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

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It is very difficult to not react to negative headlines. Back in the olden days, the newspaper was the newspaper. It was designed to provoke a reaction, but it wasn’t designed specifically to provoke a reaction in you. Everyone on your street who received the newspaper saw the same stories on Monday, and they didn’t see new stories until Tuesday.

But now, the stories you see are sometimes not the same stories other people see. News sites create so much content, and the algorithm can decide what to put in front of you based on what it believes you want to see (or provoke a reaction). The top of my news site is exclusively headline news, followed by opinion pieces on how AI is going to take everyone’s job, followed by articles about retirement. I never see sports, even though I know that section exists in the newspaper. I never see entertainment. Clearly, they showed those articles to me at some point, I didn’t click, and now they don’t show them to me at all.

My point: We have begun reminding each other in this house when we’re being distracted by headlines designed to distract us from real news, or believing a possibility just because the algorithm has delivered 12 opinion pieces over 12 days about the same topic. Instead of reacting, I remind myself that I am being manipulated by what amounts to advertising. It’s just advertising to get me to click or distract me from focusing on something else.

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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.

I am an information hoarder, squirreling away links with a silent promise that I will absolutely, definitely return to this piece of content in the future. I will need it. I will implement the advice, visit the location, and make the recipe.

I have bookmarks on every social media site in addition to the bookmarks I leave behind on every browser, the “bookmarks” I email myself, and the “bookmarks” I download as a PDF and put in a folder to read later. They’re not really bookmarks, but they’re kind of like bookmarks. Okay, they’re technically bookmarks in non-bookmark form.

This piece resonated with me:

The bookmark is a kind of fantasy: Not just in the sense that we can convince ourselves, while employing it, that we will one day transform an old t-shirt into shorts, but that by using it we’re not merely passive observers of our social feeds, but active participants, explorers, collectors. Gathering resources for a life we’re bound to start living.

Gulp.

If I were going to make myself a resolution this year (which I’m not), I would probably make it to bookmark less and return to bookmarks more. And if, within one month, I cannot actually see a future use for the information, I can unbookmark it.

Luckily, I don’t make resolutions.

I was stressing about the fact that three books were all coming to me on the same day from my library holds list, followed by another book the next Tuesday. All four were super popular books, so if I suspended the hold, I would be waiting weeks to get them again.

But then it occurred to me that if you read 5% of a book per day, you would finish it in 20 days, leaving you with 1 day of wiggle room for a 21-day checkout. 5% of a 400-page book is 20 pages, and most books are under 400 pages. I could easily move each book forward by 5% per night, right? 15% seemed do-able.

I checked out the first book and read to 5%. Then I checked out the second book and took it to 10%. Then went back to the first book and brought that one to 10%. I was currently 1 day ahead of schedule! I waited until the next day to check out the third book and bring that to 5%. As long as I always end at the daily percentage goal, I can keep this going indefinitely. Though it feels like 4 books may be my limit.

Take that, library holds list.

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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.

And now the blogs…

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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 is on a hunt for delights. I love this as a teaching concept, and while it’s similar to a gratitude journal, there is something different, too. Gratitude is more about acknowledging and thanking the world for a moment. It feels weighty. Noticing delights is more whimsical and speaks to the fact that there are good things in the world, even when it looks like a dumpster fire. And beyond that, noticing them is kind of the point of living. Love this.

Lastly, All & Sundry writes about two visits: one at a care facility and one at hospice. While I was deeply moved by the hospice story, it was a thought she wrote about in the care facility one that was a light bulb moment for me: “What I now understand is that he has trouble expressing things but no trouble at all receiving, if that makes sense. He can often answer questions, he cannot ask them.” The human brain is fascinating.

The roundup to the Roundup: 5% reading goal. 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 January 2 – 9) 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 finished a book in the final week of 2025, making me uneven on Goodreads. 65 books instead of 64 books. I probably could have finished one of the other two books I was currently reading, but instead of committing to completing one of the existing books, I decided I had to read The Correspondent. Immediately.

It’s funny because when I first heard about the book, I was interested. But when it came up in the library, it felt like the last thing I wanted to read. Ever. I don’t like epistolary novels. But I suspended the hold rather than canceling it. Every time I saw it in the queue, I thought about canceling it — I was never going to read it — but then I was in the final days of 2025, and I needed a book, and suddenly, that was the only book in the world I wanted to read.

I unsuspended it, and it came in within a few hours.

It’s funny how that happens. Something sounds completely unappetizing (figs), and then it becomes your favourite food, a treat you buy yourself on special occasions. Or a book sounds uninteresting and then becomes the only thing you want to read.

The woman writing most of the letters in the book processes her world via her correspondence. She isn’t the best person at face-to-face relationships, but on paper, she asks probing questions that show how deeply she listens and remembers. But she is going blind, so this favourite activity (handwriting letters) will either need to change or go away as she loses her sight.

Moreover, her second favourite activity — reading — will also change. It’s not that she won’t have access to stories anymore, but she will need to consume them differently. For some people, there is something different about reading the words off the page vs. listening. I’m one of those people who prefer to read the words vs. listen to them.

So she mentions several times during the book that due to her older age and imminent blindness, she selects her books carefully. She re-reads her favourite books, knowing it may be the last time she spends time with those characters in that way, and she is selective about which new books she chooses.

I would probably first work my way through the books I’ve been hoarding; the ones I’ve been holding because I know they’ll make me happy, so I read one when I need one. And then go back to my old favourites because I’d rather consume something I know will be good vs. take a chance. Though if I did that, I would have missed this book, The Correspondent, because until it rose to the top of my TBR, it wasn’t even something I was considering giving a chance.

But this isn’t a hypothetical. One day, I will realize I’m nearing the end of my life (hopefully, I’ll get time to prepare for the end), and I’ll have to choose how I use my final reading choices after a lifetime of books.

I read this a few months ago, but it stuck with me because I keep seeing commercials for the Olympics, which opens in one month on February 6.

Studies have been done that people who win bronze feel better than people who win silver (with people who win gold obviously feeling the best). They explain,

…Pre-event expectations affect reactions. One finding was that silver medalists may have higher expectations, which amplifies disappointment when they don’t get gold. Bronze medalists often have lower expectations (or different comparisons) so their emotion is less dampened.

In other words, silver people thought they should be able to get gold and are disappointed they didn’t. Bronze people feel lucky that they beat out third place and got on the podium.

Two different reactions, even though the two winners are standing next to one another. I feel like there is a life lesson in there. That we’re happier when we notice what we’ve achieved (made it onto the podium in life) vs. what we missed (silver instead of gold). I’ll definitely be thinking about this at next month’s medal ceremonies.