A few weeks ago, I noticed a cloudy spot on my glasses. I tried cleaning them, but the cloudy spot remained. And got larger. I could see it out of the corner of my eye when I turned my head.

I was running an errand by the glasses store, so I stopped in to see if they could remove the spot. The man cautioned that a coating was peeling off, and the only fix was to replace the lens. Just what I feared. I would be purchasing a new set of lenses to fix this problem.

The store manager brought up my account to check when the glasses were made, and his brow furrowed. “Did you buy four pairs of glasses on the same day?”

“Yes,” I informed him. “I have glasses fears.”

“Glasses fears?”

“I always fear that I’m going to break my glasses. So I get backups for my backups. I would need to be super unlucky ever to be caught without glasses because I travel with at least two backup pairs. And prescription sunglasses.”

“Oh. That’s. Well, that’s something,” he told me. “You know what? I’m just going to replace these for you. Because you clearly have a lot of feelings about your glasses.”

I had to hang around the area for two hours while he had the glasses remade, but that feels like a small price for free lenses. There really are good people in the world.

I bought an interesting book that I haven’t started yet called How To Be Your Own Therapist by Owen O’Kane. I was skeptical of the idea, but O’Kane IS a therapist, and the Goodreads reviews were overwhelmingly positive. I was sold on the concept of “small, short techniques.” The whole thing is supposed to take you at most 10 minutes daily, which is how long I meditate in the morning. It feels doable to slip three- to four-minute thought breaks into a day.

Putting this out there in case anyone else finds this helpful.

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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.

Finding a Different Path recounts her husband’s icebreaker at work. It’s not just the question that will make you shake your head; it’s the new boss’s jaw-dropping response. Click over to read it.

Lastly, Infertile Phoenix also has an infertility-at-work story. I love the clarification of her response that it’s okay: “Thank you for saying that. I don’t say ‘it’s okay’ dismissively. For a long time, it definitely wasn’t okay at all. But it’s okay now.” It’s a wonderful realization. Go read the whole post to understand.

The roundup to the Roundup: Interesting book. 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 March 17 – March 24) 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 usually don’t use journaling prompts — mostly because I like to use writing as a brain dump — but I thought these were particularly good if you’re blocked for what to write about but know you want to write. Or, if not journaling, they’re also good for just thinking about because they ask you to go deeper than a simple answer.

It’s not “what makes you anxious?” It’s “what makes you anxious, and where does that fear come from?” Should you keep the fear if you can’t figure out the origin?

I particularly liked #59: “What would the complete opposite of you look like?” Or #16 to get at the heart of what is important to you: “If I could have anything written on a massive billboard where you live, what would it be?” Or #26: “Who is someone you wish you had stayed in touch with?”

Have fun (or deep thoughts) with them.

18 years ago, I spent a lot of time crying because I didn’t think parenthood would happen. This last year with the twins at home, I’ve spent a lot of time crying again because it did, and I loved the experience so much, and I’m so sad that it’s over.

Yes, I know. It’s not over. But in many ways, when they leave home in the fall, we’ll both enter into a different relationship. They will always be my babies, but they will no longer be babies. And while I’m excited to see what they do and where they go in this next stage of life, I am sad that I am losing my job.

Or that my job description is changing.

We’re nearing the end of the college cycle. In fact, we’re smack in the middle of decision week, when most admission decisions come in for regular decision. They’ll have a month to make their final choice, but I sense it will happen sooner. I hope that I’ll be more at peace once I know where they will live next year. Right now, I think some of the tumultuousness is not knowing where they’ll be.

It has been such an amazing 18 years. I am so lucky I got to watch them grow up.

It’s just strange to think of those two bookends of parenthood — crying because I thought it would never happen and then crying because it did.

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

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Fodor’s puts out a No-Go list of places not to travel to every year. If that sounds counterintuitive to a travel site, the point is to steer people away from areas that are over-traveled to give them a rest. They explain the three categories: “Natural attractions that could use a break in order to heal and rejuvenate; cultural hotspots that are plagued with overcrowding and resource depletion; and locations around the world immediately and dramatically impacted by water crises.”

Of course, a lot of heavily touristed areas rely on tourists. So not a perfect solution, but it’s an important question to ask yourself before you book tickets: How will my visit impact the place?

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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.