The last time I wrote a mental sampler post, the pandemic was a little under a year old. That Melissa didn’t realize that this Melissa would still be living an upside down life.

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I was looking out the window when A FOX TROTTED ACROSS MY LAWN IN BROAD DAYLIGHT. It ran as if it was on the way to run an errand, not too quick but with a purpose. And I shrieked mid-sentence (I was talking to the ChickieNob and Josh), “I love you!” at the fox, and then ran out of the room to try to see it out of the back windows.

It was up there as one of the top five most thrilling moments of my life. The twins say this fact is sad, and I probably shouldn’t share it. But you didn’t see this fox. It was gorgeous.

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For the first time ever, I was delivered an ad that I actually wanted to click. It was for a “how to” tutorial on cleaning your guinea pig’s grease gland. Is there an easier way than a bath? I clicked.

I wonder if they looked at that click in the metrics board and wondered about me. Who was this person who didn’t know how to clean their guinea pig’s grease gland? Who was this person who was so moved in the middle of the day that she clicked to learn their step-by-step process? I’m that woman, Oxbow. Me. I’m that woman.

I was equally fascinated by their social team’s UTM tagging for the link. If only we could meet and discuss and answer each other’s questions. And talk about guinea pig grease glands.

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ChickieNob and I started watching HBO’s Julia, and we adored it from the first episode. They captured her awesomeness and her sadness and her sweetness and her brilliance. It’s such a good hour of television.

Every time you think the world is a dumpster fire and humans are awful awful awful, you see a news story that spins your brain 180 degrees. (I mean, not literally. That would be horrific! Your brain spinning in your skull.)

Apple announced new features coming to iOS including door detection: “Door Detection can help users locate a door upon arriving at a new destination, understand how far they are from it, and describe door attributes — including if it is open or closed, and when it’s closed, whether it can be opened by pushing, turning a knob, or pulling a handle. Door Detection can also read signs and symbols around the door, like the room number at an office, or the presence of an accessible entrance symbol.”

THIS IS AN AMAZING WORLD.

Or live captions, which generates captions in real time that are on the device. So it can tell you what people are saying in a Zoom call or FaceTime call. Or you can use it if you’re sitting in the same room having a conversation. Do you know how life-changing this will be?

People — they’re awful awful awful but sometimes they invent really amazing things.

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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:

• “Apparently Friday the 13th Isn’t an Unlucky Day At All” (InStyle)
• “I’m Retiring from Aunthood” (Yael Wolfe)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Grumpy Rumblings shares a post they wrote a long time ago that is still relevant today: the idea of doing something vs. doing more. They explain it as: “People who do something small sometimes get yelled at for not trying to reform an entire system.” If you can’t do everything and fix the entire problem in one fell swoop, then what you did do was worthless. Or worth less.

Bio Girl writes a letter to her son as he enters the teen years. The Internet is amazing because we get to see people grow up and change. In our corner of the blogosphere, we often hear more about life before birth — we know the hope that goes into building the family — so I love hearing about that life continuing. And this line made me weepy: “So whatever your age, I love you in that moment – and I ache, just a little, for all those moments past with my very favorite person. So if I try to pick you up today, just let me – so I can believe I can still hold you, if I really tried.” Yes to life moving too quickly.

Lastly, I love Infertile Phoenix being grateful for what she is not doing — moving. She begins: “I’m. Not. Moving!!! My boyfriend reminded me of this today as we were not packing. I have moved five times in the last six years.” Home is a place and a feeling. I like the twist on the saying.

The roundup to the Roundup: People invent amazing things. 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 May 13 – May 20) 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.

Once upon a time, I had a phone with very little storage. I had to download the images off the phone and delete the ones that weren’t super special to me to make more space. If you look back at the early years of my camera roll, they are the best of the best — fantastic images that I want to keep forever.

I got a new phone right before the pandemic. Even though I had more space, I behaved the same way, anticipating a time when I would run out of storage again. I would carefully cull out the blurry pictures or screenshots, download the good but not great ones to my computer, and delete.

But at some point during the pandemic, I stopped doing this because it felt like one more thing on my to-do list. And I wasn’t taking many images anyway. I would back up the images to my computer but leave them on the phone, too. And now my camera roll is an unruly mess.

For some unknown reason, I take a screenshot of my Wordle every day. I’ve played on this phone for 178 days. (Before that, I was on the computer.) I have 178 unnecessary screenshots that I will never look at again. I have three billion pictures of Beorn. Most of them look exactly the same. There are hundreds of pictures of the kids with masks over their faces. You cannot see their faces. Why do I need this many pictures?

Because I didn’t keep up with it, it will now take me a whole afternoon to clean up the camera roll so I don’t have to scroll past four thousand pictures of wallabies eating treats to get to those older, curated, best-of photos. It makes me tired to think about it, so I never begin.

Clean as you go, digitally.

Kottke announced that he is stepping back from the internet for the next 5 to 6 months. The archives on his site go back to 1998; an extraordinary amount of time to be writing regularly. You can imagine the billions of words and images he has posted in those 24 years, probably the equivalent of writing dozens of books. No wonder he is exhausted.

He asks in his post so many questions that have been rolling around in my mind:

Does what I do here make a difference in other people’s lives? In my life? Is this still scratching the creative itch that it used to? And if not, what needs to change? Where does kottke.org end and Jason begin? Who am I without my work? Is the validation I get from the site healthy? Is having to be active on social media healthy? Is having to read the horrible news every day healthy? What else could I be doing here? What could I be doing somewhere else? What good is a blog without a thriving community of other blogs?

Specifically, identity wrapped up in work resonated with me. And do I still make a difference? I think I did once upon a time. Maybe less so now because of that other big question he asks: “What good is a blog without a thriving community of other blogs?”

The reality is that when I started blogging, there wasn’t a thriving community of blogs. There were hardly any blogs. My first blog was in 2004, and this blog started in 2006. Back then, I could read every single other blog I knew on a daily basis because there weren’t that many posts. Within a year or two, there were way too many posts to get through in one sitting, and by 2010, it felt like the blogosphere was a wild and crowded space. Now it’s back to quiet, which isn’t a bad thing, but it can feel strange after watching a vibrant community quietly fade away.

I am not going anywhere right now, but I’m always curious when people step back. Do they return? How do they feel while they’re away? I guess I’m waiting for another post, 5 or 6 months from now, when he comes back to tell us how the break went.

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

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This is super relaxing to watch. I changed the settings to only include nature sounds, but play with it because maybe you want years to pass by in hours vs. minutes or control the weather with the click of a button.

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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.