So… to return to the post on Sunday… blogging has changed but bloggers have changed, too. I was circumspect from the get-go — the twins were people in MY story vs. being the focus of my story — but I used to go through my day and sometimes internally note, “I am so going to blog that.”

A case in point: the potato chip factory tour fiasco. I knew while we still on the road that the story was going to end up on my blog. It captured one of my many many many spectacular moments of not-thinking. As we were living the day, I was noting, “this is so us.” I wanted to remember it. I wanted other people to know it because I felt like it captured our family: Josh ever patient, the ChickieNob having an existential crisis, the agreeable Wolvog happy if potato chips were involved, and Melissa exuberantly not-planning a factory tour.

There were other moments like that, too. The tooth fairy fiasco and the talk about evolution; times where I thought as the moment unfolded: I am so going to blog this. Or non-twin moments. When I got to be the press pool note taker. I knew as I was living the moment that I would end up writing about it.

I even had a t-shirt that I got at BlogHer one year that said, “I am so going to blog this.” It was totally see-through. It was immediately relegated to workout clothes.

The point I’m making is that I don’t go through my day thinking those words anymore. It’s not that exciting or funny things don’t happen. It’s just that the impulse isn’t there. The twins say funny things all the time. I do interesting things sometimes. And sometimes as things are happening, I have a vague flutter in the back of my head: Should I write about this? And then the internal answer: Maybe? Would anyone else find it funny? Do I even have time?

And then the moment passes.

I’m willing to bet that I’m not the only person who stopped thinking, “I’m so going to blog this.” Life is still just as full. It just doesn’t seem quite as story-worthy; either because it’s just one more example of something I’ve already said before or because I’ve entered a different stage in life. Not everything gets captured in the word net, thrown up on the blog for posterity.

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

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Beyond the fact that I cannot stop snickering about the term “lady backpack,” I need to scream that I HAVE A LADY BACKPACK, which means that I am finally — FINALLY — fashionable. It will only last for a hot second, but I need to grab it while I can.

I hadn’t been using my lady backpack (lady backpack!) because I realized that I was schlepping around half of our house with me every time I went out, and I didn’t need most of it*. I didn’t need all of my notebooks; I just needed one. I didn’t need a laptop or iPad for a trip to the grocery store… ever. Even with my glasses anxiety, I could make do with one pair of backup glasses when I was under one mile from our home. I was like a goldfish, the stuff I was carrying growing to the size of my bag.

So I switched this fall to a small purse that fits just a handful of items. Wallet, extra glasses, a box of cinnamon mints, one notebook. I don’t miss carrying all of those things that I brought with me under the heading of “what if.” What if I need an entire first aid kit while I’m out purchasing groceries? What if?

But now I’m switching back. Not because I need that other stuff but because I want to be fashionable for once in my life.

How big is your purse? And how much stuff do you carry that you never use?

* Just to give you a sense of how much shit I brought with me that I didn’t need: I once discovered that sonic screwdriver I made out of toilet parts at the bottom of my purse and realized I had carried it with me for months — MONTHS — without knowing it was deep down in my lady backpack.

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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.

I started getting emails on Friday about Vox, and Turia sent along an article about Heather Armstrong that contained a sentence about me in the middle. It sent me on a bizarre trip down memory lane, which had already started recently because some longtime DC bloggers formed a group on Facebook for a reunion of sorts.

The twins and I were reading through old posts on my blog, and I was trying to explain to them how different blogging was back then. It was a lot easier because everyone pretty much knew each other. It was rare for someone to say, “Did you see what so-and-so wrote?” and have no clue what so-and-so wrote. I would go to BlogHer and get to see everyone I conversed with on the Internet face-to-face. Now, it would be more likely that I’d find familiar faces in the larger crowd but not be familiar with most people in the room. Back then, I could write anyone with a question, even if we weren’t friends, because we all knew of each other even if we weren’t close with each other. It wasn’t six degrees of separation — at most it was one or two.

