1103rd Friday Blog Roundup

My sidebars disappeared at some point. I noticed it on Monday night, and I’m not sure whether I (1) accidentally deleted something when backing up my site, (2) accidentally deleted something when writing a post, or (3) they have been missing since I updated to the latest software version. Or it was just a random thing. Or it will fix itself with the next software update.

I could restore or rebuild the old sidebars. It would only take a half hour or so to rebuild; even faster to restore. I’m not sure why I didn’t just do that when I first noticed that things had changed.

I guess I’ve left my site unchanged due to a lot of inertia and a little nostalgia. Let’s say 85% to 15%. At first, when I saw the sidebars were gone, that nostalgia blotted out everything else. I wanted my site to look the same. But just as quickly, inertia asked me why I wanted an icon from IComLeavWe June 2015 at the top of the site. Or icons for sites that no longer existed, including BlogHer or StumbleUpon. I could redesign the sidebars and make them more current and useful.

Or I could let this go for a while and make a decision down the road.

*******

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.

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.

All & Sundry has a beautiful piece on the places you think will be there forever but disappear. She writes: “Even when you know bone-deep that the world does not stay the same, sometimes a thing can catch you completely off guard. Like what do you mean this place we went to over and over and assumed we’d always be able to go to just, like, burned the fuck down?” I suspect it’s because you can no longer revisit and access who you were in that space. That version of you. Or, in this case, her family. It’s about sudden goodbyes or known goodbyes, and as you probably suspect, all goodbyes are hard in different ways.

Lastly, A Separate Life dreads the season change as she mourns her husband. She explains: “Winter has been the ideal mourning period. I could stay inside, in the warmth with the curtains pulled, and just not have to pretend … it is too hard to move into a new season without D by my side.” Sending a huge hug across the world.

The roundup to the Roundup: Where did my old sidebars go? 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 September 25 – October 2) 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.