Category — Microblog Mondays

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

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Modern Mrs. Darcy wrote about her love of her hot water bottle, linking to an article about it. And it made me realize how much I love this low-tech item that I use daily through winter.

Hot water bottles are something we rarely talk about.

I could not make it through winter without one. I love holding it during the day while I work. Hanging out with it while I read at night. I can fill it once and have the heat last for hours. No item makes me quite as happy as my hot water bottle. Even if I never mention it or think about it.

Clearly remedying that fact right now. Thanks, water bottle, for always being there for me.

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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 that are connected to businesses or are sponsored post.

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

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I spent most of Saturday (before and after my date) hitting refresh on my Libby hold list. A watched library list never gives you your hold. But I had convinced myself that the only book in the entire world I wanted to read next was Janice Hallett’s The Appeal.

Why?

I have no clue. I know nothing about it. But I convinced myself as I neared the end of the book I was reading that it was the only thing that could make me happy despite having several other holds sent my way and hundreds of unread books in my home. We didn’t want to drive into the city to get to the bookstore because of the trucking convoy. So I had to just hit refresh on the list and make a plan B.

Sometimes I just hit a reading mood. Based on nothing.

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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 that are connected to businesses or are sponsored post.

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

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Our culture is terrible with endings. Beginnings — we go above and beyond. Endings — not so much. Like everyone else, I was drawn into the recent Atlantic article about friendships that begins: “Our culture lacks the proper script for ending friendships. We have no rituals to observe, no paperwork to do, no boilerplate dialogue to crib from.”

You can divorce a spouse, but we don’t have a method for uncoupling a friendship. The article tries to give a blueprint (or a reason for a blueprint) to that.

It is worth the very long read because it unpacks this truth: “What makes friendship so fragile is also exactly what makes it so special. You have to continually opt in. That you choose it is what gives it its value.”

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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 that are connected to businesses or are sponsored post.

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

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As if you needed another reason to do Microblog Monday and write in your own space, I loved this article about the power of writing things down. When we give our thoughts a label — describe them and explain them — we make our thoughts manageable:

It is like when a doctor gives a diagnosis after hearing a list of symptoms; we give a label to describe a thought or a concept. And what happens to feelings that cannot be put into a label because they are too abstract? We use those categorical dimensions of positive or negative, self or others, past, present, or future, and so on, and it forces just anything to be labeled. It is a method for tricking the amorphous.

The diagnosis doesn’t remove any symptoms and it doesn’t solve the problem, but anyone who experiences unexplained infertility knows that a diagnosis (or label or name) makes a difference. It gives you a focus, a way forward.

Write it down. Get it out. Look at it on the screen. Release it.

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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 that are connected to businesses or are sponsored post.

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

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Every year at my elementary school, they would put an enormous “mailbox” in the front hall, and people could drop in Valentines that were meant for a person outside of their class. In other words, you went around the class putting your cards in your classmate’s box. But if you were in third grade and you wanted to send a card to a fourth grader, you dropped it in the mailbox. I have no memory who delivered the out-of-class cards.

All I remember was that it was the most exciting day of the year. The mere chance that a kid outside your classroom liked you enough to fill out a card and drop it in the box… FOR YOU.

I hope you get an out-of-class Valentine-like happy experience today.

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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 that are connected to businesses or are sponsored post.