Since the United States marked a half a million people dead from COVID-19 earlier in the week, several thousand more have died. Over a half a million people.

It is hard to look back at articles like this one from last year which stated: “If Americans embrace drastic restrictions and school closures, for instance, we could see a death toll closer to the thousands and breathe a national sigh of relief as we prepare for a grueling but surmountable road ahead.”

The vaccine in the article is here much sooner. The deaths so much higher. We knew so little last March.

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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:

• “On Grief Shaming” (Grief Is the Word)
• “Oh Hello, Welcome To My New Space” (Finding a Different Path)
• “#MicroblogMondays: Pandemic Family Day” (The Road Less Travelled)

Okay, now my choices this week.

I have the first post on Finding a Different Path for this week. My Path to Mommyhood has moved spaces and changed names (so update your bookmarks and feed reader). I love this: “The last three (oh wow, almost four) years have been about rebuilding. About standing in the rubble of a dream denied, and figuring out how to pick the pieces up and create a life that is meaningful, that is beautiful, and that is its own path, not a detour.” Welcome to your new space!

Speaking of blog name changes, The Evolving Engineer has a great post about “I Am” statements. After not being able to bring herself to state a series of “I Am” statements, she writes, “Imagine my surprise when, one morning, a few weeks ago, I woke up with a string of I Am’s running through my head. I shared it with my husband, and I shared it with a friend. It felt grounded and light to walk around for a while with this string running through my head.” She captures a turning point moment and shares it, knowing that others may have had the same doubts.

Anabegins captures the collective mood. She walks through ways she is trying to get out of ruts and find happiness. And she ends with an important point: “I guess it’s up to me to find the joy and make it happen.” It’s hard but true.

Lastly, No Kidding in NZ recounts an easy friendship with a person whose life path has differed greatly from her own. Her friend has made the hard times easier, and it has kept them close. But she also notes that after her friend’s children move from the home, there will be “a period of time – maybe 10, maybe 20, maybe even 30 years, when her life won’t be all that different to mine. It’s useful to reflect on that.” It’s an important reminder that things that seem far apart at one point can look close together at another.

The roundup to the Roundup: 500,000. 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 Feb 19 – Feb 26) 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.

I like to think of my brain as my emotional bank, and I store my weekly paycheck of emotional energy in its vault. Most of the time, I have enough energy to cover all of my bills—family obligations, work obligations, time with friends—and still have enough leftover for frivolous purchases, such as scrolling through Facebook and remaining friends with someone even after a fake pregnancy announcement for April Fool’s Day. (Please don’t do this.)

But the pandemic has thrown my careful budget into disarray. There is emotional energy I need to spend to keep the lights on—family obligations and work obligations—and I usually have enough in the account for Zoom calls with friends, though I keep the circle smaller some weeks more than others. But that leftover emotional energy I enjoyed before the pandemic is usually not in my account at the end of the week. It’s all spent. Zeroed out.

I don’t have the energy for social media itself much less fake pregnancy announcements. (Please don’t do this. It bears repeating.) I don’t have patience for other people’s poor decisions.

This article summed up how I feel as we round on one year of this. Sometimes I look at what needs to get done, and I think inside my head: “I can’t.” It’s almost like I need to let myself say those two words in order to make a withdrawal from the emotional bank. Those words have become like a password.

It’s not that what I need to get done is so much. It’s less than I did pre-pandemic because there’s less socializing, fewer meetings, no travel. But it’s more than I have energy saved in my emotional bank.

Except for the days or weeks when I feel fine.

Because that’s how it is now. There are the weeks when everything just is. It’s fine. We’re all fine. The word for “okay” in Hebrew is b’seder—”in order”—and that is how it is most of the time. My emotional account is in order. It balances, even if the amount in my emotional savings account is negligible.

One year.

Purim starts Thursday evening. Hint: if you wished people a Happy Chanukkah this year, you probably also want to wish them a happy Purim because this holiday is on par—importance-wise—with Chanukkah. Meaning, it’s a minor, not-super-important holiday. But I love this one and I don’t love Chanukkah, so we normally celebrate Purim big and Chanukkah very small.

When I say that we celebrate Purim big, we celebrate it as big as Christian people do Christmas. I have a separate freezer just for storing baked goods because I have to begin baking several weeks early in order to make gift packages for everyone. Our family always does a theme for our packages. When the kids were little, we did elaborate, hand-made costumes. We always go to a megillah reading and carnival.

Because the Hebrew calendar shifts within the world calendar, last year, we were able to deliver our packages and have a slightly more subdued Purim at the start of the pandemic. This year, we opted to send See’s candy to a few family members so the holiday wouldn’t go unmarked. No theme. No costumes. Zoom megillah reading.

It feels weirdly empty to not have Purim prep beyond a single tray of hamantaschen and chocolate chip cookies for inside the house. We’ve passed through much bigger holidays between last Purim and now; some that require just as much prep work and attention. But this one is the one I’m feeling. It’s a happy holiday, and it’s hard to do it happy over Zoom.

Maybe next year.

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

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No Complaints (she makes the amazingly wonderful Shedunnit podcast) posted a story of using (and breaking) a special cup. She points to a sentiment that has been guiding a lot of behaviour this year: “Use the fancy stuff … Enjoy it all now, because who knows what trouble is just around the corner.” Everything feels so precarious: why save a bar of chocolate if you could end up with no sense of smell (or taste) tomorrow?

But she also points out the flip side: “If you use it, you have to be prepared to lose it.” Using the nice cup is wonderful, but in using it, you need to be prepared that you may drop it and lose it.

I am definitely in the latter group. I think more about the fact that I could lose it if I use it. Which group are you in? The “use it because there will never be a perfect time” or the “save it because if you use it, you could lose it” group?

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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.

I am three minutes away from getting an Apple watch, and I blame the pandemic. Before the world fell apart, I would have described myself as a saver, not a spender. And that has mostly remained true with few exceptions here and there.

But lately, I have been coveting an Apple Watch with zero clue what I could do with an Apple Watch. I know it will count my steps. I’m not sure if it’s more or less accurate than leaving my phone in my pocket. I’ve been told that I can receive and send texts, though I have a hard enough time seeing them on my phone with that small type. I’m not sure how it will be more convenient to have it on my wrist. And beyond that, I have zero clue what an Apple watch will do that my phone can’t. Please remember that I’m not leaving the house right now. See, zero use for this watch.

And yet, it has become a family joke. I tell them that we’re all going to get Apple Watches and talk to each other through our wrists.

The Guardian recently had a piece on emotional spending. That is what this is: emotional spending. Buying an Apple Watch not because I have any use for an Apple Watch but because I want something new. Anything new.

Emotional spending isn’t a problem because I am also distrustful of online shopping (or purchasing anything I haven’t gotten to try on or touch) and spend more time thinking rather than doing. But the article hit close to home for me because I understand craving newness whether it was a complete revamp of my library holds list last weekend or a new pasta sauce or a watch that promises to solve all of my problems.

Except for… you know… that big pandemic one.

I’m not getting a watch.