The New York Times recently had an article about a woman who teaches people how to live civilization-free. It’s survival skills for a world in which there is no end to the survival period. As in, she’s not teaching you how to get through an experience. She’s teaching you how to adapt and continue on as the experience becomes the new normal. Or the old normal because she’s returning people to how we lived before cities and cars and books and hospitals.

The reporter spoke to people who live this way all year round after going through a six month Stone Age Immersion:

“People say, ‘Oh when the apocalypse comes. …’ What are you talking about? It’s here. I’m a collapsist,” she said. “I’m not invested in maintaining the comforts we have.”

A collapsist. It certainly feels like something is collapsing. It has felt this way for a long time; before COVID-19. There’s a fin-de-siècle, pessimistic odor in the air, except that we’re not actually in a fin-de-siècle. We shouldn’t feel like there’s a proverbial cliff in front of us.

I don’t think I could live like the people in the article. Not just the idea of living close to nature… I mean, I’m not really a nature person, especially when there are crickets outside. But because I associate thinking about the future with hope. Nature is lovely, but I think the thing I love about cities is the innovation. And that is what I would miss. I don’t know if I could feel hope if living backwards was my existence.

I would hopefully survive the collapse of civilization because that’s what humans do; we continue on. But there was something that made me so sad as I read the article.

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

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We need to clean out the basement again. I am excellent at forgetting that I want to do this task (out of sight, out of mind), but Caroline Crampton inadvertently reminded me with her newsletter.

She’s the creator of the podcast Shedunnit (which is the best), and she writes an irregularly-sent newsletter about random stuff. A recent one was about taking stuff to the dump and the joy of getting rid of things you no longer need.

There is a joy in it. There is also an anxiety that I am getting rid of something I may regret getting rid of in the future. But I still need to do it. And I know I’ll feel joy in having the space.

What have you gotten rid of recently?

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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.

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 February.

I had a great reading month.

Followers (Megan Angelo): I’ve written about this book a lot, and I have one more post that I’m waiting to write because it will have spoilers (I’ll warn you, I promise), and I want to give people time to read the book if they’re going to read the book. Contrasting an imagined future with a fictional now gave a deep look into how we use (or abuse) social media and reality television. Celebrity culture, in general. I liked her writing style; I found the whole thing engaging and enjoyable to read.

The Hand of the Wall (Maureen Johnson): It’s the third and final book in the Truly Devious series. It’s such a fantastic set of YA books. Loved, loved, loved them, but I’m a sucker for most books set at boarding schools. I didn’t guess the ending, even though I guessed tiny sub-mysteries along the way. I miss spending time with Stevie, but impressed that the whole series wrapped up nicely.

The Hunting Party (Lucy Foley): A solid four-star read. There were clunky moments in the book, and I didn’t love most of the characters… but somehow the whole thing worked? I know that doesn’t sound like the most generous review, but the story was engrossing. Or, I wanted to keep reading to see what happened next. I almost avoided this book because… not into hunting. But hunting plays a tiny role in the overall book.

The Sentence is Death (Anthony Horowitz): My all-time favourite book of the month. It’s the second in this series––the first was The Word is Murder. This book is just… fun. And funny. And moving. And I loved it so much that I felt sad when the book ended and then panicked when I couldn’t figure out if there was a third book in the works. I love everything Horowitz writes, so I’m not surprised that I liked this as much as I did. But he’s brilliant. Just brilliant.

What did you read last month?

Remember Melissa from last week who thought she was prepared for COVID-19 because she owned a functioning thermometer? Who was THAT Melissa? This Melissa does not feel prepared for this at all.

This Melissa keeps refreshing this site. (It’s pulling in the data from WHO and CDC.) In the time it took her to drive from her home to her mammogram, 3000+ people were diagnosed with COVID-19. Three new countries had cases.

This Melissa feels really uncertain.

