People have been posting memes for weeks about how excited they are that 2020 is over. Woohoo! It’s 2021! Whereas I have been dreading 2021 for 17 years.

2021 is the year of the 17-year cicadas.

This May (or late April… or early June… we won’t know until we know), millions… billions… trillions of Brood X cicadas will emerge out of the ground, covering the trees until you can’t see the bark. They will cover pretty much the whole East Coast and chunks of the Midwest. 15 states in total.

I’ve been worrying about this since 2004—the last time the cicadas were here. If I wasn’t already staying at home, I would choose during that time to stay at home. So… yeah… we have that to look forward to in five months. Cheers to 2021.

Wednesday morning started with gifts from Befana. She didn’t travel this year because of COVID-19 guidelines (and Fauci never stated that she was vaccinated along with Santa), so she instead used all of her powers to magic the gifts to our house. The twins refrained from rolling their eyes because there was chocolate.

Wednesday evening ended with discussing the terrorists at the Capitol with tearful teenagers who spent their afternoon glued to NPR. It is hard to have your worst suspicions about humans confirmed.

I have a lot of other sentences that I’m writing and erasing. I will encourage you, when you feel your chest tightening, to step away from social media. It helps me a lot to take in events only via a few trusted news sites to have my brain quiet enough to think.

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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:

• “Duke” (LindsayMader)
• “The Day After” (Infertile Phoenix)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Grumpy Rumblings has a great opening to their weekly link love post, calling out people who post about doing things that go against COVID-19 guidance. They write, “Even if you don’t spread Covid yourself, you may encourage someone who does.” Even if you do everything according to best practices, you still may get it, so it doesn’t make sense when people write about how they’re considering doing things that are a risk. As they say, “It only takes two mistakes in a two week period to infect someone.”

Risa Kerslake has a post about processing her infertility while taking a memoir writing class. Her first piece is being caught off-guard by her feelings. “I wrote about church. Because where else can an infertile couple feel so completely alone than in the very place you really probably shouldn’t?” Her words allow other people to feel how she felt that day, and give her insight in the power of a memoir—both for the reader to understand and for the writer to process what they went through.

An Unexpected Family Outing has a post about taking a day off when you’re having a miscarriage. It’s actually bananas that we live in a world where it isn’t a given that you’d step back to deal with the emotional side of things even if you can keep going physically. It is such a powerful post, including this: “I’m not going to list the reasons why. If you’ve ever had a miscarriage, then you know why. If you haven’t, then words can’t quite justify the pain and agony endured.”

Lastly, it’s not infertility-related, but it is mental health-related and I didn’t want it lost in all the other news of the week. Our Congressman Jamie Raskin wrote a very moving piece about his son who died this week. It is a hard read, but it’s an important read.

The roundup to the Roundup: Terrorists in the Capitol. 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 1 – 8) 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.

This new year feels so clean and shiny and new, like a bullet journal before it’s filled with all of my hastily jotted down notes and cross-outs. Which inevitably makes me think about Melissa back in January of 2020. That foolish woman who had no clue how the next 11 months would unfold. It makes you squint at 2021, wondering its intentions. Will this year mostly be a continuation of 2020 with only the change of a single numeral? Or will we get our vaccine and return to life in the outside world? Only future me knows.

I’m choosing to be hopeful with a side of realism?

Things I’m carrying with me into this new year: Hard limits and firm boundaries (with my time, with my safety, with my newfound ability to say “no”). Reading with my guinea pig while working on Josh to see my vision of a house full of guinea pigs. Not overscheduling myself and being okay with things being okay. Keeping my friends and family close (at least, via Zoom and text).

New things we’re doing: Working my way through my guilt TBR. (These are purchased TBR books that I keep passing over because library holds come in, even though I want to read these purchased TBRs more.) Playing chess. Doing more crosswords. Not eating as if the pandemic means there are zero calories in my food.

2020 caught me off-guard. I’m going into 2021 looking straight ahead and side-to-side. Checking my rear-view mirror. Driving forward, carefully and fully masked.

What are you bringing with you into the new year?

“Being a good housekeeper, many say [Befana] will sweep the floor before she leaves. To some the sweeping meant the sweeping away of the problems of the year.” —Wikipedia’s page on Befana.

Even though we are Jewish, even though we don’t even have Chinese food on Christmas, even though we aren’t into any other winter holiday… we still celebrate Befana Day. Which is tonight. The astute among you will notice that no matter what we call it, it’s really Epiphany. I picked up the idea 25+ years ago in Italy, and I’ve been celebrating it ever since.

Though, this year, that sweeping part takes on new meaning. Get out of the home, 2020.

The twins have always celebrated Befana Day, graduating from candy in their shoes to candy placed on top of drawings of shoes (because it is really gross when you think about it, even if the candy is wrapped). Befana drops off a gift, treats, and a letter that falls somewhere between a lecture and love song. Tonight, we’ll eat gnocchi pomodoro and go to bed a little early to ensure that she’ll have enough time to drop off presents before flying on her broomstick to the next house.

It’s just enough. Befana Day is one treat and one gift, regardless of age. It’s one simple meal and no other obligations. That’s about all I can handle at the start of 2021.

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

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One thing I love is that we all have a different way of seeing resolutions. I’ve seen just as many posts explaining why someone is not making resolutions (while simultaneously telling me what they are doing, which sounds very much like setting resolutions) or why they are making resolutions (which don’t sound like how I define resolutions).

My favourite description of resolutions came from Caroline Crampton (who has the BEST podcast—Shedunnit): “For me, resolutions have always functioned as a kind of intentional prediction about the direction I want my life to take, and the last five years have completely cured me of trying to make any kind of guess about what will happen next. The best I can do is try.”

An “intentional prediction about the direction I want my life to take.” That is such an interesting way of putting it and so huge. Was family building one of my resolutions? My career change? That is what I think of when I think of new directions whereas my actual resolutions (for the third year running, taking 15 minutes to myself each day) are tiny steps in place, not really moving me anywhere.

How do you define resolutions?

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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.