I read something that I found helpful recently, and I’m passing it along because I hear a lot of people doing this—including myself. It’s the idea of the “second arrow” or compounding pain with the secondary feelings that follow the first pain.

The Buddha taught that when we experience something painful — a physical illness, or the news that someone we love has died, or witnessing suffering all around us — it’s as if the world has shot an arrow into us … But often, what we then do is shoot a second arrow into ourselves. That second arrow is any thought we use to spin up a “story” around our pain, as a way of resisting simply being with the experience of pain. This can manifest in many different ways.

It’s in the family of the Pain Olympics except that it’s turned inward instead of outward. You can berate yourself for not dealing with things better or lash out in anger at the people around you because you’re upset with the situation. Second arrows can be worry or guilt. They’re the secondary crappy feelings that we trot out as if the first crappy feelings aren’t enough. But, of course, if we take a step back, we can see that they’re not the same thing. They’re two different sets of feelings; the initial bad thing (the pandemic) and then our reaction to it (all the other feelings).

I liked the article because it outlined how to put it into practice. How it feels on the page is very different from how it feels when you try to do it. Because it’s HARD. It’s hard not to let my mind go to the worst place and justify it with the fact that anxiety = preparation.

Passing it along in case it’s helpful to you, too.

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

*******

It feels morbid to talk about funerals in the middle of a pandemic—something I wouldn’t have thought twice about pre-Covid-19—but I really loved this tradition I saw in Atlas Obscura.

Funeral cookbooks.

In Thailand, funeral books preserve memories and photos of a person. They’re handed out at the ceremony as people say goodbye. And some families include recipes that the person made while alive. Isn’t that brilliant? So when you miss them, you can make that dish. And great recipes don’t die out with the person.

I have a chocolate chip cookie recipe that people like that I would include. Or my hamantaschen. Or you can include foods you liked (vs. recipes you created). What would be in your book?

*******

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 miss libraries, too.

They really were a place where you could say yes to everything. I mean, you still can if you’re checking out e-books, but it’s different because I’m always aware that when I check out an e-book, I’m using up one of the book checkouts. (Libraries pay for a two-year contract for each copy of the e-book or 52 checkouts. Then they have to buy a new copy.) I didn’t feel badly saying “yes” to a physical book and then not reading it, but I don’t do that with e-books because that wastes library budgets.

Prior to Covid-19, if I was in a bad mood, I’d go to the library and browse the shelves. Sometimes I went home with nothing. Sometimes I checked out a book just for the sake of bringing something home. Retail therapy without any money exchanged.

So this is exactly what I miss:

Because libraries are places of abundance. Where else can you look at something, be only 13% sure you want it, and bring it home anyway, risk-free? Where else can you say to your children, “Pick out anything you want, anything at all.” I’m not rich, but at the library I could be extravagant.

At the heart of that post is the real question that has been thumping in my heart every time I’ve seen our closed library: “Who knows how we’ll feel about sharing books with strangers in the future?”

I can’t imagine walking around the library just because. I can’t imagine going out anymore just because I feel like getting out of the house. I can’t imagine lingering in a place or wandering around or sharing an aisle with another human. I can’t imagine picking up books that other people have touched. I can’t imagine bringing them into my house.

I don’t want to live like that. I want to be a library person because “library person” was part of my identity. Without that, I don’t feel like myself. But I also don’t know how to go back to seeing that community space as a safe space. Which makes me really miss libraries.

Eadwynn didn’t survive the transfer to the bigger pot. Eadwynn II didn’t survive. Period. She was dead on arrival, though I still attempted to coax her back to life. I went back to the nursery to get Eadwynn III (third time is a charm!), and the horticulture teacher at the local high school was there. She stood 18 feet away from me in the tent and gave me a 10-minute lesson in gardening.

I used her advice to pick out a few new plants. Please meet Mary the chive plant, Edith the parsley plant, and Sybil the basil plant:

What I really need (clearly) is an indoor gardening class because when I checked out, the woman ringing me up said, “Just know, we’ll still have plants all summer if you need a fourth try.”

Don’t break my heart, little plants.

I am really bad at this, but I want plant 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:

• None… sniff.

Okay, now my choices this week.

Risakerslake has a beautiful set of watercolours based on embryo photos. She found an artist who makes them on Instagram. You provide the embryo picture, choose the colours, and the woman paints the print. What a cool keepsake.

Amateur Nester has a guest post about how Covid-19 is affecting IVF cycles. She writes: “They are open 365 days a year — weekends, holidays, even Christmas and Easter. It seemed our treatments always fell on holidays and Sundays (and my husband is a Pastor!). Thanksgiving, New Years were two of our treatment dates, just to name a few. Amazed the staff was available EVERY SINGLE DAY… and then… COVID. Closed, shut down, no IVF treatment cycles would proceed for the indefinite future.” Read how she’s navigating the emotional side of the experience.

No Kidding in NZ unpacks Mother’s Day. She wrote it before the day began. “This year, though, I know it might be harder. I think we’re all a bit more vulnerable at the moment. I know I am … I have had the occasional moments when I have felt emotions welling up. Unexpectedly so. Uncertainty does that to us. Loneliness does that too.” Mother’s Day can be hard any year, but the pandemic amplifies emotions.

Lastly, Searching for Our Silver Lining has a post about balancing the return to the old normal with looking forward after The Great Pause. She explains: “But my hope is that despite the attempts at gaslighting, people will not be able to easily forget what has come from this period. That in addition to making right all the wrongs, they remember the good that came out of this. And that combined, it makes us a better species.” The post is like getting a hug from afar.

The roundup to the Roundup: Still attempting to have plant friends. 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 May 8 – 15) 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.

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 April.

The House in the Cerulean Sea (T. J. Klune): In another time and place, I may have smiled wanly while reading this book, but encountering it during the pandemic was like being thrown a happiness lifesaver. It is such a sweet story about a social worker for magical children who is sent to a remote orphanage to report on the conditions. I loved every character in the book, and I still have Bobby Darin’s “Beyond the Sea” stuck in my head. But mostly I laughed aloud at a time when I really needed a good laugh.

In Five Years (Rebecca Serle): What you think this book is and what this book actually is isn’t clear until you close the last page. And while that normally would have made me annoyed, in this case, I was blown away. Like literally blown away by the ending. It’s a 3 or 4-star book that becomes a 4 or 5-star if you stick with it to the last page. And I can’t reveal any more than that or you won’t get the big mouth drop when you realize that you had it all wrong.

The Secret History (Donna Tartt): It’s a classic. And there’s a reason it’s a classic. A classmate is murdered—you know from the opening that he’s dead—but it takes the whole book until you understand why and how the murderers did it. It’s chilling, and maybe not the best book to read when we’re all feeling a little stressed out by the pandemic. But still an amazing read to put on your TBR list for another time.

Eight Perfect Murders (Peter Swanson): I enjoyed it, but I also had big feelings about the book (see yesterday’s post). So… I give this one a solid maybe. I have the feeling I’d like other books by the author, though I don’t know if you’ll love this one unless you’ve already read all the books that he ruins or if you really don’t care about spoilers. I do care about spoilers, so I had mixed feelings about this book, but it was an enjoyable read, that fact aside.

What did you read last month?