I host a bunch of holidays at my house, and by now, I’ve fallen into menu rhythms for each of them.  But a long time ago, I tried new themes for each holiday, and for one Pesach, we had Argentinian food. I made this steak dish in a pan that I finished in the oven. I wasn’t paying attention when I went to serve it, and I grabbed the metal handle, just as I would if the pan was on the stove top. I burned two fingertips and the soft skin at the base of my thumb.

I was okay if I held my hand under cold water, but the moment I dried my hand, all I could focus on was the intense pain. I ended up filling a surgical glove with burn ointment and slipping my hand inside (a hack that I thought was brilliant at the time). It allowed me to use my hand, but most of my concentration was focused on the pain for the rest of the meal. I couldn’t think about anything else. Pain demands that you think about it.

First-degree burns are funny things in that way. You know, rationally, that once the skin begins to heal, the pain will diminish and––over time––all will go back to normal. It isn’t permanent. It isn’t chronic. You just have to let the ointment do its work, and you’ll be able to use the hand again. Maybe there will be a small scar. Usually there won’t. And, one day, you’ll forget about the incident entirely except for times when you have a metal pan in the oven or you’re making Argentinian food. Those times, you remind yourself to be careful.

I was thinking about this because someone I love is moving. Unlike the hot pan, it has been a burn that has built slowly with the knowledge unfolding over time––from possibility to definite. And now that we’re in the definite stage with a moving month on the horizon, it feels like that time when I was sitting at the dinner table, unable to concentrate in the moment on anything else. It hurts to think about her five hours away when she has been anywhere from two floors (in an apartment building) to 45 minutes away for the last 20+ years.

(I am trying to keep my shit together for her. I am not doing a great job with that, but she has been forgiving about it.)

I know that in time, we will find our new normal. We’ll make plans to meet in the middle somewhere 2 or 3 hours from each of our homes. We’ll visit her in her new town. She’ll return to see us in ours. We will have FaceTime lunch dates to replace our face-to-face lunch dates. Our daughters will have their own texting chains. It will all be okay. She will always be my heart, no matter where she is living.

But right now, that sadness is a first-degree burn, demanding that I think about it. There are no clever hacks; I’ll just need to wait to find our new rhythm. And in the meantime, help her pack and clean and do all the tasks that come with moving. Tell my brain that it will be okay later even if it doesn’t feel okay now. This will heal.

I saw Sam Horn speak at BlogHer many years ago (I still use her hands-as-blinders idea), and just came across a TEDTalk article featuring her idea of happiness squares.  It’s pretty simple: draw a square and divide it into the four quadrants.  Write “Doing”  (left) and “Not Doing” (right) over the top two squares.  Write “Want to Do” (top) and “Don’t Want to Do” (bottom) down the left side.

In the top left box, fill in what you are currently (in the present, not this exact moment) doing that you want to do.

In the top right box, fill in what you are currently not doing that you wish you were doing.

In the bottom left box, fill in what you are currently doing that you don’t want to do.

In the bottom right box, fill in what you’re currently not doing that you are thrilled you are not doing.

The top left and bottom right are your happiness squares. Your top right and bottom left are your not-happiness squares.  And then she says: “Next, ask yourself: How long? How long have you been doing these things you don’t want to do? How long have you not been doing things you want to do?”

It’s kind of eye-opening, isn’t it? It’s also not always feasible to stop the things that are making you not happy or begin the things that will make you happy. But I do like her idea of a hooky hour. If I had an extra hour, I would spend the whole time reading and meditating. How about you?

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

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I get the Rose-Coloured Roundup, and she ended the newsletter last week with a quote from Mother Teresa: “Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.”

I am guessing that was true for Mother Teresa — people interacted with her and felt happier after the interaction.  I mean, she was Mother Teresa.  I don’t know if that was true 100% of the time for all people, but there are people who fill others with awe (and subsequently make people feel happy to experience that awe), and Mother Teresa was one of those people.

