The article stated: “You know that thing where you stubbornly stay up late for no reason because you feel like you didn’t get any time to yourself?” Um… yes. Like what I did last night? And the night before that? And the night before that? We always stay up too late because I work too late (or to-do-list-checking-off too late), and I end up feeling like I didn’t get down time. So we stay up and read a few chapters, even though we should be sleeping.

I feel seen.

I don’t necessarily feel like I don’t have control of my daytime hours:

Learned a very relatable term today: “報復性熬夜” (revenge bedtime procrastination), a phenomenon in which people who don’t have much control over their daytime life refuse to sleep early in order to regain some sense of freedom during late night hours.

— Daphne K. Lee (@daphnekylee) June 28, 2020

But I definitely feel like my daytime hours are too full, and I really really really want to read a few chapters in a book.

The solution? “Ryan and Shapiro both recommend carving out breaks while it’s still light outside—calendaring them in and taking them seriously. Ryan, knowing that later in the evening she’ll be busy with her kids, builds 15 minute segments into her workday. ‘I shut my office door, I put my music on, and I just breathe,’ she says. But it would be okay to use that time just to watch half a TV show, she adds.”

I’m not sure that will work for me because I already take 15 minutes to myself at the start of the day. Maybe it’s enough to know other people are doing it, too.

The Guardian had a good article about COVID-19 mistakes, which mostly comes down to the difference between can and should. There are plenty of things we’re allowed to do under CDC guidance. Depending on where you live, you are allowed to gather with ten people. You are allowed to eat indoors. But should you? That’s where we drop into the chasm. We mistake the fact that we’re allowed and end up believing that means it’s “safe.” Or, at the very least, “safer.” When, in reality, those parameters are often given to balance other factors such as mental health or the economy.

Anyway, I thought it was a good article. I especially thought this made things clear: “If you can smell someone’s garlic or alcohol breath, or cigarette smoke, you’re inhaling air carrying not just the smell of the garlic, alcohol or smoke, but any virus that’s leaving their nose or mouth if they’re infected.”

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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.

In Quest of a Binky Moongee has a roundup of good news, made even lovelier because it’s other people’s good donor egg/surrogacy pregnancy news. Plus, I love the story of the Honolulu friendship.

Movable Type has a heartbreaking post about COVID-19 loss. It’s a tiny post, containing a profound thought. “‘Cover your loved ones in death,’ because that will cause you to live your love for them, daily. To be present to their presence. Listen to their beating hearts and love them.” Go read it in context.

Lastly, By the Brooke writes about her book. She explains her feelings about its release: “The truth is that people will read it or they won’t and whatever happens, the stakes are actually not that high? I want to honor Eliza and how much I love her and how much she means to me. But also I could never write something good enough to do her justice, you know?” That just may be the best reason I’ve heard to write a book as well as the limitations of words.

The roundup to the Roundup: A good article about COVID-19 mistakes. 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 Jan 29 – Feb 5) 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.

My cousin has gotten me into Romance books. Before the pandemic, I wasn’t really a Romance book person. I didn’t know the genre well, and I also didn’t give it a chance. I thought I liked my book relationships messy.

And then I spent Christmas with a Jasmine Guillory book, and I realized how relaxing it was to know—without a doubt—that everyone would get a happy ending. There was no stress. No tension. It was such a happy experience.

My cousin suggested that I watch Bridgerton, and we gave it a try because everyone was giving it a try. And we got hooked. I decided that reading The Duke and I would be a perfect second foray into classic Romance. AND IT IS. (Plus the rest of the series.)

I realized something that I’ll take with me into future books and shows. When I watch the television show first and I read the book second, I go into the pages imaging that the characters look and sound like the ones in the show or movie.

The problem is going the other way around: I think I want to read books first, but what happens is the characters on the screen don’t match the ones in my head. And I ended up feeling like the movie or show ruined something. This is especially true when I care deeply about the book. I don’t want the versions in my head to be replaced with the actors on the screen.

Though I don’t think it will bother me to read the rest of the Bridgerton books before seeing them on the screen. Many of the characters are already established, and the new ones will be mentally incorporated far after the reading experience if they haven’t even started filming Season 2 yet.

Does order matter to you? Do you prefer to read the book first or watch the show first?

One of the things I miss during the pandemic is something I didn’t think about at all until I read Anne Helen Petersen’s piece on errand friends. You know those people that you roll catching up into grocery shopping or swinging by the post office?

Most of the stuff you do with an Errand Friend, it’s unremarkable. It’s just life, but with another person there. I tried to look for a picture from my past to accompany this post, but there was nothing to be found. You take photos of special events, of dinners, of nights out and camping trips and hikes and weddings and dress-up costumes. You don’t take a photo when you’re in Target browsing dishtowels for the seventeenth time.

I have several friends who are errand friends, especially when they come into town. They need to entertain their kids or get something for their parents, and I accompany them because we can talk while we’re being productive. (Usually, even if it’s their errand, I end up accomplishing something, too. Such as last spring when I bought matzah for Pesach while my friend was helping stock her parents’ house with groceries at the start of the pandemic. Back when we thought this would be two weeks.)

I miss that. I miss errand friends. The people that you’re so close with that even grabbing groceries is fun because you’re talking as you walk down the aisles.

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

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The New York Times had a fantastic article about how to tidy up your life, digitally. It went well beyond the usual, low-hanging fruit advice and provided links, breaking down all the places you need to tidy and how to do it.

The nicest part is that it’s split into seven steps, so you can tackle one per day or one per week, and the whole thing is less overwhelming.

Plus, unlike a lot of articles that focus on cleaning up clutter so your machine runs faster or organizing data into folders, all of these steps are about tidying your online life so you have fewer accounts open or browser extensions used.

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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.