Mark Slutsky wrote a piece about what he called amygalar earworms: “the memory equivalent of a melodic hook—amygdalar earworms.” So they’re the memories that bubble up to the surface in response to a trigger. For example, I spent thousands of hours on or around Lake Mendota in Madison, Wisconsin. But if you talk about Lake Mendota, I immediately think of one of two memories:

1. Picking up a rock near the edge of the frozen lake and throwing it against the surface to test if it would still support our weight or if the lake was beginning to thaw, and watching the rock smash through the surface.

Or

2. Somewhere between midnight and two in the morning, my friend and I had the brilliant idea to walk to Picnic Point in the dark with flashlights. When we got to the stone wall, a man walked past us, without a flashlight, totally silent and just glancing our way as if walking in the dark in the middle of the night without a flashlight in a muddy nature preserve (it was the summer of The Bog) was non-comment-worthy.

And then I will keep thinking about either one of these two memories — or both — the rest of the day. It happens whenever someone mentions the lake.

If you pushed me to come up with other lake memories, I could. I remember the day I climbed into the lake fully dressed or watching kids feed Starbursts to the swan or running around on the frozen lake with Marts and making snow angels. But they don’t get stuck in my head for the rest of the day, or bubble up readily any time someone brings up the lake.

What are your amygdalar earworms?

I went from a lifetime of rarely crying at the theater to a year of crying almost every time I’m at the theater. The latest was a concert performance of Pippin.

It was the play I was most looking forward to seeing in 2020, but the performance was moved due to the pandemic. Then it was moved again due to the pandemic. Then it was transferred into a concert performance and canceled again. Then rescheduled and canceled for our performance because half the cast had COVID. Then recast with our tickets on a new night. But when we finally heard the first bars of music begin on our fifth try seeing the show, I burst into tears. It just felt so huge to be there. To finally be there. After waiting for so long.

They made it a concert-plus performance, incorporating some of the choreography that we would have seen if they had gotten to hold the first performance over two years ago. It was one of my top five nights of theater ever. Would it have been so remarkable if I hadn’t waited so long? Who knows.

But that’s kind of the point: The pandemic has made everything feel so much bigger once the thing you’ve been waiting for finally happens.

It has super-sized the emotions around seeing people or doing something commonplace again for the first time in a long time. It makes me feel like every mundane experience draws all of my emotions to the surface. And I’m not sure how long this phenomenon will last.

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

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I read this fascinating piece on how Gmail changed our relationship to amassing information. Giving people somewhat unlimited space (at least it seemed like an unfathomable amount of space when it started) and then enabling a search function in it means that we don’t need to (1) be careful about saving what is truly important because space is not an issue or (2) organizing it because we can always search and find an email later. If they had created a smaller limit or made the data unsearchable, we would have a different relationship to amassing digital clutter.

I still organize the emails I save into folders, but I think that is a habit based on my earliest interactions with computers. If I grew up with search, maybe I would have a completely different way of organizing or amassing digital ephemera.

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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.

Carolyn Hax does it again. Well, actually, one of her commenters does it again. Carolyn gave great advice, but then one of her commenters followed up with an even better point.

The question asker is struggling with the idea that forming a new plan (buying a home) means giving up her earlier thoughts for how she wanted her life to turn out (travel). Carolyn gives her a few ways to be okay with a change in plans.

And then, at the end of the column, another person pipes in:

“If there’s anything that wasn’t in your plan that you’re happy about, then you know the ‘plan’ isn’t the only path to satisfaction.”

Yessssssss.

Here is to Plan Bs and the fact that life probably contains more plans off the assumed path than on.

It’s the most terrible day of the year. Fine. There are holidays that are emotionally hard to get through. April Fools Day isn’t that, but it makes me so cranky. Especially fake pregnancy announcements.

I am avoiding social media as much as possible today so I don’t have to whisper, “I hate you,” under my breath as I scroll on.

My glasses saga also continues. I had to return one of the pairs of distance glasses. The frames were too small for my face, which I probably would have noted if I had been given longer than three minutes to commit to a pair of frames. I learned what all of the numbers mean on the temple of the glasses, and now I am armed with the numbers from my favourite pair and trying to replicate them in a new frame. Like April Fools Day, I feel really done with eyeglass shopping.

Done.

That is the theme of this week.

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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:

• “Putting Our Yearning on a Shelf” (No Kidding in NZ)
• “Can’t Stop Won’t Stop” (Infertile Phoenix)

Okay, now my choices this week.

The Cut has a photo essay about miscarriage. A warning: it is graphic. But I’m including it because I found it very moving. Especially the accompanying words: “I remember being annoyed with Casey for taking pictures. What I didn’t realize was the whole time I was bleeding, being operated on, and recovering, he was photographing. This was his love language, his way of saying, ‘I’m here, I see you and your pain.’” Click over and read it if you’re feeling up to it.

Lastly, Uterus Monologues has a post about Mother’s Day. (UK Mother’s Day is earlier than the US version.) She encourages you to feel whatever you’re going to feel. She writes: “My relationship with this particular day has shifted since I started writing this blog. Every year, my feelings have been slightly different. Every year, I’ve been confronted by something else. And every year, I’ve learnt something.” Love this thought.

The roundup to the Roundup: Don’t get tricked. 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 March 25 – April 1) 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.