Near the beginning of the pandemic, ChickieNob and I started walking daily to first-person treadmill videos. There are a billion out there. You just Google “virtual walk + name of place,” and YouTube spits out dozens of options. Usually we walk somewhere we know. Occasionally we walk somewhere we’re going. (This was super useful when we got to Belgium and could navigate to various places because we walked past them in the video — strange.) Most of the time, we mute the video and listen to an audio book at the same time.

But a few weeks ago, we tried walking to a television show. So just walking indoors, but replaying the fourth season of The Crown while we walked. First and foremost, it is such an enjoyable way to spend a half hour. I rarely think about how much time has passed because I’m into watching the show. Secondly, I’ve discovered that I walk so much faster when we walk to television shows. I shaved between one to two minutes per mile when we walk to a television show vs. the walking videos. Even when we put the walking videos on 1.5x the speed. It’s really strange. Margaret Thatcher just makes me walk very very quickly.

It’s a nice discovery.

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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.

No Kidding in NZ has a thought-provoking post. She walks the line between showing both truths — the happiness and the occasional sadness of living childfree after infertility. She writes: “Rationally and logically I might be at peace with my life, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t still have ouch moments, feel some of the emotions that we all feel from time to time, or worry about the future without children.” We are complex and need to create space to honour all feelings, as they come.

Lastly, Jewish IVF talks about how it has been a rough summer. I love this thought about seeing other people’s posts: “This is only filtering out one piece of it that has contributed to my mood. I need to remember the converse when scrolling through other people’s filtered reality skewed to the positive.” Her friendship questions at the bottom hit home. I think we are shown (via media and curated social media) a story about friendship that simply isn’t true for many people. It’s another post that stuck with me for a long time after reading.

The roundup to the Roundup: Walking quickly in place without leaving home. 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 July 29 – August 5) 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.

This is another how-to-live-life-better trick I read recently about using anticipation on a daily basis because “looking forward to something can be almost as good as experiencing it.”

So true.

The best part of a trip is usually the planning stage. I mean, yes, it’s wonderful when you’re there. But when you’re there, you’re hot or tired or your feet hurt or you can’t see over everyone’s head. But when you’re planning, all possibilities for how it will unfold are in front of you. And it’s perfect.

So the trick comes from Carrie Wyland:

“At the end of every day, write down one thing you’re excited for tomorrow … Maybe it’s a new book or getting doughnuts or a package you’re expecting.”

It means you get to experience that anticipation every night. Sure, the actuality of the experience or item may be disappointing, but you still get those sweet anticipation minutes.

I read an interesting quote by Cennydd Bowles about a question worth asking yourself when you need to make a decision:

“‘What experience would you enjoy more?’ Since we can’t beta-test major life choices, we need heuristics on what to do. Although there’s more to life than hedonism, choosing a path that leads to more enjoyment and happiness is surely a sound principle.”

I really love that. Because you can’t take both paths — at least not with the major events in life — but you can make a list between two choice and choose the one that leads to more enjoyment and happiness. To go to this college or that one. (College is on our minds.) To live here or there. What is the short-term happiness vs. the long-term happiness.

It’s a good rule.

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

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Usually when you do a Google search (or use any search engine), the results show the best fit. Oldest search engine tells you the first time a term was used on the Internet and then moves forward in time to the present. Super helpful when you’re trying to find the first time something was used.

I searched for “Stirrup Queens,” and clearly, I’m the first hit. But then moving forward in time, I found all sorts of neat things I missed. Like the Washington Post once mentioned a post in an article. Or there was a health journal, a post on Alpha Mom, and a “creepy rocking horse store.” (Not linking to that last one because it looked… creepy.)

A fun tool to play with.

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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.

Infertility seems to be a favourite situation of mystery writers. Need a murderer? Make it the baby-obsessed infertile woman. As I said last year, “The infertile woman is ALWAYS the murderer. Or the victim. She’s never the sassy friend nextdoor who needs to nip out to give herself a Follistim injection but ultimately has nothing to do with the murder.”

So when infertility popped up in Magpie by Elizabeth Day, I was ready to stop reading. Except I didn’t. Because every last detail in the book was… correct. Everything she described I had thought or felt or experienced. She used the correct terminology. The correct timing. The correct sensations.

Because a quick Google search revealed that the book is written by someone who gets it. Who has been through it. Who is still going through it.

And while hard to read at times because it felt so raw, so real, and so close, it also was the most comforting read I’ve had in a long time. And I think I would say that even if I was still in the throes of family building. It is a lot like reading blogs. You read them when you’re in the trenches because you feel less alone because you can whisper, “me too.”

And this book had a lot of “me too” moments.

There is a scene on page 198 between the main character and a random stranger in a restaurant bathroom where the random stranger asks her if she has children. “She shook her head. No, she thought, no, I don’t have children. But if you knew how much it cost me to answer that, you wouldn’t ask.”

What it costs to sometimes answer a simple question. The emotional currency you lose as you reach inside for the answer when you already feel like you’ve lost so much. The other person not knowing how much they’re taking from you in that moment. With 15 words, she summed up something I didn’t even realize I thought until I read it on the page and thought, “yes, you get it. Me too.”