It may or may not be International Blog Delurking Week. The first full week of January (January 3 – 9, 2021) is when we’re supposed to slither out of the reading closet and check in with an “I’m here” comment. I’m not sure if anyone does this anymore. Back in the olden days, people would pop up out of the woodwork. Nowadays, not so much.

So let’s see what happens.

So welcome to International Blog Delurking Week. I make a badge every year to mark the occasion, and I give you full permission to right click and grab it for your very own.

My reward for remembering to do this (when I could have just as easily forgotten) is that you have to delurk for this worldwide holiday, which is super serious and important. Right?

It is fairly easy. Leave a comment in the comment section below admitting that you’re here. You can simply raise your hand and meekly admit that you’re here with a simple, one-word “here” comment; or you can proudly raise your hand and tell us all a bit about yourself (my preferred method); or you can tell me what type of cookie you’d be if you were a lump of cookie dough (see, I’m trying to make it easy for you by even providing a comment prompt). The point is that I want to know about the people who read me, since there is a huge discrepancy between the number of readers in actuality and the number of readers I actually know are reading. Or a tongue-twister like that.

And that’s all you have to do to celebrate.

So (clears throat to nudge you along), who is here?

It’s the first Roundup of 2021, looking back on the final week of writing in a truly bizarre year.

Happy New Year.

Once upon a time, I would have had a crisis with this day—do I post a Roundup if I’m posting the Creme de la Creme? Do I post the Roundup a day early? Late? But… alas… no Creme de la Creme this year. I miss that.

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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 Road Less Travelled captures the strangeness that was Christmas 2020. I laughed about the breaded cod patties. That was so 2020. Unfortunately, I fear that we’re still going to be saying everything is 2020 in 2021. But! That’s not the point. The point is that people made the best of it and celebrated the holiday. As she says: “I said to dh that if we HAD to stay here, by ourselves, I wanted it to be at least a little special (i.e., not just another day at home) — and I think we managed that, even with COVID to work around. I hope you can say the same!”

Open Step at a Time also reflects on the year. I love the hope she captured in this post. Would anyone choose this pandemic? No. But as she says, “On the whole I am profoundly grateful for this year because it was a year of learning, growth and building. Everything I have learnt during 2020 is something I can build on for the future.” If nothing else, the pandemic revealed who we are—to ourselves and to others.

Lastly, No Kidding in NZ recounts a conversation she had with her sisters during Christmas. They spoke about her not having children, and she writes: “We talked about it in a matter-of-fact way, and it was just nice. Nice to know that my situation was recognised by them both, to feel seen. Nice to be able to talk about the occasional reality of my life. Nice to be able to move on to the next topic without feeling we needed to out of awkwardness. Nice to know that they saw it was a part of me, but not all of me.” Click over to read about the conversation.

The roundup to the Roundup: Happy New Year. 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 25 – Jan 1) 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.

There was a question posed in an article earlier this year that I found recently. Are we morally obligated to meditate? Meaning, if we believe that meditation makes people less reactive and more compassionate, are we morally obligated to meditate because to not take up this practice means that we are knowingly choosing not to be our most compassionate selves?

Does that make sense? It makes sense in my head.

I mean, yes, meditation benefits the individual, but if it also benefits the community, should we all be meditating? Or, by that reasoning, replace it with anything that has been proven to benefit more than the individual. For instance, are we morally obligated to read because reading makes us more empathetic? I’m sure we could compile a long list of similar activities.

The article gives the short answer of “no,” with a more nuanced answer following that. But I thought the question itself was more interesting than the dissection of it.

I meditate daily, and I have for years, both as a regular practice every morning and as a stress reliever on an as-needed basis. I don’t know if it has changed me because I’ve been doing this form of meditation on-and-off since I was a child and learned it, so while my practice has been more structured vs. less structured at various times in my life, there has never been a time since I was a small child that I haven’t meditated.

But it has never occurred to me to encourage anyone else to meditate except for my kids. I’ve taught other people how to meditate because they asked to learn and I remember how I was taught in such a way that I can pass it along to others. But I’ve never thought to encourage the practice in someone who didn’t ask because I think it’s something they should do. In other words, happy to teach if the person asks me to teach them. But I’ve never thought to offer because I think they should be meditating. Because I’m not sure it is for everyone.

I’d be interested in hearing your opinion. Are we morally obligated to do things that benefit others as much as it benefits ourselves?

It’s pretty rare that I cut out an article from People magazine… but I cut out an essay by Caterina Scorsone from the November 9th issue because it was—in a word—amazing. She didn’t say anything new, she just said it well. Very very well.

She writes about her daughter, Pippa, and what she learned raising a child with Down syndrome. It’s a way of viewing the world that clears away the clutter, and I think everyone needs to hear her thoughts, take them to heart, and apply them liberally across all facets of life.

She writes,

Most of us have grown up believing that we’re supposed to aspire to some sort of standard of “perfection,” some idea of humanity that is located at the top of a vertical tower of value. How smart are you? How fast? How thin? What’s your gender? Your ethnicity? What have you bought and achieved? Do you qualify for love? But when Pippa was born, it suddenly became crystal clear that the emperor wasn’t wearing clothes. There is no standard, objective, perfect human being. The metrics of perfection are arbitrary and imposed in the service of those who fit them. My daughter is perfect. Exactly the way she is.

I love that, and think we need to spend more time kicking down that vertical tower of value rather than reinforcing it by supporting it with attention or worth.

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 a lot of unread books. I give priority to library books because they may not be accessible forever whereas books I own will always be here. But it means that the books pile up—books I really want to read—because I push them off for books on my library holds list. It gives me anxiety.

But calling those unread books an antilibrary makes me feel good about my book hoarding. Especially with this quote:

Instead of a celebration of everything you know, an antilibrary is an ode to everything you want to explore. The vastness of the unknown can feel terrifying, which is why many people feel uncomfortable with the idea of accumulating books they haven’t read. But embracing the unknown is what drives discovery.

Three cheers for the antilibrary.

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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.