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

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My morning routine of word and geography games keeps getting longer, but I have one more I need to add: Squeezy.

You get a set of words with missing letters and a bank of letters that need to return to the words. You can only use each letter once, and the letters (when in the correct order) spell a word that goes down through all the words.

You may need to play it once to understand what I mean. It gets harder with each level.

Enjoy.

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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.

While I think all of the Roundup pieces are well said, some articles in mainstream publications deserve a light shined on them because they cut down to your heart.

A case in point: a recent piece on loss in the Atlantic. The dek: “After enduring infant loss and years of fertility challenges, I still don’t have a child.”

It begins with the first walk to her neighbourhood coffee shop after her baby dies. She writes,

Many new mothers have done this walk. But they generally have a baby in their Ergo carrier or nestled into a stroller. They get loving glances from strangers, who coo at their newborn or joke about lack of sleep. But no one on that walk—not the cashier I ordered from, nor the young couple walking their dog—knew I was a mom. I had no idea either.

It’s an exploration of what makes someone a mother. In my personal opinion, parenting begins long before someone enters the world. She is a mother. She was a mother long before she reached the moment she called “mother-daughter stuff.”

It’s such a powerful essay.

It occurred to me earlier in the week that because employers base salaries on a 365-day calendar, everyone worked for free yesterday with the leap day. It would have been brilliant if the world had given the day as a holiday; 24 extra hours of found time to do with as you wish. But it didn’t, so I worked as if it were a typical day, albeit with an unusual date at the top of my notes.

What did you do with the leap day?

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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:

• “Is Positive Thinking Really THAT Powerful?” (Finding a Different Path)

Okay, now my choices this week.

The Road Less Travelled wins for coolest post experience this week. She wrote a book review, explaining how an unnecessary dig at childlessness ruined a few pages of the book for her. The author, S.J. Bennett, jumped into the comment section and gave the best answer, thanking her for pointing it out and stating that she would try to change it in future editions. I’m reading the same book right now (though not quite to that chapter), and it made me love it even more, and it was already a five-star book for me, just like the first three books in the series. As much as the internet can divide us, it can also bring us closer together and understand each other better. This is really a story of two women learning from each other.

Lastly, Infertile Phoenix talks about getting COVID, (continue to feel better!) and the thoughts that went through her head while sick. She writes: “Those were just some thoughts I had. I got sick and couldn’t do anything, but I had some time to think about things. And things have been different … And even though I’m a creature of habit, different can be good.”

The roundup to the Roundup: Leap day. 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 February 23 – March 1) 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 did one of those big messy cries the first time I read The Fault in Our Stars and got to the scene with the living funeral. The idea is that the person is alive to hear the eulogies they’ll miss when they are not there in the near future.

I forgot about the scene until The Guardian ran a story about living funerals. Reading about it, I realized how much I would not want this, no matter how lovely it sounds in theory and how much the people in the article found comfort in the ritual.

My brain is not equipped to process the enormity of my funeral. The logistics — sure. I have planned out what I want to happen when I’m gone. But I cannot imagine observing my own funeral, sitting these while I contemplate how these are the things that will be said and done when I’m actually gone. Or, like the person in the article, lying inside a coffin, crying.

What do you think of living funerals? I would be okay attending, but I wouldn’t want one myself.

You often hear about individuals or organizations doing good things. People like credit. But this is the story of an individual who inherited a great deal of money and then invited multiple people to help her pass out the money. She explains,

My personal situation allows me to act now. That’s why I want to redistribute my wealth back to society. But then the question emerges: how? The first answer is usually to donate … And secondly, it again grants me power that I shouldn’t have. Redistribution must be a process that extends beyond me.

It’s that idea that just because you’re born into a certain family and just because that family has wealth doesn’t mean you know better than people without wealth how to use that money wisely. So she built a council of 50 people (from a random sample of 10,000 Austrian citizens) to decide.

I am placing my trust and 25 million euros in the hands of a citizens’ council. 50 people will be asked to develop ideas for a better distribution of wealth in Austria – and decide what happens to the money.

It’s a neat way to bring together multiple experiences and make the distribution good for most people. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than a single mind deciding where the money goes. It will be interesting to see what they decide.