I have no idea what prompted me to try to reach the bottom of my saved post folder in Feedly, but one day this week I scrolled all the way to the bottom and discovered that I had over 1800 bookmarked posts going back to 2013.

Did I need 1800+ bookmarked posts?  I mean, I clearly wasn’t returning to the really old posts, and most of the new ones were only helpful to keep around for a few weeks.  For instance, I sometimes bookmark an article about a movie or show I know I’m going to see but haven’t gotten to yet.  Once I see it, I read the article, but then I should unsave the post.  And I haven’t.  It is clear, 1800+ posts later, that I haven’t.

So I started deleting.  And here are a few things I noticed.

The Posts You Deleted/Altered Are Still There/the Same

If I bookmarked your post (and this is not special to me; if anyone bookmarked your post), even if you deleted the post, changed the post, or took down your blog, the post is still there.  I know because I saw that the opening lines in the teaser of one post was about how the person was going to remove the pictures in the post within 24 hours, and when I opened the post, the pictures were still there.  But when I clicked over to her blog, the pictures were gone.  The same goes for a person who mentioned they would be removing their child’s name from a post in the future (again, it was in the post in my reader, though not on the person’s blog) and an old post from someone who deleted their blog.  All of it, still intact.

What should you learn from this?  Don’t post anything you don’t want to live on out there.  There will be times when you post and have regrets, and you can’t avoid all of those because you can’t predict the future.  But the times when you intend to remove the information or image in the future — don’t post it at all.

Bookmarking is a Great Way to Create Future Post Ideas*

At least 30% of the posts I bookmarked made me say, “Oh, that would make a great post topic.”  I started creating a list of links to those particular posts and realized that if I wrote about all the posts that I’ve added to the list, I’d have months of posts at my fingertips.  So… if you start seeing me discussing posts from 2013, you know where they came from.

Even more interesting are the posts that predicted how something would unfold.  Now, with the passing of time, I can return to those articles and say, “No, this didn’t happen” or “Oooh, this is eerie, but scientists said this would be the case.”  Retrospect adds a new layer to those discussions.

I Learned a Lot About Myself

Going through my bookmarks taught me a lot about myself.  I seem to have an unusual love of ghosts and haunted spaces.  I wish I had kept track of how many ghost-related/abandoned space posts I had bookmarked before I started deleting, but suffice to say that it would have been a high number.  I knew I liked the topic of ghosts, but seeing the sheer number of posts made me say, “Mel, you really love ghosts.”

The same goes for magic tricks and fun math games.  And posts about the act of writing.  And anything Harry Potter, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Doctor Who, or Lord of the Rings related.  And on-the-go vegetarian recipes; the vast majority breakfast ideas.

Have you ever gone through your bookmarks and cleaned up the clutter?

* Listen, I’m going to challenge you and join the challenge as well.  Once a week, let’s say on Sundays, I’m going to post about a bookmarked article — usually old, but sometimes new.  I may talk about why I bookmarked it in the first place, or simply respond to the ideas in the post.  Go through your bookmarks — in your Internet browser or the articles you saved in Feedly or Pocket or Evernote — and write about one of yours, too.  Bookmark Sundays.  If there is enough interest in this, I’ll post a linky list so everyone can find each other’s posts.  It becomes at least one more post that you have on your blog each week.

Are you in?

We’ve needed a new hot water heater for about two years.  We still had — albeit inconsistent — hot water, so it was difficult to muster up the energy to replace the heater.  But we finally hit our breaking point and ordered a new heater, even though I will sort of miss the daily family question asked after every shower: “Did you have hot water?”  Followed by one of two responses, “Oooh!  Lucky!” or “That sucks.”

We went with a big business rather than ordering the heater from a plumber; the thought being that if anything went wrong with the heater, we didn’t want to be dependent on a sole proprietor.

I laugh now at this mindset.

The heater came, a man installed it, and all seemed well.  We took showers and there was an abundance of hot water.  There was much happiness in the household.  It was nice to be warm.

A few days later, we did a load of laundry.  As we were getting ready for bed, Josh went to move it into the dryer, and I heard him yell, “SHIT!”  I ran to the laundry room to find it flooded with a half inch or so of water on the floor.  It had seeped out into the next room, soaking the carpet.  Everything on the floor that wasn’t made of plastic was ruined.  The flood had picked up the glue trap from behind the heater and cricket corpses were floating on top of the water as salt in the wound.

We spent an hour trying to soak up as much as possible.  What happened was that when the installer drained the old water heater, he used the washing machine’s drain.  But he failed to re-hook up the washing machine to the drain before he left, so when the laundry was going through the final cycle, all the water that was in the machine ended up on the floor.

Anger doesn’t really cover how I felt mopping the floor at 12:30 am.

