I’m reading Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell about his bookshop in Scotland. I picked it up because it was on sale (and not in our library system) and didn’t know a lot about it. But I’m absolutely smitten by it and have marked three passages so far.

The first came early on in the book––page 31––when he went to clear the estate of a childless/childfree couple and pick up their books for resale in his shop. He explains,

The experience of clearing a deceased estate is one familiar to most people in the second-hand book trade and it is one to which you slowly become desensitised, except in situations like this, in which the dead couple is childless. For some reason the photographs on the wall – the husband in his smart RAF uniform, the wife as a young woman visiting Paris – evoke a kind of melancholy that is not there in deals where couples are survived by their children. Dismantling such a book collection seems to be the ultimate act of destruction of their character – you are responsible for erasing the last piece of evidence of who they were. This woman’s book collection was a record of her character: her interests, as close as anything she left to some kind of genetic inheritance. Perhaps that’s why her nephew waited so long before asking us to look at the books.

I sat with that passage for a long time. It was written by someone who––as far as I know––doesn’t have children, and his experience, perhaps, has informed his beliefs. But I had a hard time tying it to parenthood. Dismantling any person’s book collection is about releasing their character, and hopefully all of us are more than just our book collections.

Meaning, that concept of the ways we announce to the world “This is who I am” happens through our possessions, even when there are children, AND our possessions or children are not the only statement we leave behind.

Moreover, the children we raise aren’t the only carriers of our story. My former students, for example, carry part of my story. And that story of who I am and what matters to me (they would all tell you the French Revolution; it was the one unit where I cried every year, without fail) is no less important than the story that the twins know.

Unless you never leave your home or interact with other people, that evidence continues to exist, whether we like it or not.

What are your thoughts?

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

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Halloween costume motivation lingered at a strong zero throughout the month of October. Back in September, I entertained the idea of going as Random Party Guest at Downton Abbey, but I never bought or made the dress, and now I cannot imagine sitting around outside in thin material in order to celebrate a holiday.

I need a costume that is essentially my pyjamas. Like a onesie but not a onesie because those look hard to pee in. So… my pyjamas. I need to go out as a Person About to Go to Bed.

Are you dressing up this week? What are you going as?

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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.

Three posts popped up in my Reader or on a listserv this week that all felt worth mentioning separately from the Roundup.

The first was in The Atlantic and titled “All the Pregnancies I Couldn’t Talk About.” The author chronicles her nine pregnancies and one child. She writes,

We do not talk openly about miscarriage and fertility in America, and yet miscarriage is more common than the flu … For years, I never told anyone about my miscarriages, because as a professional American woman, I’d been indoctrinated to mute the implications of my gender. I should never hint at the idea that my body is capable of reproduction or that I might someday want to start a family.

It’s a moving article, but it will also make you want to get up and cheer. And stand behind her and shout “yes!” because… “I’m older and stronger now, and with some distance I can see that refusing to talk openly about miscarriage is utterly and inexcusably ridiculous. America lacks a requisite societal maturity in how we discuss pregnancy and professionalism.” She’s leading the revolution, and I’m throwing my support behind her.

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The New Yorker has an article about the Polish government seizing the frozen embryos of single women. The author states: “That summer, the laws covering fertility treatment in Poland were shifting. Informed by the Vatican’s absolute opposition to IVF, the socially conservative Law and Justice Party, known by its Polish acronym, PiS, had put forward legislation that would ban IVF and criminalize its provision.”

It’s a look at how anti-IVF sentiment can grow inside a country. It’s terrifying and informative; anyone concerned about reproductive rights (all of us, right?) should read it.

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Finally, a post that is not actually about infertility (or… maybe it is… the author doesn’t state what the injections are for) but about giving yourself (or someone else) an injection. If you’re scared of needles, it’s a great little trick. While I didn’t do it for pain reasons, I did always line up my needle with my skin before pulling back an inch and then plunging in. Makes the shot so much easier.

Watching videos without headphones on your phone in a waiting room… just no. We’re all adults. We know this isn’t okay. Except that it happened not once but twice in the same day in two separate waiting rooms.

I woke up one morning with hives, snapped a picture, and emailed it to my doctor, asking if I should do something about it. I not-so-secretly hoped that she would write back and say, “Nah, take a Benadryl. It’s all good.” Instead her nurse wrote that I should be seen that day.

So I went down to the doctor’s office where there was first a middle-aged man watching sports and news videos on his phone at the loudest volume. Everyone was staring at him, but he just took that as a sign to let all of us know how much he was enjoying the videos.

Then, after the appointment, I needed to go to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription. I had to wait for it to be filled and the only empty chair was across from a woman who was FaceTiming her sister. Again, video and responses both at top volume.

There were signs in both waiting rooms asking people not to use their mobile phone at all, but, clearly, that isn’t enforced.

It made me want to never leave home.

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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:

• None… sniff…

Okay, now my choices this week.

Inconceivable writes about being in the space where she knows the active part of family building is finished, but she’s still waiting for the results of their final cycle. She writes, “It seems a bit fitting that in the same month I got the PCOS diagnosis back in 2012, we are wrapping up the last loose ends in 2019. Same sunshine, same crisp air, same bright trees and dusty corn fields.” I love the quote at the end of the post. Send her good thoughts.

The Uterus Monologues asks the eternal question: “But why?” She explains, “This, essentially, is what happens to your brain after you lose a baby. It short-circuits to six-year-old brain: But why? But why. But why. But why. And none of the grown-ups can answer you.” Her post unpacks this “black hole in your brain” filled with all of the questions and none of the answers.

Lastly, a two-fer from Of Needles and Noodles, who is tearing up the blogosphere this month with a post-a-day challenge. The first is a post about weather, island life, and an IVF cycle. What do you do when you’re dependent on a ferry to get you to your monitoring appointments? The other post begins: “It’s hard to explain the feeling of missing a family member who’s never been there to someone who has never experienced it.” I love this.

The roundup to the Roundup: Headphones were invented for a reason. 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 October 18th and 25th) 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 love Robin Sloan’s emails. The newsletter will come to an end soon–he promised that in the beginning of the project–but for the time being, he either points out interesting things or makes interesting statements. I don’t mind because it’s more about what he shares vs. the writer himself.

In one of the September newsletters, he talked about this concept of building the end into the beginning. He writes:

There are all these people starting email newsletters suddenly, and I’m glad! It’s good! That said, I hope some of them have considered ahead of time how their newsletters might end. Every internet project is sorta by default open-ended, and I don’t think that’s healthy.

His recommendation is to treat every project as you would a book: beginning, middle, end. You know when a book is complete. You can feel good, knowing you wrote the story across the finish line.

A blog, on the other hand, is an amorphous beast. You either keep writing it forever––this blog is over 13 years old––or you fade away, sometimes without a goodbye. But very few people start a blog and say on the first post how long they’ll write–and then end it when they say they will. Still, with no edge to bump against, how do you know when you’ve accomplished something?

I don’t look at this blog as a project. I look at it as an online home; a space where I live on the Internet. But I’ve been chewing his words as a reader. Would I start reading a blog (not a newsletter) if I knew the blog was going to end? Would I be more likely to skip it because part of blogging is becoming attached to the voice and the writer–not the plotline?

I don’t know. Would you start reading a blog if the person said in the first post, “This blog will be completed on X date” or “This blog will end after X happens”?