There has been a lot of talk about the post-platform internet after the destruction of Twitter and nostalgia for the olden days of the internet after the death of Heather Armstrong.

I do miss the old days of blogging. It was like sitting on someone’s front porch, hearing about their day. And then walking down the street and sitting on a different front porch and hearing about another person’s day. We visited each other’s sites and held conversations in the comment section. It was slow content. You read fewer thoughts, but you connected with them more.

And then, one day, most people decided to abandon their homes on the internet and rent Facebook or Twitter apartments where they could visit each other easily. They didn’t have the bloggy front porch for long conversations, so they mostly stopped happening. But you could keep up with many people all at once in your feed.

And then, the landlord sold the buildings, and new owner changed things. Or the landlord stayed, but the residents started learning disturbing things about their living space.

So what if we returned to our homes on the internet? What if that is the next step in a post-platform world? What if we went back to blogs?

ChickieNob and I walk in the afternoon to first-person virtual walking videos while we listen to audiobooks. Sometimes my mind wanders as I consider whether I want to live there. How would I feel if I lived in Knaresborough, UK? If I woke up to see the river and then got breakfast in the little cafe we pass along the walk. Or Paris? Or Mykonos? What would it be like to live in any of these places?

There are so many things in life you can’t control. You may not get the family you want, the job you want, or the opportunities you want. But choosing where you live — not the exact place but the general location — feels like it could have a big change in how you feel about life.

My state makes me happy. I want to live closer to water, but the fact that we can get to the river, bay, or ocean quickly makes me happy.

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

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I called a favourite hotel to book a room, and once I said my name, the woman rattled off a bunch of facts about me (like… hotel-focused facts, such as the room I like to stay in) and finished with, “How is your guinea pig?” That is why I stay there. Because the woman at the front desk can name all of our guinea pigs and even sent a condolence card for Truman.

Before she got off, she started rattling through the script of things they always say when you book a room, but she trailed off and said, “You know. Because nothing ever changes here.” That is the other reason I stay. In a world that equates new with better or new with exciting, I like my hotel to be exactly the same. Year after year after year.

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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.

Last week, I encountered a strange bug on a tool I was using for work, and I did what I always do when I discover something not working on the Internet. I went to Twitter to see if other people were writing about it, too.

That is the only reason I go on Twitter.

[Side note: The problem was solely my account. The bug disappeared the next day.]

I looked at the top of my feed and thought, “Oh, I don’t know who this is. But I must have followed them because this isn’t sponsored content.” I hovered over the name and discovered, no, I didn’t follow them. Strange.

The next tweet was the same thing. I had no clue who this person was. It took about eight tweets until I hit a name I knew. Then there was a run of strangers and another tweet from someone I knew. I closed Twitter and went downstairs. “My Twitter feed is filled with strangers. I don’t know how this happened.”

“Are you looking at your feed? Or the ‘for you’ tab? It’s stuff Twitter thinks you’d be interested in.”

“Based on what? Why would Twitter ever think I would be interested in watching a woman pour chocolate syrup all over the outside of a glass jar?”

Apparently, I didn’t get the memo. Twitter gave us a new column of stuff we don’t want to see. This is just in case, like me, you are totally confused. And, no, I have no clue how long it has been there because I only go on the site when I encounter a bug online.

I received a note from my doctor to schedule an appointment. So I scheduled an appointment and shaved my legs. The last time I saw her, I hadn’t shaved my legs because I didn’t think anyone would see my legs. So I was going to be careful this time. You never know when you’re going to be asked to disrobe.

I jumped in the car at the crack of dawn. (Oh, did I mention that I snagged the first appointment of the day?) It was so early that the office wasn’t actually open yet, but she took me (bleary eyes and all) five minutes early.

“Why are you here?” she asked.

“I’m here because you sent me a note to make an appointment. Why did you want me here?”

“Um… I don’t send notes to people to tell them to make appointments. Why would I want to create more work for myself? I only see people if they need to see me.”

It turned out that there was a glitch in some centralized system that sent that note out without her knowledge — as in, the algorithm decided that I needed an appointment and signed her name. She told me in the future to always check with her office if I received something weird like that. A co-pay and messed-up morning later, the end of the story is that I didn’t need to be there at all.

Awesome.

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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.

Heather Armstrong was still on a lot of people’s minds. The Road Less Travelled created one of my favourites, asking a thought-provoking question as she unpacks the legacy of “mommy blogging.” She writes, “And without ‘mommy blogs’ like ‘Dooce,’ I wonder, would childless women like me have felt the need to respond by writing about their/our much-different experiences in the same, highly personal way?” See, thought-provoking.

Lastly, Edenland returns to her site to process her thoughts about Heather’s death, and writes as only Edenland can. An example: “Told her I didn’t go so she sent me a single question mark. I followed with the laugh-cry emoji and ‘Mate I was too depressed to go.’ Then we just kept exchanging the death skull emoji in increasing increments until one of us gave up. One of us gave up.” Go read the whole thing.

The roundup to the Roundup: Pointless appointments. 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 12 – 19) 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.