We’ve all read the articles about how we need to shut off notifications and take a real vacation, yadda yadda yadda, but this is not that. Nathan Bransford has an interesting piece on not turning your vacation into work by scheduling yourself with activity after activity.

He pushes against this mentality: “We can’t just vacation sometimes and do whatever we want, we need to vacation in a ‘good’ way that maximizes our return and helps restore our productivity.”

The whole essay is really about how not doing anything sometimes becomes doing something amongst other thoughts, but the idea of an unplanned trip is what caught my attention.

My first thought: But you’re going all that way and taking time off to boot. Don’t you want to make sure you see what you want to see and do what you want to do while you’re in that other place? After all, maybe you’ll never be back and have missed something that would have been meaningful to you. I don’t mean hitting all tourist points on a list. I mean doing whatever is drawing you to that place. That means something to you.

My second thought: But that would also be so nice. I often wake up exhausted every day of the trip, and one of the nicest things we’ve ever done for ourselves is give permission to skip Toulouse during a heatwave and head to three days in Perros-Guirec at the beach.

My third thought: I hate feeling like I’ve missed something.

My fourth thought: Why am I always obsessed with holding onto experiences and items?

My fifth thought: I wonder what others think about this idea of going somewhere without plans and seeing where the day takes you, every day.

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

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I saw a quote from Ocean Vuong from NPR’s Fresh Air: “You realize that grief is perhaps the last and final translation of love. And I think, you know, this is the last act of loving someone. And you realize that it will never end. You get to do this to translate this last act of love for the rest of your life.”

What a profound thought: that grief is love. It’s an expression of love after a loss, when you can no longer express your love to that person, place, or thing in another way. And that you express your love in this way (and perhaps in other ways that you discover down the road) for the rest of your life.

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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.

I love People magazine; love it with all of my heart. A few weeks ago, Loribeth posted an article that hinted that People magazine may move to digital-only like many of the other magazines in Dotdash’s stable including Entertainment Weekly. It’s not clear which direction it will go, but I think about it every time I pick up a paper issue.

I don’t know if I’d keep reading it as a digital magazine.

While I’ve made the jump to e-books — the pandemic nudged me deep into e-book territory — I haven’t made the same jump with magazines. So I keep watching the news. Please don’t take my People magazine away.

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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 writes about pronatalism and the housing market. Not just the thoughtless comments of a physical therapist, but the greater question about why neighhourhoods exist that are clearly designed to cater to kids, and neighbourhoods exist that are clearly designed to cater to the retired. But… “There are so many neighborhoods that are clearly made with families in mind (borderless backyards in developments with 8 billion playsets), I don’t really get how you can’t have a small neighborhood (read: 2 dead end streets in the middle of nowhere) meant to attract people without children so you can build a community.” Good question.

The Evolving Engineer writes about being in an emotional hole and how she got herself out. All other tricks weren’t working. It took reaching out to someone who understood and a quick talk to get her climbing upwards. She writes, “When we have people in our lives who not only understand feeling this way but who can help boost us out of the spiral, it changes everything.” Indeed.

Lastly, Bereaved and Blessed is approaching the one year anniversary of her father’s death. Part of the healing process is writing it down and thinking through the moments. She writes, “One year ago today began the last four weeks of my father’s life, though we didn’t know that at the time.” I’m honoured, as a reader, that she is letting us abide with her as she remembers.

The roundup to the Roundup: I love People magazine, and I cannot say that enough. 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 June 3 – 10) 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 conundrum: I love receiving emails, but I don’t love answering them.

I think we all feel this way. Right?

The twins rarely respond to my emails. I send emails because I don’t want to interrupt their moment. Texting is disruptive, but emailing is not. It took me a long time to realize that I am disrupted by texting (and Slack notification and everything that dings), but they are not. They can take in the communication and deal with it either immediately or later without feeling frazzled.

I want to be a digital native.

This New York Times essay spoke to me and my relationship with email, especially emailing myself. I am my own worst enemy with self-emailing. Except that I am never waiting for myself to respond. I let myself off the hook with that.

What is your relationship with email?

There was going to be perfect weather last Saturday — not too hot, clear skies — so we set my birthday beach trip and aimed for Rehoboth. Everyone in the US probably knows how this story will go.

We set up our chairs on a less populated stretch of sand and removed our masks. But about five minutes after we sat down, a F-15 fighter jet started circling over the beach. It was loud. And low. And freaked me out.

Josh checked, and Biden was in residence at his Rehoboth house. Crap. We hadn’t checked before we left, but with another loop or two over the sand, the fighter jet left and calm returned. Later, when we were walking in town, we got to see the motorcade pass. And even though I’ve seen a presidential motorcade dozens of times, I still stood and clapped.

Beyond the initial confusing fighter jet situation, it had been a perfect day. French fries for lunch. Great weather. Enjoyable mystery to read and waves to watch. We were the only masked riders for the haunted mansion ride on the beach, but I got everyone to jump on the merry-go-round with me before we picked up Nicola’s and said goodbye to the original location with a picnic dinner. We didn’t know anything was amiss until we got home and people texted to ask if we had been at Rehoboth.

Ooops. We had no clue anything was happening until we got home and saw the news.