It averages out to about once per year that I skip writing the Roundup for some reason. And this week is going to be that one time this year because writing the Roundup may mentally break me today.

First and foremost, I didn’t read a lot this week because it was a shit week. Like… really shit week. And the idea of opening my feed reader right now and reading everything to find the stuff that sticks with me feels… impossible. And yet I don’t want to clear my feed reader without reading, so… I’m going to make next week’s post the one thing I bookmarked from this week as well as everything I read next week. Which will include posts written this week.

Because I can.

I know that’s a really simple, true sentence, but my brain didn’t go there immediately. It first went to the I-want-to-cry-because-I-cannot-do-this-thing-I-need-to-do-now place, and then reality kicked in and I realized that nothing would happen if I didn’t write the Roundup.

So I’m doing my work today, and then I’m mentally shutting down and practicing some version of self-care until Monday. I am going to deep breathe and go on indoor walks and read books and have a long cry. Reboot. And go back into my brain on Monday. I’ll see everyone then.

I trimmed my to-read list the day after my second vaccine shot. I was mentally empty and exhausted, but it seemed like a simple housekeeping task. Remove the books that no longer look appealing. Add the new books I’ve been bookmarking on my phone. Decide on the next buddy reads with my cousin. Cancel holds I have no intention of getting to in the near future.

I have a tab on my TBR spreadsheet called “Changed My Mind.” Instead of deleting, I move books onto that list. It’s an interest graveyard; the corpses of things that once upon a time piqued my interest.

Maybe it was the fact that I’m running on empty, but the task made me feel weepy. Life is full of too many interesting books, too many interesting places, and too many interesting people, and I will never get to all the things I want to read, or places I want to go, or enough moments with all the people I want to spend time with because that is the way reality works. No surprises there, but seeing it all listed out in a spreadsheet made me feel profoundly sad.

The alarm on my phone works. It wakes me gently, mentally bringing me into a world of magic with the opening bars of “Hedwig’s Theme.” I bought the song years ago for this expressed purpose, and it has been bringing me out of sleep ever since.

But I decided that I needed a change. Why? I’m not sure. It was just an impulse that I needed a different alarm. I considered a few options—the music from “A Very English Scandal” wasn’t sold on the iTunes store.

“It Happens Every Day” by Dar Williams would be perfect except that it reminds me of miscarriage.

But I ultimately landed on the song that plays before and after movies at the Scottish Seabird Center. It’s happy, and it reminds me of a happy place. I reset my wake up alarm to play this theme and went to sleep, excited to start a new day infused with happiness.

But the moment it started playing in the morning, we jolted out of bed, our hearts pounding. Beyond having cold water thrown over your head, it may just be the worst thing to use for wake up purposes that I’ve ever encountered. I turned down the volume for the first snooze and jolted again when the hands started clapping. There is no volume where that song becomes a happy way to wake up. I know because I set multiple alarms with this music, so we had to endure it two more times that morning. Josh made me promise that I would change it immediately.

I’m currently back to “Hedwig’s Theme” for the time being. It works. But I’m thinking about buying this song from an old, favourite video game. It would be good… right?

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

*******

It was just the 34th anniversary of my Bat Mitzvah. I know this because my Bat Mitzvah fell during the 17-year cicadas in 1987. Back then, due to the fact that there was no Internet and they didn’t cover the 17-year cicadas in Teen Beat magazine, I did not know they were coming until they were here.

Imagine my horror when I looked out the window of the car and saw the trees covered in cicadas crawling over each other, making the bark look like it was pulsating. And with no warning, I was going to have to run from said car into shul in my one-inch heels.

Though I imagine Bat Mitzvah girls this year are thinking, “You think you had it bad with just cicadas? I have to read Torah in a mask and project over the noise of the cicadas. You don’t know how good you had it.”

Fair point.

*******

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.

My second pandemic birthday coincides with the date that mask restrictions will be lifted in our area. Of course. It feels like each change in the pandemic makes the maze a little more twisty to navigate. We had a great system with takeaway, knew which restaurants took masking seriously, and now we need to see which ones will keep up masking because there is no way to know whether or not someone is vaccinated. The only thing we know is whether or not they’re wearing a mask.

So.

We’ll figure it out. Either we’ll get takeaway because one of the restaurants we’ve been patroning will continue to mask, or we’ll skip the takeaway and eat cereal for dinner instead. Cereal and cookies. All things tan.

Because we’re still masking. Because careful is cool. Because it feels right. Because we like to live in a zero regrets zone, and removing our mask—especially indoors—would fill us with regrets. Emphasis on the us. We’ve read. We’ve thought. We’ve decided. And we know everyone else is doing this, too, and may come to a different decision. We all see the world through our invisible lens.

Ten Percent Happier had a great piece on predatory listening, which in blog form would be more predatory reading. It’s that idea of forming how you feel about the words on the screen (or the words coming into your ears) before you’ve read the words on the screen or heard the words. It’s forming your response before you even know what you’re responding to.

Every stage of the pandemic has been a whirlpool of predatory reading—myself included. It includes listening or reading “with a hypercritical focus rather than with curiosity. If I don’t pay attention, my mind switches into offense mode, poised to build a case, selecting only things that validate my narrative.” To continue to mask or not to mask. Most people—like the election—have already decided what they’re going to do. They relax into reading what confirms their decision. Form arguments while reading (or, in some cases, before reading) what they suspect or know goes against their decision.

I like the end thought in the article—how to get out of the cycle of predatory listening and reading. It was food for thought in stressful times.