I spent the first day of school crying on and off. I cried hard when the kids left the house. Cried harder once Josh left, and I was alone. And then cried whenever I thought about the fact that it was the last first day. I cleaned my face before they came home.

Josh and I made a digital album of all of the first days and gave it to the twins the day before, so I only had one photo to slip in on the actual first day and then zero distractions.

I read a bunch of very mature social media posts from people talking about how they’ll miss their child, but they are ready and their child is ready to spread their wings and fly. You will not read anything like that here. I am a mess. I will be a mess this year. I realized this week that I’m not really interested in not being a mess because… that is who I am. And to change how I feel is to change who I am at the core. To pretend that a different way of being is somehow “better” when it is just… different.

So expect zero maturity. Zero ability to bask serenely while the twins go off into the world. You will read no advice on how to let go gracefully. My only goals this year are to try to be in the moment and not cry in front of them. If I succeed even partway, I’m calling it a win.

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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 admits sadness bubbles up sometimes. She returns from celebrating her grandmother’s 85th birthday and thinks, “I am so grateful for the life that we live, but it doesn’t erase that when we turn 85 (hopefully), there will be no giant picture of all the descendants. Because there will be no descendants. There will be no family to throw a party and make a speech about the impact our lives have had on the family.” It is a post about being happy with life while still acknowledging the losses we carry with us, and how those two realities exist at the same time, neither one negating the other.

Lastly, one of the nicest things about blogs is that wealth of community wisdom. No Kidding in NZ pulls together a post of it. She looks back on comments from healing posts, giving the reader a 360 view of wisdom between the original post and the comments on it. It’s a fantastic idea.

The roundup to the Roundup: Hard first week. 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 August 26 – September 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.

I loved a recent issue of Strong Sense of Place where she explained how they decide where to travel next. She explains their method: “When we see a photo or hear about something interesting in a particular place, we go there as soon as we can.”

Which is pretty much our method, too. We bookmark photos on Instagram or we read about a place in an article (or the back of a potato chip bag), and it jumps to the top of the list. Let’s go there. Because the picture is interesting or the article made it sound like a place we want to see ourselves.

It means we sometimes end up in a place without deep thought, like Montreal in winter to see what the newspaper promised would be the world’s ugliest Christmas tree. But that’s good, too. You can’t go everywhere, so if you want to go somewhere, it must be chosen somewhat at random out of a long list of possibilities.

How do you choose where you go?

I deeply deeply deeply identified with this essay on the reason the author takes photos. It has everything to do with a fear of forgetting. If you take a photo, and you can look back on the photo, you can release your mind from the act of active remembering because you can always access the moment by looking at the picture.

I love this:

Even when I wanted to stop taking photos, I couldn’t. I had no plans to post on social media—I had no plans for the photos at all. It was more that taking them became an expression of emotion I didn’t otherwise know what to do with: affection rendered desperate, like hugging someone so they can’t get away.

Making the photo album is the first thing I do once I get home from a big trip. During the trip, we keep a detailed audio journal. Everyone sits around the recorder and talks out a 15 minute play-by-play of the day: Funny snippets of conversation we overheard, which subway lines we used, what we ate, how we felt or what we were thinking about in various moments. And that is super helpful to use later on when we’re trying to remember the order we did things or the name of a random restaurant. But it’s also fun to listen to the twins tell us what they noticed, how they processed things — at eight, at twelve, at seventeen.

The photo album is the other protection again the brain from forgetting. I create a key to the photos — a printed PDF that gets tucked in the back of the book that states the date each photo was taken, which one of us took the photo, and the importance of the image. It takes hours, and I often wonder if it’s worth it. But we all look at the photos during the year, so I’m happy that we have them. But, moreover, they make my brain relax because I don’t have to remember every single detail. It’s all captured in the books.

That advice to live in the moment and not photograph everything is great. Except it wouldn’t work for me. Because I would spend that time in the moment worried about forgetting. So unlike the author, I’m happy with the number of pictures I take, the times I take them, and the way I use them after.

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

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I recently read about the concept of the extended mind. So… you know where your body ends and the object begins, right? This is the table, these are my fingertips. The table is one thing and my skin, nerve endings, and bone are another.

But the same line doesn’t exist between the mind and your surroundings. For instance, where does my mind end and your mind begin? You are reading these words from my mind, and they’re going into your mind, but where is the end of my mind and the beginning of your mind? It’s bizarre, right? Like I’m seeing things outside of myself, but I’m processing them in my mind, and it isn’t clear where the object or experience ends and I begin.

Just something to get you thinking today.

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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 that are connected to businesses or are sponsored post.

This week contains the last first day of school. Months ago, I wrote about this day, dreading it because it removes another buffer between our lives up until this point and when the twins leave for college.

“Very soon, we will have a final first day of school. And then a final last day of school. And then a final last day of summer. And then a college arrival. And then a college drop off and drive away. And I will have to get through each of these moments. And right now, I don’t know how I will do that.”

I still don’t.

I feel like a cartoon penguin on an iceberg — you know exactly what I’m talking about, correct? That common cartoon trope of the penguin’s icy platform growing smaller and smaller as it drifts into warmer waters, until the penguin is balancing on a little ice cube. Except I am a very real person, balancing on a platform of time, watching it melt away while I scramble to find my footing.

Clearly, I haven’t traveled far emotionally from the last time I wrote a full post about the last first day.