Sometimes you make the right decision, but that doesn’t mean that it will feel good. There are right decisions that feel terrible, but that doesn’t mean they were the wrong decisions. And that is one of the hardest things to remember when you’re slogging through your feelings.

There are decisions that you make because life gives you two choices, but you don’t want either one. You would almost rather make no decision than choose between your two choices. But one day you realize that you must — for your own sanity, you must — so you look at your two options, and you choose the one you can live with. You wish there had been a third option, the option you really wanted. But it’s not there, and you can’t force it to be there.

Living out a choice is sometimes easy, especially after a lot of time has passed. You can go days barely remembering your decision, and then weeks or months or years not remembering it at all unless someone calls your attention to it. And then life-changing decisions have a way of dragging you back to the pivotal moment, making you look back and wonder if you made the right choice. But you know you made the right choice. It was not the wanted choice, but it was the right choice. And you tuck the choice into the back of your mind again and remember that right decisions don’t always feel good.

They don’t feel right, even when you know they’re right.

And then one day, your decision is finalized. You reach a no-going back point, maybe not realizing the no-going back point would arrive on that day. But one day you wake up and you realize it’s there. The no-going back point tears open every Band-Aid you slapped over the decision wound, and for days you walk around wondering how no one else notices that you have this gaping hole where your hope once lived.

And then there is the day after the no-going back point.

And the one after that.

Sometimes you read about someone else’s story, something completely unrelated to your own — to what you are grappling with or trying to make sense of. But somehow it fits. It teaches you. It shows you a way forward. It helps you make sense of limits.

Stories can make the world make sense.

I read a fascinating (and very short — in case you’re intrigued and want to read it, too) book recently: Mouth to Mouth by Antoine Wilson. There are zero spoilers in this post.

Two college acquaintances bump into each other at an airport during a flight delay. They’re hanging out in the first-class lounge, and one tells the other a story about how he saved a man’s life and everything that came after.

There are several questions that keep percolating up as you read the story: Can we live with ourselves if we don’t think we’re a good person? Who defines who is a good person? Do good people always do the same good thing, or are there dozens of good actions in the same situation? And is being good something we do over and over again, or can one really big good act define us? If we do one bad thing, does it erase the good?

Chewy questions. And I didn’t even get to the really deep ones because those would contain spoilers.

But my favourite was an unspoken question that came up early on in the story: Are we owed anything if we save someone’s life? If we say no, does the answer change if the person is rich and can afford to give a reward? If we say yes, does the answer change if the person is poor and cannot afford to give a reward? And then is it about the action (saving someone life) or who we save (rich person vs. poor person)?

What do you think?

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

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Modern Mrs. Darcy wrote about her love of her hot water bottle, linking to an article about it. And it made me realize how much I love this low-tech item that I use daily through winter.

Hot water bottles are something we rarely talk about.

I could not make it through winter without one. I love holding it during the day while I work. Hanging out with it while I read at night. I can fill it once and have the heat last for hours. No item makes me quite as happy as my hot water bottle. Even if I never mention it or think about it.

Clearly remedying that fact right now. Thanks, water bottle, for always being there for me.

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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.

Two years ago, the twins were sent home from school for two weeks to stop the spread of COVID. They didn’t go back until 18 months later. Two years ago, I wrote in my bullet journal that the stores were empty and cases were multiplying. We felt panicked but also had no clue how bad things would get — could not fathom 6 million people worldwide would be gone by this date in 2022. That almost 1 million of those people would be in the US. I’m not sure what I was worried about back then because, like I said, I didn’t imagine this.

Last year, I wrote:

Today marks a complete year at home. No in-person school. No in-person work. No in-person social events. No visits inside a home. I went from mostly paper books to mostly e-books. I went from no plants to an indoor herb garden. I walk in place in front of YouTube videos.

I’ve stopped believing this will be over soon.

We were still at least a month away from being able to get our first vaccine dose. It felt like it would never be our turn, and once it was our turn, that we would be able to get one of the coveted vaccination appointments.

Things look different now, even though I don’t consider things over. Not close. But we’re triple vaccinated, own a ton of KN-95 masks and wear them everywhere, and feel comfortable venturing back out into the world with precautions in place. We still get meals to go, but the kids are back in school and we’ve been to the theater. We visit people indoors with masks. We don’t feel limited, even though we clearly are more limited than we were a little over two years ago before COVID started spreading around the world. Maybe it doesn’t feel limiting because it’s so much more than we were doing last year at this time. For that, we’re grateful.

Even though every single book says it is the most anticipated book in 2022 (seriously, there are zero books on GoodReads that are not listed as the “most anticipated book”), ChickieNob and I really are anticipating Hannah Gadsby’s book, which is out at the end of the month. She reads the audio book version, and you can hear the first five minutes or so on iBooks right now. We laughed so hard that we had to restart it and listen again.

This is what we need right now.

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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:

• ““Do You Have Children?” – How This Question Affects Me” (No Kidding in NZ)
• “Ukraine” (The Next 15000 Days)

Okay, now my choices this week.

The Next 15000 Days shares an article from 1950 that sums up how she’s feeling right now. She writes, “He taught his children that we should consider the world’s children our own. That’s how I feel about the children of Ukraine.” I think a lot of people feel this way, too.

Hopelessly Infertile Surrounded by Fertiles explains what kindness looks like. It’s not just what you do when it’s easy. It’s what you do when it’s really really hard. She explains: “The Rabbi who is running the class said, ‘Can you imagine that level of kindness, to pray for someone to get what you yourself have not been blessed with?’ talking about Sarah and how her overriding characteristic, in general, is kindness.” There is also a deep kindness in ensuring all people are seen and heard.

Lastly, Countingpinklines is back in another cycle. I love her mentality of literally taking it one day at a time. She writes: “That’s how I’m trying to approach the FET as well. Today is ‘take Lupron and remember how to give myself injections’ day.” It’s getting through one thing and one thing only rather than feeling the weight of everything all at once.

The roundup to the Roundup: Hannah Gadsby’s book! 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 4 – 11) 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.