It is entirely possible, as The Atlantic states, that people are journaling about their life during the pandemic, but I don’t truly believe it’s as widespread as they make it sound from the article.

Back in March, I thought more people would return to their blogs to write through the pandemic. Many did, dusting off old sites and proclaiming they were going to write again. And then they never returned after that initial post. Or they returned two more times and then disappeared again. Or they wrote an initial post, disappeared, and then popped up again in July to point out that they didn’t blog like they said they would.

No one owes anyone a blog post. This is not meant to make you feel guilty if you did exactly what I describe above. The point is that I’m surprised that more people didn’t return to their blog and go back to writing regularly, at least for a short period of time. I’m surprised more people aren’t journaling their way through the pandemic in the same way they’ve journaled through other crises in their life. The vast majority of bloggers I’m reading right now are people who consistently blogged before and during the pandemic.

Of course, perhaps more people have taken their words offline. Like Doogie Howser, they’re typing their journal in a Word doc. (I have zero memory of word processing programs prior to WordPerfect and Word. What did we use?) Or they picked up a new Moleskine and they’re jotting down their words with pen. But I suspect the vast majority of people aren’t doing more than writing quick Facebook posts or tweets.

Are you surprised that more people didn’t return to blogging during this?

We were finishing Rosh Hashanah dinner when we heard the news about Ruth Bader Ginsburg. We had been laughing about my low spelling group from elementary school, but my phone kept going off behind me. Over and over and over again. So I turned around and saw the top text from my cousin letting me know that she had died.

Our table got very quiet, and then ChickieNob started sobbing. The first fifteen minutes or so was just about calming her down and trying to make sense of things and wondering about her family—to lose her on Rosh Hashanah Eve, the last few minutes of the year.

Once she had calmed down, I came upstairs to cry by myself.

So many times since 2016, I’ve felt complete despair. I can’t say that this despair is different or worse or more hopeless than all the other moments of despair. But there is an emptiness inside of me. Like the outline of my body is despair, and the inside is completely hollow.

I like books. Do you like books? One of my books (at least, the e-book version) is on sale today for 99 cents. 99 cents! You cannot get a cup of coffee for 99 cents. You cannot even buy gum for 99 cents. Actually, you may be able to buy gum for 99 cents… It has been so long since I’ve left the house that I’ve forgotten the cost of gum.

You can only mail one letter for less than the cost of my book. If you try to mail two letters, you will be paying more than an entire novel.

I could spend the next 50,000 paragraphs listing all the things that are more expensive than my book. Instead, I’ll spare you and tell you to get yourself Measure of Love.

Pretty please?

Or, at the very least, tell your friends.

*******

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.

*******

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:

• “Celebrating Ten Years” (My Path to Mommyhood)

Okay, now my choices this week.

World Childless Week was this week, and many people wrote about it. Finding My Plan B – The Black Women in the Room has a post about living her Plan B, which was finding her voice. That plan gave birth to a book and so many amazing opportunities to tell her story and support others. She writes, “During this journey I have come across so many women, especially black and Asian women who have been silenced by the cultural parameters that tell us not to bring shame on the family, not to talk about our problems outside of our home … I’ve been honoured to be in a position to listen and support them on their own childless journeys.”

My Path to Mommyhood celebrated ten years of blogging this week. So much happened in ten years, and she takes us through the journey. I love this line: “It ended with a lot of work, a lot of sadness, but also a lot of hope that finally we could have a life that wasn’t predicated on waiting for a life to begin, but LIVING in the one we have.” As I said to her: “Thank you for always making me think AND making me feel.”

Lastly, The Next 15000 Days has the best conversation stopper when a man drops multiple assumptions into a single question: “No one has ever offended me the way you just did.” Seriously.

The roundup to the Roundup: Measure of Love is on sale. 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 September 11 – 18) 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.

