Once upon a time, I was thinking about going back to graduate school for a degree in library science. Like teachers and doctors, the world always has a need for a librarian. It seemed like a stable job, and I’ve realized over the years that––for me––job stability is connected to job satisfaction. My favourite jobs: the ones that had no end-point and could potentially continue forever. My least favourite jobs: the ones that were always in-flux with layoffs and sweeping changes.

Even if you come through the layoffs, you don’t feel comfortable on the other side. You’re just uncomfortable with a job vs. uncomfortable without a job. Believe me, I’d rather have a job than no job, but I’d also rather be comfortable and in a quiet job than feeling unstable but in an exciting job.

But I spoke recently with a librarian, and she told me all about how often librarians lose their jobs due to budget cuts. So much for that.

I recently came across this interesting post that’s a few years old. The author talks about designing your ideal education plan if money and time weren’t an issue. He writes about how his education plan wouldn’t be based in the classroom, per se, but as I thought it through, I decided that mine would. I would love to be back in a classroom, learning something new.

I would love to get a degree in library sciences. I’d love to study at Oxford and would spend the rest of my life starting sentences with, “When I was at Oxford…” Then I would switch universities and go somewhere else and then somewhere else and then somewhere else, jumping from university to university across the world.

I would take an enormous crate of books with me and spend a year in the Maldives, reading on the water. I would travel, of course, and learn a Scandinavian language properly by speaking it in the everyday world rather than in a classroom. I would apprentice with a mechanic and learn how to fix a car. And then I would apprentice with a zoologist and learn how to care for various animals.

And then when I got back to the normal world, I would settle down in a small town near water that needs a librarian and can promise funding the position for at least the next fifty years. And that’s where you would find me with my wealth of knowledge.

What would you study during your ten-year education plan and what career would you take afterward?

It’s Friday the 13th. If you look back at all the old Roundups, you will see that I have a compulsive need to point out that it is Friday the 13th every time the Roundup falls on the 13th. Telling you this serves zero purpose.

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I wanted to see Frozen 2, and ChickieNob agreed to go with me last weekend. I pointed out to her that when I was growing up, the only thing Disney offered me were princesses who didn’t resemble me who spent their time singing about princes. They were mostly running away from vs. running to–or, really, sleeping or waiting–and they were the animated personification of vanilla pudding.

She gets complex heroes who are finding their own way in the world and discovering on their adventures that they are “enough.” Complete. Their damage is where the light gets in, and their differences are cherished and celebrated because those traits save the day.

Plus they get better music now.

And I like Olaf.

I would have gone to see it alone, but I’m glad she came with me so I have someone to sing “Into the Unknown” with while I drive.

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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.

Hopelessly Infertile and Surrounded by Fertiles has a post about being invited to a baby shower-ish event. What non-Jewish people don’t realize is that our baby events come after the baby is here. So the baby is at the event. I mean, they often get tucked away in a quiet space so perhaps it’s not as in-your-face as a big pregnant belly. But I always found Jewish baby events hard because the baby is present. She writes, “I’ve now received several invites to this event, like the new mom is somehow worried I’ll miss it if she doesn’t use every available avenue to deliver this invitation from text message to post. Or maybe she just wants to beat me over the head with it. THUMP. I’m a mom! THUMP! I’m a mom! THUMP! Did I mention I’m a NEW MOM!” Laughing and cringing at the same time.

No Kidding in NZ has four rules for getting through Christmas. It is literally a holiday about a baby. It may be really hard for you this year. But, as she points out in the first rule, it’s just one day. It’s all great advice: go dive in.

An Unexpected Family Outing also has advice for Christmas for grieving parents. I love the idea of an ornament swap with another grieving family. Or to hang a stocking. She has 19 ideas for how to remember your child during the holidays.

Lastly, Inconceivable! has a post about what she did after wrapping up her family building efforts. She writes, “When Arthur called an end to our efforts on trying to conceive, I found myself in the midst of a bit of an identity crisis.  I’m not sure why this surprised me – I’ve spent the better part of a decade trying to get pregnant and then stay pregnant in ways that were invasive, emotional, time-consuming, and expensive.” She makes space and fills herself with music. It’s a lovely little post.

The roundup to the Roundup: It’s Friday the 13th. I loved Frozen 2. 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 6th and 13th) 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 time for yet another deep thought brought to you from a passage in Shaun Bythell’s Diary of a Bookseller. I’ll start by saying that I love new books. If a book has been published recently, I justify the cost of a clean, new copy by knowing that my purchase helped the author’s sales rank so I actually just gave myself the gift of possible future books because it will help them get another book deal.

But if it’s an older book and sales figures aren’t going to affect future book deals, I save money (and trees) and buy used. We have great second-hand book options around me, and I go several times per week. Can’t get the amazing finds if you don’t hang out in the store and grab them as they come in.

But I’ve never thought about the book donors––the regular people who provide the books I’m buying at the second-hand shop.

Bythell writes about how interesting it is to hold a book that you know belonged or was touched by someone of historical significance. He says on page 275:

Researchers discovered this year that our brains have an automatic reaction to believe that death happens to other people. We can consciously override that state––clearly, that is exactly what I’m doing now by considering my own demise by writing about this––but our natural tendency is to shield ourselves from really believing it.

The Guardian reported on the study, and one of the researchers explained: “We have this primal mechanism that means when the brain gets information that links self to death, something tells us it’s not reliable, so we shouldn’t believe it.”

The senior writer for the study took it a step further: “We shield ourselves from existential threats, or consciously thinking about the idea that we are going to die, by shutting down predictions about the self, or categorising the information as being about other people rather than ourselves.”

We’ve done ourselves a disservice as a society by tucking death into dark corners. We talk about that a lot when it comes to miscarriage, stillbirth, and neonatal death, but it applies to all death. We don’t really talk about death or encourage people to learn about death. Except, of course, in death cafes.

Is this macabre? Maybe a little. But I thought that it was fascinating that we can rationally believe something is true and talk ourselves out of it at the very same time.

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

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The Wolvog has been trying to get a sandwich from a new-ish grilled cheese bar in our town, but every time we’ve gone, they’ve been closed. Last week, the timing worked out that we needed dinner, I didn’t have time to cook, and the place was open. He got the grilled cheese sandwich of his dreams.

I jokingly said in the car as we pulled out of the parking lot, “You’re not supposed to meet your heroes.” I meant it in the “I hope you’re not disappointed” sense. (But… do you get it? Because he didn’t… a “hero” is a type of sandwich… Bad joke or terrible joke?) It turns out that he was disappointed. The sandwich was awful.

I met my hero––several times. Norton Juster. The writer who made me want to be a writer. I’ve had tea with him and dinner with him. I’ve hung out after a performance with him and conducted phone interviews with him. I got really really lucky that my hero turned out to be just as awesome as I hoped.

But it could have gone the other way. It could have been a bad interaction. You take your chances when you meet your heroes.

Would you want to meet your hero? Have you met your hero?

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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.