other thoughts that people who downplay the virus and hide behind privilege to pooh-pooh the restrictions and the depth of the tragedy are just awful. This has been such a disheartening look at humanity. There are bright spots for sure, bit overwhelmingly prime couldn’t care enough about the welfare of others to protect the vulnerable and put an end to the spread.
Thank you for including my new space and first post!
I loved your post on the emotional bank account: https://www.stirrup-queens.com/2021/02/my-account-at-the-emotional-bank/