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

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I am extremely late to the game because the Handsome podcast started back in September, but my friend told me about it a few weeks ago. And as they say at the end of each episode, “Tell your friends.” So now I’m telling you.

I am not a podcast person—I don’t have a lot of time to listen to things, and I generally like quiet—but I have made an exception for the Handsome podcast. It’s Tig Notaro, Mae Martin, and Fortune Feimster talking about whatever is on their minds that week and answering guest questions from other celebrities, such as Brett Goldstein or Sarah Silverman.

At least one point in each episode, I burst out laughing. I’m bouncing between listening to the most current episodes each week and returning to September to listen to all the old episodes I missed. It’s such a fun hour.

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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.

A few weeks ago… months ago?… Mari Andrews had an essay about anxiety, and it contained a few things she says to herself when she is panicking. They were so helpful and thought-provoking that I turned some into a virtual sticky note on my laptop.

The thoughts that resonated the most:

This thought is unpleasant, but it’s safe

Thinking about it more won’t bring relief

It could be true or not true

The other sayings were helpful, but these three stuck out to me because they are always true. Thoughts can be unpleasant, but a thought is not the same as something actively happening to me. Sometimes, ruminating on something can help me feel better when I’m actively problem-solving. Still, many times, I hit a point where continuing to think about something without having additional information is no longer bringing relief. And I always have to acknowledge that a thought I’m having has a chance of being true and a chance of being not true, no matter how sure I am in the moment that it is 100% factually true and a situation is likely to happen. Maybe it won’t.

Passing this essay along in case it help anyone else.

The twins were home for spring break. We went to the aquarium to get our fish on (everyone in the house hates it when I say that, and they refuse to respond when I shout, “Let’s get our fish on!”) and ate double ice cream by the river. Lest you think that means we ate a double scoop, I want to clarify that we ate a double scoop and then decided that we needed more ice cream. So we got it again.

The ChickieNob asked me to save the Netflix show One Day until she was home so we could watch it together. We love David Nicholls’s books, and while we usually quote from Us, we do like to say to each other, “You didn’t even ask if she was there Moriarty!”

So, we climbed into my bed each night and watched a few episodes. It was perfect. It helps if you’ve read the book because they have to gloss over some big parts to fit it all in, but the two actors capture the characters perfectly. The episodes felt like a countdown to when the kids would leave: 12 episodes left, 9 episodes left, 5 episodes left, 2 episodes left… always knowing that we would probably watch the final episode or two on the last night.

Knowing the plotline made it already difficult to watch, but feeling like it was a creative countdown clock made it a little bit harder.

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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:

• “Finally Resting” (Infertile Phoenix)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Hopelessly Infertile and Surrounded by Fertiles has a post about being in the right place at the right time with the right people. I laughed with the therapist’s response, and her comment: “These are our people.” It’s funny but it’s also true that finding those connections makes all the difference in the world.

Lastly, No Kidding in NZ has two great quotes. Fully agree with her: “I love finding that someone has perfectly, succinctly, eloquently expressed an emotion I have not previously been able to articulate. Or when I read a quote that has expressed a feeling or belief I have had, and I see it validated in print.” They are such good thoughts, too.

The roundup to the Roundup: Spring break. 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 March 15 – 22) 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.

I like quiet more than I can put into words. Like, I work in silence. I drive in silence. I wanted a lot more than just 45 seconds of silence.

So, yes, I clicked on Traveler’s article about silent travel when it popped up in my news feed. Their take on silent travel:

In overstimulated times, silence is a hot commodity. The ‘silent walking’ trend that took TikTok by storm at the end of last year reflects a growing impulse to find new ways to escape the noise of our tech-fueled lives. In our travels, too, we’re increasingly looking to switch off and find refuge from the chaos for a little while.

I was not aware of the silent walking trend—in my world, that would just be called “walking,” but there is something enticing about the idea of escaping noise and crowds and doing and intaking and processing and just going somewhere and existing.

And at the same time, I will go on a finite number of trips in my life. It takes time and money to travel outside my home, where I set up my life with a lot of quiet. Would I want to use a trip in this way? The article discusses how “silent travel helps us disconnect to reconnect—to nature, to our true priorities, and to ourselves.” But part of the reason I travel is not to reconnect to myself but to connect with the other people I’m with or to connect to a different culture.

What is the word for something appealing and unappealing simultaneously?

The title kind of tells the whole story. Mostly. I had waited for the DCUK company to release a wooden toy for the last year and a half. I kept the email they sent about it back in 2022 in my inbox and reached out to them sometimes to ask when the toy would go on sale.

It finally went on sale, but the announcement went into my SPAM folder, and by the time I saw it (only a day later), the toy was sold out. I was disappointed and added my name to a list to be notified if they ever went back on sale. A few days later, I received a message that they had a few more. Did I want one?

Yes, I wanted one. Very badly.

I went to purchase the toy and discovered that adding shipping more than doubled the cost. It went from a $30 item to a $70 item, with an added caveat that other import taxes may apply when the item reaches the United States.

Was it worth it? It was worth it when it was $30, but only because I had seen the price and was comfortable waiting for the item at that price. There are other things I’m drawn to that I immediately dismiss when I see the price tag, but this one felt reasonable. Until it wasn’t that price anymore, and then my brain had to shift and ask the question again. If I had known from the get-go that it was $70, I might have gotten comfortable with that price tag, but the jump in price made me ultimately close the tab and not purchase the toy.

I don’t have regrets because it is just a tchotchke. It would make me happy to look at it, but I can’t do much more than look at it. Thinking about things as worthy or not worthy vs. want or not want makes for harder but more meaningful decisions, eliminating many of those regretful feelings. It was deemed not worth it, and I need to let it go. Clearly, I’m still trying to make myself feel okay with the decision.

Goodbye, toy.