People have been restarting their blogs. Or posting updates on Facebook with specific notes that they want to remember this experience. I’ve tried to record thoughts here or in my bullet journal as much as possible.

It’s a weird thing to want to remember; this time period ranges from boring to scary to sad. But forgetting feels equally terrible. I’m living it; I want to remember it.

Apparently, we probably won’t.

Or, I won’t. People who are at home won’t.

“For many of us—especially those isolating at home—memory researchers say it’s more likely it will become a blur … Those on the frontlines, like healthcare workers, will remember it differently. They’ll witness the toll on human life firsthand and emotions like grief, fear, and anxiety will heighten their memories.”

It’s harder to hold memories in the brain when every day blends. One part of the article states: “We’re likely to merge together many different memories—ending up with a generic sense of what it was like, and we may struggle to come up with specific event memories later on.”

Is it important to remember? I mean, it isn’t like remembering your hand being burned so you don’t touch the stove again. We’ll remember the big things, such as making sure we have certain items in the house “just in case” or giving each other physical space while out in public. We just may not remember all the individual moments that we’re talking about right now. We may not remember the individual press conferences, though I think I’ll always remember the way the local grocery store manager cheered us on every single morning via Facebook.

Though maybe not her individual posts.

Are you doing anything to try to hold on to the memories of this time period? Or are you letting them float past, knowing you’ll hold on to the general feeling if not the day-to-day memories?

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

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I’ve entered the “what will life be like after Covid-19” stage of isolation. I’m no longer checking the daily case trackers every hour. Instead, I’m seeking out articles that break down what may happen next. What does life look like after Covid-19?

And what do we mean by “after” if we can’t eradicate it or make a vaccine that always works?

The articles aren’t always cheerful: “When the coronavirus outbreak is under control, aversion to strangers or large groups, and the threat of infection they could pose, might echo in our minds for years.”

Like so many things, we won’t know until we know. Until we live it. But that doesn’t mean that people won’t try to think through what may happen next. And that’s where I am right now; devouring articles as they pop up in my feed, trying on the thoughts like clothing, seeing how they fit.

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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.

Rebecca Solnit is so smart.

At least, she is in her essay about how fairytales are the stories we need in this moment. For one, “fairytale characters are given tasks that are often unfair verging on impossible, imposed by the more powerful.” In this case, our more powerful is a virus. “They are often mastered by alliances with other overlooked and undervalued players.” Essential workers such as grocery workers and truck drivers come to mind.

Solnit writes, “We [a]re ourselves in the middle of a fairytale, and that at present our difficult task [i]s to stay home.”

Which doesn’t sound hard when you write it out. Stay home. That’s what I do all the time, anyway.

But somehow, it’s really hard. Not seeing people is hard. Constantly being on Zoom calls is hard. Not being able to nip into the library or grab a head of lettuce for Linus or hang out in the post office speaking with a neighbour is hard because all those things are normal. They’re not really interactions I crave, but I miss them because they represent normal and non-scary. And what we’re left with is abnormal and scary.

The wolf in the woods.

Somehow, having it said makes me feel better: “We are in the middle and the end is not in sight. We are waiting, which is among most people’s least favorite thing to do, when it means noticing that you have taken up residence in not knowing.”

We’re telling ourselves stories right now. And that’s okay, as long as we know they’re just stories until we get to the end of the book and we actually know what happens next.

We’ve been watching cooking videos from Da Mario’s, a favourite restaurant in London. The chef is posting recipes from the menu and explaining why he does things. Like did you know that if you add vegetable stock to a cream sauce, it won’t clump up? So once or twice a week, we schedule in Da Mario nights, pretending that we’re at the restaurant and our substitutions are close enough to the real deal.

Plus he made me cry when he got choked up during his first video.

What are you eating?

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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:

• “When Our World Shifts Beneath Us” (No Kidding in NZ)
• “Jealous of Fiction” (Stirrup Queens) — thank you, Jess!
• “Die Kinder anderer” (Elaine ohne Kind)
• “The ‘Have Children or Do Something Big’ Dilemma” (Different Shores)
• “Life at a Different Altitude” (Stirrup Queens) — thank you, KatherineA

Okay, now my choices this week.

Infertile Phoenix received the perfect understanding of her own heart via a response to a comment. She explains, “I wanted children because I wanted to love them. I have a lot of love to give.” You’ll need to read the whole post (and Elaine’s post, too) to follow the thought, but it gets to the core of why infertility and loss hurts so deeply.

By the Brooke wonders how the current situation will remain with her kids into the future. She writes: “I keep thinking of ways that this experience is shaping my children’s lives in ways that might have real and lasting impacts. Like, hopefully they’ll be very good handwashers. But also, they might never touch people.” The post is an unpacking of a lot of thoughts that are in my head, too, of what life will be like down the road.

Res Cogitatae has dusted off her blog (welcome back!) to ask why she is angry all the time if things are generally okay? The two voices in her head are also the ones in mine: “The voice that says (truthfully) that in the grand scheme of things EVERYTHING IS FINE and the voice that says (also truthfully) that THIS IS TERRIBLE AND I HATE IT.” Read through the twists and turns in her brain; there is probably something in there (or many things) that you will have you saying, “me too.”

Finally, My Path to Mommyhood writes about the draining quality of quarantine stress. Even though things are going well with work, days of screens becomes evenings of screens. She is helping her students tremendously, but it takes something out of each teacher who is spending the day online, reaching out to their students. She writes about comparative suffering (akin but not exactly the Pain Olympics): “It’s basically feeling like empathy is a pie and I can’t feel exhausted for myself while there are healthcare workers out there who are working endless 12 hour shifts, so my frustration and exhaustion isn’t as bad as theirs. She said you have to have empathy for yourself and realize that everyone has the right to their suffering without comparing to others.” So, yes, let it out. And be kind to yourself.

The roundup to the Roundup: What are you eating? 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 April 24 – May 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.

It’s hard to imagine life ever entering a third stage; as in, if what we thought of as normal life is stage one, and our current normal is stage two, there must be a stage three that is not stage one OR stage two. A time when we can leave our house, but we’re still carrying baggage from being in lockdown, so our normal looks different once again.

The third stage.

I think about 2023. Yes, by 2023, we must be well into the third stage. 2022? Yes, probably in the third stage zone. I keep trying to creep the date closer and closer to now—could we possibly be in the third stage this summer? How about June? I’m pretty sure it can’t be May.

I have to believe that the third stage exists—not just for my sanity, but because I can look at history and know that people live through time periods and come out the other side. These types of reminders are getting me through thinking about the here and now.

There’s a reason these lines were the most highlighted ones in the piece:

But I don’t worry for long. Because I’ve read a lot of history, and I know that scary unknowns aren’t unique to our present circumstances. We actually live with a lot more knowledge, understanding, and predictability than people have throughout history.

Leaving this post here in case you need to gain some breathing space, too.