We went to bed and dealt with the store in the morning.  They were apologetic and sent a company to clean up the mess.  There was $1400 in initial damage, and that doesn’t cover replacing things like the baseboards which were destroyed in the process.  We’ve had industrial fans running for days as well as a dehumidifier.  The clean up company is supposed to return to finish assessing the damage and work to put back together the laundry room again.

But here’s the thing: we had to front the money to pay the clean up company.  We’re supposed to get reimbursed by the big store and have that fact in writing.  But, of course, we can’t get a person to return a phone call nor tell us when we can expect payment.  Someone else’s mistake has become our headache, eating up work time and energy.  We can have our insurance cover the additional costs, but we would still have to pay the deductible, so in the end, we’re still paying for someone else’s mistake.

I can wrap my brain around needing to be responsible for my own mistakes.  When I cause a problem, I understand that I will have to deal with the consequences and pay the price, even if it was an accident.  That is life.  What I can’t accept is that because an installer made a mistake, we have to pay for the damages.  We have to deal with righting it.  We have to make phone call after phone call and front the money to fix it.

Humans make mistakes, it happens.  But businesses need to step in and fix mistakes in order to have any trust between consumer and provider.  And fixing that mistake means jumping in and doing everything possible so the weight doesn’t rest solely on the customer.

Fine.  I made a resolution.  It’s something I’ve been very consciously doing for a while now, but I decided to take it up a notch so I’m accountable.  I mean, if it’s my resolution, it’s serious.  I need to do it.

I’ve been asking myself a question every time I reach for my phone.  It’s pretty simple; I just say to myself, “Melissa, why are you reaching for your phone?”

Sometimes I have an answer for myself. “I am looking at my phone because I’m checking to see if there are any work emails.  I haven’t looked in a while, therefore it is entirely possible there is something I need to answer.”  Or, “I’m going to play one game of Solitaire because I’m thinking right now, and playing this game helps me think and problem solve.”  Or, “I have the time since I arrived early to my meeting, and I feel like connecting with people, so I’m going to check Facebook.”

If there is a good answer, I look at my phone.

BUT.

There are a bunch of times when I lie to myself, and then I need to call myself out on it.  “I’m checking for work emails,” I’ll say, even though I know I checked 5 minutes earlier.  “I want to connect with people so I’m going to check Facebook,” I’ll say, even though I’m not connecting with the human beings who are physically around me because I’m looking at my phone.

And other times, I’m honest with myself, even though I know the answer has no legs: “I’m bored, so I’m checking my phone to stave off that boredom.”  Or, “I’m checking my phone because it’s easier than tackling the stuff I have to get done.”

Those times, I don’t look at my screen.  I may touch the phone through my pocket, but I don’t turn it on.  Sometimes I have to deny myself the screen a lot.  Other days I barely remember that I have a phone when I’m moving through the house or out-and-about.

I don’t know why I am limiting it: Do I feel like I am missing out on the world around me because I am looking at my screen? Or do I think other people think that I look at my phone too much? Or have I realized that I don’t always use this tool well?

All I know is that I’m setting some conscious limits.  Not a time budget since my needs will change from day-to-day, but instead forcing a mindfulness of why my hand reaches for this tool.

Back in the olden days of the Internet, the first full week of January was declared International Delurking Week, and I still celebrate this ancient holiday. It runs this year from the 3rd until the 9th, so you have about seven days to slither out of the reading closet and check in with an “I’m here” comment.

It is fairly easy. Leave a comment in the comment section below admitting that you’re here. You can simply raise your hand and meekly admit that you’re here with a simple, one-word “here” comment; or you can proudly raise your hand and tell us all a bit about yourself (my preferred method); or… you can tell me your favourite book (see, I’m trying to make it easy for you by even providing a comment prompt).

The point is that I want to know about the people who read me, since there is a huge discrepancy between the number of readers in actuality and the number of readers I actually know are reading. Or a tongue-twister like that.

And that’s all you have to do to celebrate.

So (clears throat to nudge you along), who is here?

And just to answer my own question, I am partial to the Harry Potter series.  And almost anything Tolkien.  And Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale.  And Voltaire’s Candide.

* I make a badge every year to mark the occasion, and I give you full permission to right click and grab it for your very own.

Side note: tomorrow is also #MicroblogMonday.  So get writing!

While Friday is usually a Roundup day, this week was so quiet online that there wasn’t much to read.  Sniff.

So the Roundup will be back next week, and in its place, I give you puzzles.  Not my puzzles, but MIT’s.

Every year in January, MIT hosts a treasure hunt.  I’ve always wanted to go, though in speaking to people who DO go every year, I have exactly zero chance of actually succeeding in getting past the first few puzzles.  But I am not deterred!  What I lack in intelligence, I make up for in spirit.

This year, someone at MIT has put up an online version of (I think) last year’s game.  You can form a team and try to solve the puzzles from home.  Our family has a team, and we’re working together.  Again, what we lack in actual knowledge we make up for with exuberance and a complete refusal of acknowledgment of our inadequacies.

Let the games begin!