I read something profound last week in a newsletter that stuck with me, so I’m passing it along. The opening hooked me because I feel much the same way. It’s as if I don’t have a satiation threshold when it comes to progress. She writes:

Noticing how the desire to be “more productive,” to be farther along, to be progressing faster, to have gotten more things done is constantly pulling me away from being fully present to the task at hand. There’s this energy of wanting to rush past what’s happening right now to get to something “better” in the future — an inability to relax into, and be fulfilled by, whatever is happening in the present moment.

That rushing past things also ties into the desire for more when I’m not rushing. As in, I am sitting on the beach, and all I can think about is how I want to sit on the beach more rather than acknowledging, “I am lucky to be sitting on the beach now.”

But the most profound thought comes near the end: “If we are always rushing towards fulfillment, we will never actually experience fulfillment.” As in, we will never get there because we will always be trying to reach end goals that continuously move (that we encourage to move) to keep us actively pursuing them.

I don’t know the answer beyond recognizing when I’m doing it and reminding myself to stop. But it gave me food for thought.

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 longer than I want to admit trying to figure out the answer without looking ahead at the answer that Oliver Burkeman put in his newsletter:

Here’s a riddle, adapted from a Zen koan: imagine you’ve come into possession of a live goose, trapped in a large glass bottle … The neck of the bottle is much too narrow for the goose to pass through. Your job is to remove the goose from the bottle without harming it, and without breaking any glass.

How do you get the goose out?

It’s an excellent exercise for not overthinking things.

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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 connected to businesses or sponsored posts.

I don’t remember where I found this, but it contains a profound set of questions, including: what is the monetary worth of memories?

Meaning, what would you be willing to pay to retain your memories? Is there a price tag you’d place on how far you’d go to preserve your memories — from backing up your photos to treating memory loss? But also, what is the monetary worth of creating memories? Are there price tags you’re willing to pay not just for the experience but also for knowing you’ll have the memory of the experience afterward?

And then it travels into how do you know when you’re creating memories vs. living an experience that you’ll forget about over time? Or what would you do differently to allocate your money so you can spend it on things that create or preserve memories?

Such a thought-provoking read.

And now this blog is really 18 years old. The space has become an old friend as much as the people who read it. I am glad that I started it, glad I continued it, and I can’t really imagine ending it, even though sometimes it feels like there should be a day that I stop typing.

But that’s a decision for another day.

Today, I’m just marking 18 years.

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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 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. To read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “Birth Mom Wants to Be Called Mommy & That’s Not OK with Me” (Lavender Luz)

Okay, now my choices this week.

The Road Less Travelled has good news: She is about to become a great-aunt again. It is super happy news (or, as she says, full of “gleeful anticipation“), but it also comes with a little pregnancy anxiety. I don’t think you can go through what we went through and fully relax with anyone’s pregnancy. Send her a big congratulations.

Lastly, sometimes it feels more commonplace to find complaint posts on the internet, so I especially loved A Separate Life musing about how lucky she is to live where she lives. And, of course, the pictures are beautiful.

The roundup to the Roundup: 18 years of writing this blog. 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 June 14 – 21) 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.

This blog is officially an adult on Friday.

When I started writing it, I thought it would be amazing if I could keep it going for a year or two. But I kept it going for 18 years — 5 posts per week, every week, with very few exceptions.

Building on last year’s post, there are now over 5,700 posts and over 85,000 comments. I cannot begin to calculate how many hours have been spent on this space. I have been writing this blog for 36% of my life. For 90% of the twins’ lives.

I am so grateful to everyone who reads it — for the relationships I built over these 18 years. For the voices who have come and gone (and sometimes come back again). Thank you. For being here.