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

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I just started a new bullet journal. It happens about every 1.5 years, so the last bullet journal was like 98% pandemic.

I have a section in the front of things I commonly forget and then drive myself bananas trying to remember. It’s a weird mix of things. The word “panopticon.” The name Simon Armitage. (I seriously just had to open the notebook and look that up. I don’t know why I cannot retain his name for longer than 30 seconds. I will forget it again by tonight.) A hotel we stayed in 19 years ago in London. I don’t need to know any of these things, but when I can’t remember something, I obsessively think about it. This is easier.

Each time, after I copy over the list, I add in anything that I want to remember from the last year or two. All the new stuff that has popped up in the previous bullet journal. So the section is now 12 pages long.

The funny thing in recopying it is that I will find the same thing on the list two or three times, as if I’m proud of myself for remembering it again… not realizing that I remembered it earlier.

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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.

If you haven’t heard about it yet, Representative Ayanna Pressley and Senator Tammy Duckworth introduced a new bill: The Support Through Loss Act. If it passes it “would mandate at least three days of paid leave for people who experience pregnancy loss (in the legislation, this includes unsuccessful fertility treatments and failed adoption or surrogacy arrangements). Paid time off would also apply to partners of pregnant people.” It gives funding to NIH for pregnancy loss research and loss data collection.

Yes, we already have the The Family and Medical Leave Act, but that is dependent on the size of the company and the length of time you’ve worked there. This would (hopefully) cover everyone by expanding emotional protections and giving people space to grieve.

You can read the wording on the bill. It’s really a beautiful piece of humanity.

There has clearly always been a time delay with the Olympics (unless you live in or near the host country), and I’m sure the news released results before the evening television coverage when it lined up time-wise. (Right?) But before social media and the 24-hour news cycle, you needed to watch to know or wait for the newspaper to report the results the next day.

Knowing results hours before the televised highlights makes me feel like… I can watch or not watch, and it’s all okay. It feels weird to sometimes get to the end of the night and think, “Oh! I could have watched Olympic coverage.”

The gematria nerd in me loves the fact that there are 613 American athletes at the games. That number may have changed with people not flying to Japan due to COVID-19 results, but I’m going with the number reported during the opening ceremony. I married the right person because Josh and I looked at each other at the exact same moment and said, “613!”

And, of course, I am in awe of Simone Biles. What an incredible woman in addition to being an incredible athlete.

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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 in order 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. In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• None… sniff…

Okay, now my choices this week.

The Uterus Monologues has a post about pregnancy after a loss. It has taken her a little while to write it, but she explains: “I couldn’t have done it justice back when I was pregnant after loss myself. Back then, I was just existing, really. I had no reliable perspective on what I needed, what was helping, and what wasn’t.” It’s a great list to bookmark for yourself or send along to others.

The Next 15000 Days recalls a strange wish from a co-worker. It may be simply awkward phrasing—if a person wishes you happiness and you reply that you are happy, it’s not technically wrong to wish a person more happiness. But… it is also commentary on the person’s emotional state. She asks: “Am I happy? I am not sure. But what I am sure is that I am content and I love living my quiet peaceful life.”

Lastly, Not a Wasted Word makes a distinction between better and easier. She unpacks a situation that is better but it’s also harder. Plus, I love this analogy: “It’s actually a relief to recognize that all these seemingly disparate freakouts where just offshoots of the same plant of school-starting-panic. The roots of this plant grow strong, and deep and I’m sure I cannot rid myself of them completely.” Yes to this.

The roundup to the Roundup: A different sort of Olympics. 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 July 23 – July 30) 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.

Modern Mrs. Darcy started a fun conversation on Instagram: What are your reading dealbreakers? As in, if the book contains X, you will stop reading it. She states her own dealbreaker and points out that there are also exceptions to her personal rule. Really good writing can help you through a dealbreaker topic.

Infertility as a plot point in my dealbreaker. I hate it when I start a mystery and there is an infertile woman because I know that she’s going to turn out to be portrayed as desperate due to her desire to have a child. Desperate enough to muuuuuuuurder. By the way, the infertile woman is ALWAYS the murderer. Or the victim. She’s never the sassy friend nextdoor who needs to nip out to give herself a Follistim injection but ultimately has nothing to do with the murder.

What are your reading dealbreakers?

Have you played the Terms and Conditions game? An evil corporation wants you to agree to the terms and conditions, and your job is to NOT agree to the terms and conditions.

It’s a way to teach the nefarious ways sites have of getting you to agree to things. And while some are clearly real tactics (confusing wording), others such as the spinning on/off buttons are just funny. I was surprised they didn’t have a questions with thousands of words in tiny print that you need to read carefully to know if you want to check yes or no.

I like to think of myself as pretty savvy, but the message at the end:

We attempted to access your data 29 times
and you were kind enough to give it to us 6 times.
That’s better than 51% of players
You took 247.88 seconds to complete the game
That’s faster than 53% of players

You can replay ones you got wrong (keep scrolling past your answers), and it certainly made me more cognizant of websites that ask you to accept all cookies.

Let me know how you did if you play.