This Melissa bought herself a new mop because she cannot stop cleaning. Because that is what all incarnations of Melissa do when they’re nervous. Melissa loves her new mop. She loves her new grapefruit-scented floor cleaner. Melissa wants to stay up all night cleaning and cleaning and cleaning.

Because this Melissa doesn’t know what to do with herself.

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For the first time… ever(?)… we didn’t go to Purim services. I mean, we did Purim in the sense that we made mishloach manot. But we didn’t go to a Purim party or megillah reading. We didn’t celebrate it in the traditional sense.

It didn’t really have to do with COVID-19. I had gotten home from volunteering, and I felt tired. The last thing I wanted to do after showering was go out again. We didn’t have costumes. So I phoned it in and watched Fleabag instead.

And felt like a terrible person afterward.

Social media made the whole thing weirder because I wasn’t just missing it; I was watching everyone else celebrating it. I didn’t have FOMO because I didn’t really want to be there. I had GOMO––the Guilt of Missing Out.

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It’s Friday the 13th. You guys know I have a compulsive need to mention this every time the Roundup falls on the 13th. As you were.

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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:

• “That’s My Story and I’m Sticking To It” (Inconceivable!)
• “Up On the Watershed: The View from 45” (Bereaved and Blessed)

Okay, now my choices this week.

The Road Less Travelled has a post about the playground she can see from their window. She writes, “The weather hasn’t been great, and so the playground hasn’t been used very much so far. And to be honest, I really didn’t give it that much thought. But it’s gradually starting to get a little milder and sunnier outside — and the other day, we spotted a couple of obviously delighted small children climbing all over the equipment as an adult stood by supervising.” It’s a bittersweet post about her old house and old dreams as well as the new ones she’s looking forward to.

Much Ado About Nothing writes about infertility (or, more accurately, PCOS) in the next generation. Her daughter is facing a PCOS diagnosis, and it’s hard for her not to think of her own experience with infertility. She writes, “I know what IF and miscarriage did to me and so many of my friends and all of you out there. Thinking my kid might have to know the same pain just kills me.” She’s asking for words of wisdom if you’ve experienced PCOS yourself.

My Path to Mommyhood has a post about other paths as she goes through a few what ifs. She explains: “I think that’s why it was so hard when the family with two boys moved in to our old house, and the house got the family we tried to make happen, but only after we’d left. Seeing toys in the yard and hearing neighbors talk about the life in the house because of those two young people gives me another window into what could have been.” It made me wistful to think about these mental trips we take to alternate worlds.

Lastly, I love No Kidding in NZ’s post about turning away from guilt and honouring instead. She writes, “Maybe I didn’t want children enough if I could begin to feel joy. Maybe, if I could begin to feel joy now, it meant that I didn’t deserve to have children. Were my fleeting moments of pleasure, or laughter, a betrayal of the babies I had lost, or those I would never have?” Instead of feeling guilt over experiencing moments of joy, she sees it as a way to honour herself, her partner, and her losses by living well.

The roundup to the Roundup: I am not prepared at all. I skipped Purim. It’s Friday the 13th. 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 March 6 – 13) 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 hate losing things.

I even hate it when other people lose things.

I was once traveling in Spain with a friend when she lost a watch with sentimental value. We were having a hard time at that point in the trip because we were both sick, and we had a miserable time in Córdoba.

We returned to the train station to leave the city, and I told my friend that we should check the lost and found because we first noticed the watch was missing when we entered the city a few days earlier. What if someone found it on a train? My friend thought this was a terrible idea; what were the chances that someone turned in a watch? It was a waste of time to ask.

But she humoured me and watched me pantomime a lost watch at the station desk. “Oro? Plata?” were the only two words I knew in Spanish that applied to this situation. The man looked up and said, “Si!” He reached under the desk AND PULLED OUT HER WATCH.

It was probably the best moment of the whole trip.

The moral of the story is “always ask.”

Even if you’re outside of Japan, which has the most amazing-sounding lost-and-found system… ever.

What have you lost recently?