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

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I have been in a drugstore twice in the last few weeks, and in both cases, there was a stack of Binax at-home tests on display. Both times we considered getting them, and both times we left them there — once watching the display get cannibalized as we waited to pay for our items. It made me anxious not to get them.

Except that I couldn’t think of a good reason to get them. Even if we tested negative, we would still do everything the same, including never taking off our masks indoors or in crowds. I also knew that if we felt ill, we would want a PCR — not an at-home test. Plus, there was a decent chance that an at-home test would give a false negative (especially with omicron), providing no helpful information at all. It was better to leave the tests and invest the money in KN95s.

But it is HARD to walk away from tests, especially when you know they’re hard to find and you can’t double back to the store and pick them up if you change your mind.

Sentences I never predicted I would write back at the start of the pandemic.

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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.

24 hours from now, I’ll be getting ready for work. I’m not usually someone who feels down at the end of a break — I really like structure, and I’m usually better with work days than unstructured time. But I’m having a hard time with the break being over, even though I have three reports that I enjoy creating on my schedule for Monday.

It’s hard to feel rested and recharged during the pandemic, so the vacation in front of me (the one where I feel hopeful that I’ll catch up on sleep and get a break from worrying) is better than the vacation that has just happened.

It’s hard to feel hopeful in the moment. To sense any fresh start. Maybe summer will be better.

The final day of a collectively depressing year. Is there really anything more to say about 2021? We will spend tonight in pyjamas, eating appetizers, flipping between the various countdowns even though we don’t really want to watch any of them. We’ll feel an itch to do something more… something different. But unable to come up with that “something different,” we will do nothing and that will be okay. It’s almost as if we lived this very same New Years celebration 365 days ago. Oh. Right.

Hope you have an uneventful, healthy new year.

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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:

• “Why I Love Rudolph” (Infertilityhonesty)
• “It Is Done” (Infertile Phoenix) — originally another title
• “Twenty Years” (No Kidding in NZ)
• “Mild Cases” (Stirrup Queens) — thank you, Jess!

Okay, now my choices this week.

The Barreness says goodbye to the year. She pays homage to her site: “I feel like I am safe in this space, with expressing myself. WHAT A GIFT THAT IS!” I love her acknowledgment of how five minutes of acceptance can grow (and if nothing else, five minutes is better than no minutes). For anyone who has been struggling, writing sometimes is a tiny good thing bringing you through a moment in time.

To that end, The Road Less Travelled does a collection of annoying things and small pleasures. I love that she balances out the venting and the noting; the release and the gratitude.

Lastly, Infertilityhonesty posts the final piece in her old space, ending 8 years to the day since she published her first post. She writes: “Organizing the past into narrative is a method of understanding the self. Not only is narrative the channel for communicating how you became who you are, it also informs who you’re on your way to becoming.” She has moved to a new space, linked to a few posts ago on the blog and in the purple circle at the end of the post.

The roundup to the Roundup: Goodbye 2021. 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 December 24 – December 31) 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.

I found this piece by My Sweet Dumb Brain comparing the second year of the pandemic to the second year after a loss thought-provoking. She explains that while the second year doesn’t hold the shock of the first, it is hard for different reasons.

The second year, though, is undeniably more lonely … It’s hard not to blame yourself for not ‘moving on,’ because everyone else clearly has.

She goes into secondary losses and discouraging thoughts. And it’s true — in many ways, the second year of the pandemic was harder than the first. There was more cohesiveness during that first year. More clapping out the hospital staff every night. More “we’re all in this together” mentality, even if we also know that mentality wasn’t embraced in the same way by everyone.

And now… strangely… we are about to enter Q1 of the third year. And she recommends a thought that is getting her through—”embrace the fog”: “The future is a little foggy, and it always has been. Our illusion of control is just that—an illusion.” We don’t know what is ahead. Accepting that may be the key to getting us through a third spring.

Carolyn Hax tucked it at the end of a section; a closing line free-floating away from the other thoughts:

“Most relationships end. It’s okay to let them. Truly.”

However many relationships you currently have — let’s go with Dunbar’s number and say 150 — you have quadruple or quintuple or, if you’re super-popular, dectuple, the number of ended relationships. Because relationships end. Friendships end. Acquaintanceships end.

I’m not sure why such a simple thought never occurred to me before now, and how dysfunctional social media has made things by not allowing relationships to end. That natural social shedding now sticks around, remaining in your attention like snake skin. Like a ghost.