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

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We’ve talked about this before, but a recent Buzzfeed article drove it home. The current internet is not like the old internet; not just in temperament (remember when the internet was kind?) but in actual format. We moved from message boards and blogs to social media in ten short years.

“Sure, blogs still exist, but the promise of a scrappy new form of communication, open to anyone has been chewed up and spit out by social media. Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, and even Medium have all made the idea of a personal, updated website seem less useful to someone who just wants to post stuff about their life.”

Sigh.

I know life moves on, and it should move on. I don’t expect the internet in 2020 to look exactly like the internet in 2010, but I miss the blogging community of ten years ago. There are still plenty of us writing regularly, so there is always stuff to read. But I miss the blogs that shut down in the last ten years; the writers moving to social media.

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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.

It may or may not be International Blog Delurking Week. The first full week of January is when we’re supposed to slither out of the reading closet and check in with an “I’m here” comment. I’m not sure if anyone does this anymore. Back in the olden days, people would pop up out of the woodwork. Nowadays, not so much.

So let’s see what happens.

So welcome to International Blog Delurking Week. I make a badge every year to mark the occasion, and I give you full permission to right click and grab it for your very own.

My reward for remembering to do this (when I could have just as easily forgotten) is that you have to delurk for this worldwide holiday, which is super serious and important. Right?

It is fairly easy. Leave a comment in the comment section below admitting that you’re here. You can simply raise your hand and meekly admit that you’re here with a simple, one-word “here” comment; or you can proudly raise your hand and tell us all a bit about yourself (my preferred method); or you can tell me what type of cookie you’d be if you were a lump of cookie dough (see, I’m trying to make it easy for you by even providing a comment prompt). The point is that I want to know about the people who read me, since there is a huge discrepancy between the number of readers in actuality and the number of readers I actually know are reading. Or a tongue-twister like that.

And that’s all you have to do to celebrate.

So (clears throat to nudge you along), who is here?

We had a very chill New Year’s Eve. I listened to Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen while crocheting a bag. I couldn’t watch and crochet at the same time because I need bifocals, but I’m not getting them. So glasses off to crochet, which meant not being able to see Anderson Cooper’s facial expressions while he downed shots.

But I got to listen and imagine what was on the screen, all in the comfort of pyjamas and my bed.

Which is where I like to be on New Year’s Eve.

I hope you had an equally fulfilling night.

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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.

Dreaming of Diapers gives an overview of IVF #8 and #9. She is pre-retrieval on the latter cycle and holding hope. It is stressful to have cycles canceled, but she also acknowledges the fact that we have options (whereas in other time periods you had zero options). She writes, “At least I am fortunate to pursue this dream, I certainly won’t ever forget that…and also how unbelievably grateful I am to have my son…a true miracle…beyond a miracle really…” It’s an important lens to have.

Edenland gives a life update. It is an impossibly hard situation, but I love this thought towards the end: “I actually broke. My life was scattered everywhere around me and I was drowning. Someone came into my life and is actually helping me. Bono says a friend is someone who lets you help. I’m not used to accepting help but I couldn’t do this by myself anymore.” After so much upheaval, it’s a tiny light when people like that come into your life.

Finally, Much Ado About Nothing has an update. She is going through a health scare; trying to get answers. And she states exactly what she needs: “My doctor has ordered me to stop googling and talking to people because it’s making my anxiety so much worse. But if you have prayers, love, good thoughts, healing vibes, those I will take.”

The roundup to the Roundup: Hope you had a good New Year’s Eve. 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 December 27th and January 3rd) 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.

Happy new year!

One of my resolutions — surprise surprise — has to do with reading. I finished 57 books in 2019. At the same time, I actively avoided tomes such as Gnomon or Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell because I knew committing the time to those books would mean walking away with a lower overall number.

So this year, instead of counting books, I’m counting pages. I’m aiming for 20,200 (so 2020 with an extra zero), which makes longer books more enticing because I read faster the deeper I get in a book. This comes out to 55 pages per day… which may not be entirely realistic… or maybe it is. Who knows? I guess I’ll have a better sense after the first month.

And now… back to my book.

What are your resolutions?

The Guardian had a piece where a self-described pessimist attempted to become an optimist. Spoiler alert: he’s able to change his outlook. (I’m thinking that if Tim had not been moderately successful, he wouldn’t have spent 800 or so words talking about the experiment. So I guessed the ending.)

That’s all optimism or pessimism is… an outlook. He writes near the end of the article: “Once you accept that at least a portion of your pessimism is just a story you tell yourself – and an inaccurate one at that – it’s hard to hang on to it.” But the opposite is true, too.

Optimism is just a story you tell yourself — and an inaccurate one at that, too.

I spent the last year taking 15 minutes out of every day to better myself. And I really do feel like I’ve improved my life, either with new knowledge or a new way of seeing the world. I’ve rounded up new hobbies and joined groups. But I thought I would end the year somehow more optimistic. A sunnier person. I thought it was inevitable as I read book after book on happiness psychology.

But that didn’t happen. I’m still Melissa. And I’m still fairly pessimistic, though clearly there has to be some optimism in there or I wouldn’t believe I could better myself. Pessimism is just the story I tell myself. It’s interesting that I would choose to tell myself that story; that it would still feel true after spending a year listening to and thinking about other types of stories.

But the pessimism one fits me like a favourite coat. One that I believe I can take on and off but still opt to wear out into the cold, cold world.

It’s the end of a decade; the first decade where I spent every year in it blogging. Isn’t that a strange thought? From the beginning of 2010 until the end of 2019–I captured a decade of my life with words.

Cheers to 2020.