I lost my blue Twitter checkmark yesterday. It was not a huge loss for someone who only uses Twitter to check if other sites are down or if people see the same bug. But it snipped one of my final threads to my work at BlogHer, keeping only the relationships because the site no longer exists. I was offered verification many years ago, and they made it very easy. So… goodbye, little blue mark.

It’s kind of weird to miss a job, but I really miss BlogHer.

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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:

• “No Kidding Lessons from a Book About Fear and Danger” (No Kidding in NZ)

Okay, now my choices this week.

The Next 15000 Days has a post that begins with a beautiful poem. She captures a sweet moment at a pool. She writes, “It felt so good to smile at the child. For a whole decade, I was so heartbroken that I couldn’t smile at anyone. Especially not a child.” And I love the lesson learned at the end of the post.

Lastly, No Kidding in NZ unpacks a recent visit with her teenage niece — one who is also navigating health issues. I think a lot of times when we think about parenthood, we think about those baby/toddler years. But teens are part of the package, too. She writes, “But it was a good reminder too that it is not easy at all to be a parent. And I will admit, after they left yesterday I enjoyed curling up on the couch with my ipad, reading a book, then having a bit of an afternoon nap on a warm autumn Sunday afternoon.”

The roundup to the Roundup: Goodbye, little blue checkmark. 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 April 14 – April 21) 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.

The topic of rest keeps popping up, maybe as a response to the recent self-care article in the New York Times. And this idea stuck with me from one of those posts:

Work is active and valuable: it’s where we prove our worth and create a legacy … Busyness is a badge of honour, even a sign of moral superiority. Rest, in contrast, is often treated as if it’s passive and pointless. Indeed, I’ve noticed many people hardly think of rest as its own thing. It’s just a negative space defined by the absence of work.

The point of the post is that you need to know how to rest and get good at rest. It’s a skill. And many people are never taught how to rest and therefore don’t know how to step back and not do anything related to accomplishment. Not do a task for work or home, check a box, or take care of one tiny thing.

I love the idea of getting other people to rest with you.

I can’t tell if I’m out of practice with adulting due to the pandemic or if this would have happened regardless with age, but I had to go downtown last week, and I felt so out of sorts over putting on real clothes and leaving the house.

I had two options for the Metro. One route was shorter but had an unknown parking lot. The other route was longer but had a familiar parking lot. Old Melissa would have gone with route one to get there quickly. She would have figured it out. New Melissa first chose route one and then switched to route two, a decision she regretted once on the train and feeling her stomach lurch for an additional ten minutes.

Old Melissa wouldn’t have written out walking directions. New Melissa clutched them in her hand, ignoring the fact that the CITY IS A GRID. It is super hard to get lost. The directions served no purpose except as a security blanket.

I made myself promise that I wouldn’t be this timid when I have to go downtown next month. I’m parking in the iffy garage and trusting I’ll be able to find a space. My stomach needs me to make that decision on its motion-sick behalf.

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

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I have not explored AI beyond reading transcripts of conversations with Bing, but I am amused by Opinionate, where you pose a question and allow two bots to argue on your behalf. Without signing up, you get one free debate per day; if you sign up, it goes up to three arguments per day.

I asked it something real, and it gave me a surface-y but detailed answer. It pulled real data to argue the point but used one tiny fact to form the whole argument, ignoring everything else. Still, it was pretty impressive. For a bot.

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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.

Yesterday we crossed the line that stretches across the month, dividing “you’ve got plenty of time to make a decision” from “you better make a decision.”

For people unfamiliar with the US college process, it differs from person to person, but most people apply to a bunch of schools where you’re in the criteria window and then decide amongst their acceptances which program/college fits the best. Because kids also often apply for direct admit, which means they go directly into their major. Some majors are only direct admit, meaning if you don’t get in via admissions, you will probably not be able to do that major when you get to school. Other majors are easier to switch into down the road.

The whole process takes about a year of your life unless you apply early decision, which means you’re committed to that school if you get in. The twins wanted to see which colleges wanted them back and didn’t feel comfortable committing to a school in October, so they went regular decision.

They ended up with many lovely schools to choose from, and it has been difficult to narrow it down. They realize that life is a series of making hard choices and knowing all the other options you won’t get to take. If it helps anyone else, I found this article a good one in helping the twins realize that every choice is just a choice; not a statement on the other options but just a leap into the unknown that the option you’re taking is the best one insofar as you know at the moment.

What would be awesome is if there was a way to test drive each college for a month and then commit to one. It’s not possible — at least, not in the way I envision — so we’re doing the next best thing by taking a deep breath and hitting accept. Any day now.