When I reject my own idea, it feels like such a moment of superiority. I delete a sentence from a story I’m writing, deciding it’s now garbage, and I self-congratulate for catching it and making the story better.

If an editor does the exact same thing, I want to curl up on the sofa and sob.

Actually, I curl up on the sofa and sob. It’s not just a “want.”

Adam Grant had a piece in the New York Times on rejection, and he pointed out why it feels horrible:

Apparently, this was adaptive in our evolutionary past. If rejection didn’t sting, you might have been perfectly comfortable leaving your tribe, which would not bode well for your survival. But it’s left us wired to overreact to everyday rejections. If you’ve ever given a presentation and felt crushed by the one scowling face in a room full of smiles, you know what I mean.

Isn’t that interesting? It’s there to keep us a little uncomfortable, a little scared. Because if we didn’t worry at all, we would leap forward, unafraid to try and be rejected because rejection wouldn’t have the same negative meaning.

I know I went into a profession — writing — that has a lot of rejection built into the experience. Perhaps more than the average job. I love to write, but I hate rejection. It makes for a cringe-filled existence.

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

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I am aware that there are many people who do not reread books or rewatch television shows or movies. I am not one of those people. I love rereading books, and research backs up my assertion that rereading (or rewatching) is just as enjoyable as the first time. So there.

The question, of course, is how do you decide? There are some books that I know as I’m reading it (or shows that I know as I’m watching them) that I’m going to want to read again and again, even before I know the ending. And others that I enjoy so much the first time around, but I also know that I probably won’t seek them out a second time.

I think it comes down to characters I want to spend time with. As in, if they were real people, I would want to hang out with them.

What about you?

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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.

And just like that, I have high schoolers.

The twins had their moving on ceremony from middle school this week. They’re enrolled in high school classes for the fall. And in between is a bittersweet summer where they know that they just said goodbye to one stage of life and have no clue what the next one will be like.

It’s my last buffer before college.

If I think about it too much, I start to cry, so I’m trying not to think about it too much.

When the twins were very little, they did this preemie thing when they felt stressed. Instead of looking at the object or person directly, they turned their head and looked at it out of the corner of their eye. They did this until about age five, and I find myself doing that now with their future. I can’t look at it head on in my mind. I need to turn my head and look at it out of the corner of my eye because it’s too emotional to take in.

I want them to grow up. I want them to experience college. I want them to get jobs and homes and relationships and (if they want) children. But I also want them to live here. Like in my home so we can talk every night. But I get that’s not what they’ll want down the road. Roots and wings and all that stuff.

So this is it. I get four more years, the last onion layer peeled away before college. I can’t wait to see how these next years unfold, even if I cry through the whole thing.

Our town has a peacock problem. Peacocks keep escaping. They are all different peacocks and different peacock owners reporting the birds on the loose. There is now a peacock hotline so people can let the peacock catchers know whenever they see one walking down the street.

Our town listserv is usually filled with petty arguments, but the last few weeks have been a running conversation about the birds. People either (1) mention where they just saw a peacock, (2) muse on why the peacocks keep getting free, and (3) lament that they have not seen a peacock.

I’m in the third camp. I haven’t seen an escaped peacock… yet. That’s my growth mindset reminding me that there will always be peacocks and always be a chance that this could be my lucky day if I keep trying to see one.

Was I aware that this many people owned peacocks prior to this point? No. Am I delighted to know that I am surrounded by so many clever peacocks? Yes, yes, I am.

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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.

In Quest of a Binky Moongee compares two graduations; her feelings during one four years ago when she wondered if she would reach parenthood, and her feelings now, knowing that her children are here and a graduation is in her future. She writes, “Being able to celebrate my kids at their middle school, high school, and even college graduation is not a far-fetched dream anymore.” I smiled reading this.

FinallyMyLinesNow has a post about attending Day of Pediatric Remembrance, a loss event at the hospital. She went to remember her three daughters. She writes, “They recognized both the pain of our loss and the joy of A & T in a meaningful way … It also felt wonderful to honor Alexis, Zoe, and Quinn. The last 14 weeks have been so focused on A & T that I was glad to spend some time on our other girls.” It’s a moving post about remembering and grieving as a group.

Lastly, it is Father’s Day this weekend in the US. Life Without Baby writes about childless men on Father’s Day. She begins with an interesting question: “Mother’s Day is pretty much the worst day of the year for those of us who didn’t get to be moms. But what about Father’s Day and the men in our lives? Do they feel the loss of fatherhood in the same way we feel it for motherhood?” Join the conversation over on her blog.

The roundup to the Roundup: Peacocks on the loose! 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 June 7th and June 14th) 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.

So I read this quote last week because it was at the top of the Skimm, not because I follow boxing. Andy Ruiz, Jr, won a heavyweight title. He’s the first person of Mexican descent to do that. And he said after he won: “This is what I have been dreaming about. This is what I have been working hard for, and I can’t believe I just made my dreams come true.”

I just made my dream come true.

I couldn’t stop thinking about his words because I was thinking about the role I played in making my dream come true, which was parenthood. I wanted to be a mother, and while I grew them (somewhat) to term (sort of), I didn’t make them. I mean, the doctor and his staff made them in the sense that they wouldn’t exist without their intervention, and science accomplished the rest. I may have played a very active role in raising them, but I played a pretty passive role in making them come true.

I need to think like that because if the opposite is true — if I actively made them — then I also actively lost all of their siblings. But I don’t think I really got a say in either case. I didn’t make them happen, and I didn’t make the other babies not happen. That was just my body acting independently from my will.

His words made me think about how powerful it is when you make your own dreams come true. When you know that it was your investment of time or energy or talent that led you to a moment. Or maybe it’s the size of the wish; when you didn’t really know whether or not you would be able to achieve it, and then suddenly the moment is here and you know and you acknowledge the very real otherwise.

Because that’s just it. The missing part of the story. I mean, I was happy for him, but I thought about all the other silent people behind his words. Yes, he made his dream come true, but what about all the people we don’t hear from because they didn’t get that moment? It’s so odd to think that there are all these silent people, other potential heavyweight champions, and we don’t know their names or their thoughts because we only hold up the person who is celebrating.

Behind everyone who achieves their dreams are a long line of people who didn’t get to tell us their thoughts. I guess I want to hear their thoughts because there is a lot to learn from the journey vs. focusing on that singular moment, that destination.

I’m not sure why his words affected me so much.