It may or may not be International Blog Delurking Week. The first full week of January (January 7 – 13, 2024) is when we’re supposed to slither out of the reading closet and check in with an “I’m here” comment. I don’t know if anyone does this anymore. In the olden days, people would pop out of the woodwork. Nowadays, not so much.

So let’s see what happens.

So welcome to International Blog Delurking Week. I make a badge every year to mark the occasion, giving you full permission to right-click and grab it for your own.

My reward for remembering to do this (when I could have just as easily forgotten) is that you have to delurk for this worldwide holiday, which is super serious and important. Right?

It is relatively easy. Leave a comment in the comment section below, admitting that you’re here. You can raise your hand and meekly acknowledge 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 the last good book you read (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?

What? You need a book? The e-book version of Life from Scratch is on sale from now until January 15, 2024. For 99 cents, you get a whole story that will keep you entertained for… hours? Days, weeks, maybe months if you’re a slower reader?

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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:

• “Sadness Comes and Goes” (Infertile Phoenix)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Infertile Phoenix unpacks Christmas. It was a hard holiday this year, and she explains: “Anyway, I digress. Which is how my childless-related sadness seems to go these days too. When I feel it, I feel it… And then I eventually get distracted by other thoughts or feelings. The sadness no longer stays all day (or week or month or year).” As she points out, the holiday may be over for this year, but next year is another chance to feel it differently.

Lastly, A Separate Life has yearly hopes instead of yearly resolutions; a much more do-able alternative to big promises. She writes, “I prefer resolutions that fit into my life, that come when they are needed. I’m hoping this year will be more productive than recent years, but I’m not setting any ridiculous aims.” The hopes run from the concrete and measurable to the abstract. I like the idea of setting intentions vs. making resolutions.

The roundup to the Roundup: Plant-less to plant-full. 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 December 29 – January 5) 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 is a thought I am carrying into this new year, and I’m putting it here in case it helps you, too.

I am not fantastic about remaining in the moment, and I’m usually thinking about things ending just as they’re beginning. But maybe that isn’t a terrible thing. I’m just attuned to the passing of time, and maybe that can work for me as much as it takes away from the pleasure of the moment.

I recently read something that stuck with me in Oliver Burkeman’s newsletter about hoarding life:

Sure, you can have a hundred tea ceremonies. You can ever have them all with the same people. But you can only have that ceremony, that cup of tea, once. Then the moment evaporates forever.

You only get to live each moment once, just as you only get to drink each cup of tea once (even if there is a different cup of tea in the future). It’s the once-ness of it, that appreciation that you’ve gotten to have the experience at all vs. being sad that it’s over (when it has just begun), that keeps me — for a brief second — in the moment instead of floating mentally ahead. Just acknowledging that you get every moment just once.

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

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After closing the book on a year where it felt like so many things were going wrong, I want to start this year by stating what has gone right so far. In my world: We all remembered to say “rabbit rabbit” at midnight so they were the first thing said in the new month of the new year.

How about for you? What has gone right so far?

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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.

For the past three years (2020) and (2021) and (2022), I set reading goals tied to the year — 20200 pages and 20210 pages and 20220 pages. As of December 25th (which is the date GoodReads last updated my reading stats), I hit 20207 pages with 60 books, but I definitely read more than 23 pages this week (to get to 20230) with my final book of the year. So I’m calling it a win.

I wish GoodReads would give you a running page count throughout the year.

To stay on-brand, I set 20240 as a goal for 2024.

My favourite things I’ve read this year:

• Tell Me an Ending (Jo Harkin)
• The Stranger Diaries (Elly Griffiths)
• A Tidy Ending (Joanna Cannon)
• La Belle Sauvage (Philip Pullman)
• Bad Summer People (Emma Rosenbaum)
• The Endless Vessel (Charles Soule)
• Death Comes to Marlow (Robert Thorogood)
• My Murder (Katie Williams)
• The Skeleton Key (Erin Kelly)
• Okay Days (Jenny Mustard)
• Grave Expectations (Alice Bell)
• One Puzzling Afternoon (Emily Critchley)
• The Christmas Guest (Peter Swanson)
• The Christmas Appeal (Janice Hallett)
• The Last Devil To Die (Richard Osman)
• The Three Dahlias (Katy Watson)
• The Windsor Knot (SJ Bennett)

What is on your list of favourite reads this year? (Feel free to list movies or television shows if books are not your thing.)