Embedded had an interesting piece about Hank Green’s cancer diagnosis and how we form one-way online and sometimes offline attachments. A Reddit commenter captured the feeling:

My close friends… I’d be on a plane and baking cookies and lasagnas. How do I give support to someone who is so good and means so much to me/us/this community when they literally don’t know I exist?

The Embedded essay states that “the practice of ‘following’ someone simply hasn’t been around long enough for us to grapple with the unpleasant parts of life that are expected, like the realities of getting older.”

Except that it has. The internet has certainly opened the door to a person sharing ongoing thoughts, and that is different from a celebrity sharing parts of their life in an interview. But we have grappled with feeling emotionally close and understanding we’re emotionally far (or unknown) before the internet.

We clearly do need to create rituals around supporting from afar or grieving from afar.

There was a Longreads essay that I saved to read when I had time because I knew I was going to love it when I reached these lines:

I enjoy the soft anticipation of what she might create next and how she will create differently, year to year, as she grows. What and who will influence her next? Who will she leave behind, pick up, come back to? Who and what will stay with her the rest of her life?

She’s talking about watching her daughter grow up, but it fits with anyone you age with. Isn’t that the nicest part of any relationship? The anticipation of what the other person will do that you will get to witness. To see who or what influences them? What they try out and reject. Or return to.

It’s interesting, certainly, to do this exercise with yourself, but those changes don’t feel the same as observing them in someone else you love. A friend, a partner, a child, a sibling. Someone you love watching become themselves again and again and again.

I’m glad I saved it. It’s a really lovely piece of writing.

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

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In honour of my birthday week (because I had to share my birthday with graduation, I think I deserve a week), I give you something fun.

I’ve had 1,225 candles used on my birthday cakes.

The moon has orbited the Earth 655 times.

There were approximately 4,029,967,636 other people alive on Earth back when I was born.

And… October 2nd, 1925 is equidistant to today’s date, with my birthday in the middle. That day, “John Logie Baird successfully transmitted the first television pictures.” Gulp.

Out of 100,000 people born on the same day, approximately 93,049 are still alive.

The history section at the bottom was probably the best part.
Enjoy it with your own birthday.

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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.

We had the oddest thing happen. We ordered four books from Blackwell’s in the UK. We do this every other month, buying books we won’t get in the US for more than six months (or not at all). We got a notice that two books had shipped, and we received another message when they reached the US and entered our postal service.

All seemed well.

One morning, I received an email that the package was there. I went to retrieve it, and it was… an empty box. Completely flat. As if someone had broken down the box to put it in the recycling bin. The words “received without contents” and “received damaged” were stamped all over the outside of the box.

There are a few possibilities. The most likely one is that someone opened the box and stole the books at some point. The box is opened too neatly, like human hands ripped it vs. a machine. I guess that’s the other option — a machine ripped open the box, the books fell out, and they’re lost somewhere in the machine. The odd thing is that Blackwell’s sends their books in boxes that state: Blackwell’s | For Learning * For Life. Super clear that the contents will not be sexy electronics or jewelry. It’s going to be books. So I like to think that someone out there coveted our British history books.

In any case, we have a message to Blackwell’s with photos of the box to figure out what we do next because we need the first part of our order. But isn’t that odd? Have you ever received an empty box?

In a little while, we will leave for graduation. I still haven’t figured out how I will cry wearing a mask, but I guess that will be a problem solved in the moment. Because I will cry. I cry just thinking about graduation, so I am sure hearing Pomp and Circumstance will send me over the edge.

I am so proud of the twins — they worked so hard and accomplished so much. I know they are ready for the next step. I’m not ready, but that doesn’t mean they are not ready.

Wish me luck that I get through this day. Everything feels so enormous, including the weight of my love squeezing all the tears out of my face.

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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:

• None… sniff.

Okay, now my choices this week.

A Separate Life unpacks the fine line bloggers walk between saying what they want to say and being mindful of what the audience would want to hear. She explains: “But I know that the reach of the internet is vast, and it is easy to unwittingly offend or annoy.” Things live forever on the web, and you never know how someone else is taking your words on the other side of the screen.

Lastly, The Barreness started HRT. She writes about the appointment: “I asked my questions and voiced concerns about my endo, and fibroids and cysts; which he answered and then I left with a prescription and knowledge in what I was choosing. I sat in the car and felt… SEEN, HEARD, and scared but EXCITED. A new milestone.” That sounds like the best kind of appointment: Solutions and empowerment.

The roundup to the Roundup: Graduation. 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 May 26 – June 2) 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.