The title of the article: “Imagine a World Where Men Stressed About their Sperm as Much as Women Stress About Their Eggs.”

I love this article because the hypothetical man at the beginning of the article lives his life much as I did in the very beginning of wondering if there was something wrong with me when we were trying to conceive. (Once we got to the actual diagnosis, eating the right foods felt more like arranging deck chairs on the Titanic.) And for this line: “Not only is John not real, the world I have just described does not exist.” In other words, while many (not all) women do a version of all the things listed at the beginning of the article, men do not.

Because, as the article points out, even though sperm are half the equation:

There is still no cohesive medical specialty devoted solely to men’s reproductive health, no recommendations that men have their reproductive organs examined regularly, no public health campaigns about the male biological clock, and no government labels warning men about the toxic effects of alcohol and drugs on sperm.

Go read the whole thing.

I have always been terrible with compartmentalization, and I chalked it up to the fact that everything was happening in my body. But maybe it’s also because I’ve been taught to pay attention to every twinge because the I have been taught to think about my body—from doctors to politicians to random stranger with opinions in the grocery store—nonstop. Until now when my body can no longer create a baby. Actually, scratch that. They’re going to keep regulating my body, even now. Because that’s what has always been done.

As I say every month, I’m shamelessly stealing this idea from Jessica Lahey. She has a recurring monthly date where she reviews all the books she read that month. Book reviews are important for authors, and I want to get better about doing this.

So. I’m going to review them here and also online, but I’m going to do it a little differently. I’m only going to review the stuff I really liked. I don’t see a reason to spend my time writing about something I didn’t love; it’s just using up more of my energy. So only positive reviews.

These are the books I liked (or mostly liked) from August.

Blue Ticket (Sophie Mackintosh): You may have noticed that I’m a tad obsessed with this book. It’s not just the best book I read in August—it’s up there within the top tier of books I’ve ever read. Very high praise. Like Handmaid’s Tale, I could see myself reading this one again and again. I have her other book on my TBR pile, and she has earned an eternal free pass—regardless of what future books are about, I’ll give them a chance because I love her writing that much.

How to Be an Antiracist (Ibram X Kendi): Kendi is really good at distilling racism into easy to remember statements, which is important if you are carrying with you the desire to do better every single day. Sometimes I wish he’d unpack his examples a little more—he relies heavily on superlatives to describe people who are important to understanding his story—but it is a straightforward, important read and a good place to dive in if you want to understand your place in a larger system.

Seven Lies (Elizabeth Kay): This was such an engaging thriller—totally creepy—and I couldn’t wait to get back to it every night and read the next lie. It has a great framing, too—you don’t realize it until you’re close to the end, and then the whole book comes together. Very well done.

Rodham (Curtis Sittenfeld): I went back and forth on whether to include this book. Here’s the thing, there were parts I really enjoyed, especially early in the book. And I may have felt differently about this book if I read it when we weren’t in the middle of an election season. It turned me off to the real and fictional Bill and fictional Hillary Clinton (real Hillary managed to remain beloved in my heart because I held the book at arm’s length). Trump is always a turnoff everywhere, and his inclusion ruined parts of the book for me. I decided to include it as a book in this list because the last line made me sob.

Camp (Lev Rosen): This was such a sweet book that would have meant so much to me if I had read it as a teen. It made me miss camp, even though I definitely don’t miss that stage of trying to figure yourself out. It’s about a camp for LGBTQ+ teens, and how the narrator changes himself to attract his crush. Did I mention it’s so sweet? It was a joy to spend time with this book with all of the crap in this world.

The Lion’s Den (Katherine St. John): This is one of those books that I liked and liked and liked and then I LOVED. I didn’t see the end coming at all, which made it such a delicious twist. Like you think you understand where things are going, and then you realize that you knew nothing and the story was so brilliantly put together that if this book were a casino, the dealer would definitely win. And you wouldn’t mind because you’d be so impressed.

What did you read last month?