And a lot harder because it was all about writing, and if that wasn’t your medium, it was harder to connect with people. Social media has made it so longform writers and shortform writers, video creators, photographers, cartoonists… everyone has a way into the conversation. And the tools… well… frankly the tools were wonky and frustrating. Do you remember when my blogroll was on my sidebar, and it took two or three minutes for the webpage to load?

What I miss is how we used to gather together. The topic of blog carnivals came up recently, and I miss things like that; big internet projects that brought people together, such as IComLeavWe or the Virtual Lushary, but even more the events that crossed niche lines and brought the internet together like Delurking Week at the beginning of January.

I am still in touch with a large chunk of people from that era — many of us are still writing our blogs regularly — and the rest are on Facebook or email. But it’s different from that time when everyone would hang out on each other’s blogs, talking in the comment section, picking apart our lives or recording moments.

I somehow missed NIAW this year. I didn’t see posts leading up to NIAW, and I didn’t receive any emails from Resolve about it. (Actually, just realized that it has been a long time since I’ve received any emails from Resolve. And there are none in my SPAM folder.) So I didn’t remember until I saw the post featured below.

On one hand, it feels weird to miss it. On the other hand, I often don’t connect with the NIAW theme. Maybe I’m just not great with themes in general, but I don’t know what I would have said for Infertility Uncovered.

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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:

• “Why I Can’t ‘Get Over It’” (My Path to Mommyhood)
• “Living My Life” (Infertile Phoenix)
• “So Close. So Far. 35 weeks, 4 days.” (By the Brooke)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Dreaming in Diapers has a post for NIAW, though she, too, missed the actual week but still wanted to acknowledge it.  She uncovers how infertility has touched every aspect of her life, admitting that writing it all down makes her feel naked. Except that we all get it. If only the general public got it, too.

Infertile Phoenix’s life has changed drastically from where it was five years ago, but she also has the wisdom gained from those five years. I love that sentiment: “…my past self may not have been able to handle it. That might’ve been the end of me. I would’ve melted into a puddle right there. But, I am not the me of five years ago. I am the me of five years ago plus the past five years.” Cheers to wisdom gained.

Lastly, Lavender Luz has a post about creating an adoptee-centered narrative. She writes about a documentary she saw of a woman trying to discover her origin story. She explains, “But to take on her quest, Reshma needs to explain to everyone — over and over again — that she loves her parents. That her search doesn’t negate them.” It’s a powerful post about “the need to know oneself.”

The roundup to the Roundup: I missed NIAW.  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 April 26th and May 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.

I just read a gorgeous piece on Longreads about grief that I think a lot of people will appreciate here. It is a man grieving the loss of his wife after cancer (though his adoption story features, too), but the concept of loss becomes universal as he discusses what he has learned about time.

Like the Longreads author, Matthew Salesses, I also just finished Carlo Rovelli’s The Order of Time. I started it as an audio book in the car, driving through the dark on my way home from my friend’s house, shivering as he tore down everything we think we know about time, staying with him because he promised to build a new understanding of time in its place. And as the Longreads author so apt states:

As consolation, Rovelli offers the mind as a time machine — we travel via memory. This is a disappointing compromise. In mourning, memory is only another cause for mourning. It does not change time, only reminds one that time has passed.

Salesses describes grief as carrying that time you had with the other person, of always having those hours, those days, those years that you spent with the person lost. He writes:

That shared life is the time I carry. In my dreams, I go to that other time. I dream that my wife is still in the middle of cancer treatments, that it is still conceivable she will come out of them okay. I don’t dream of a time that has never existed — I don’t dream of her recovery. I dream of taking care of her. I dream that our shared time has simply gone on.

It’s not about fantasy. It’s about carrying that real time with you as you move through current time; two layers of time that are carried simultaneously.

You need to read the whole piece. And then you need to go get Matthew Salesses’s books.