Whereas the rest of us are not Mother Teresa, and, unfortunately, I know I sometimes must make people unhappy.  It’s an interesting quote, and definitely something to strive for, but perhaps not achievable in the sense that people don’t have a lot of sympathy and understanding when they’re not getting what they want.  Myself included.  I can think of a lot of people I’ve interacted with this week who have definitely not left me feeling happy.

What are your thoughts?

P.S. Spreading love is the opposite of April Fool’s Day.  April Fool’s Day… yuck.

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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 just read a book that I loved so much that my heart hurt when I finished the last page.  It reminded me of Elan Mastai’s All Our Wrong Todays in the sense that you will feel such an ache as you move through the weirdness.  It’s called Tell the Machine Goodnight by Katie Williams.

The heart of the book is a hand-held machine called Apricity that can tell you with a simple cheek swab what will make you happy.  Not combat depression but move you from ennui to joy.  Throughout the book, people either use or reject the device, choosing to know or remain in the dark about what will make them happy.

Because it’s a tricky thing.  You don’t have to follow the machine’s advice, but how could you not?  How could you discover that doing something as simple as eating tangerines will make you happy and then choose not to eat tangerines?  And yet the suggestions range from benign (eat tangerines) to extreme (remove a healthy fingertip or cut yourself off entirely from your identical twin).  And it comes with the knowledge that the act itself — no matter how painful it sounds in the moment — will bring you happiness if you trust the machine.

Because you’re told that the machine is 99.97% accurate.  And what are the chances that you’ll fall in the .03%?

I think I would want to know.  Maybe I would act on all the advice.  Maybe I wouldn’t.  But I think I would want to know… now.  Meaning, I don’t know if I would have sat for the machine at every point in my life.  When I was in the throes of infertility, would I have sat for the machine?  Would I want to know that kind of secret when I was feeling so fragile?  Am I only willing to take the risk right now because the step is lower to get to happiness?

Would you sit for a machine if it could tell you the three things that would make you happy, even if one of those things could be something you wouldn’t want to hear?

Carolyn Hax gave great advice this week to a person asking what to do for a friend after her baby was born still.  The person didn’t know if she should reach out because she hadn’t been formally told about the death.  Hax told her to stop waiting for an invitation to comfort her friend.

I guess what struck me is that — as humans — we seem to wait for an invitation to do good things, such as offer comfort after a loss, but we don’t wait for an invitation to do things like offer unsolicited advice.  Seriously.  How many times has someone inserted their opinion into your life?  But we’re reluctant to jump forward and send a condolence card to acknowledge a loss?  I rarely creep into the comments, but I appreciated this one by Cinnamon Owl: “If you’d heard her husband had died but they hadn’t made a public announcement yet, would you never refer to the death?”

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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:

• “So Why Aren’t There More of Us (Part 2)?” (The Road Less Travelled)

Okay, now my choices this week.

No Kidding in NZ is still processing the shooting in the mosque in New Zealand a few weeks ago, and she passes along her Prime Minister’s wise words, which are applicable in so many moments in life.  She explains, “Too often our society doesn’t allow us to grieve – especially when our losses are invisible – and so we have to remind each other that it is okay to grieve, and to ask for help.”  It is a gorgeous post, giving comfort.

The Uterus Monologues has a guest post about staying sane when you’re in crisis mode over a long period of time.  Her poster explains self-compassion: “If you have a friend who was struggling, your response to that person would most probably be along the lines of ‘I am sorry to hear that, it’s OK, I am here if you need me’. Self-compassion is about being able to say that to yourself.”  Such an important skill to practice daily.

Lastly, My Path to Mommyhood has a post about needing to explain that living child-free isn’t a temporary decision.  I love this post for this wonderful summary of a happy life: “Why is it that EVERYONE ELSE has far more difficulty with my childlessness than I do with my childfree status? I mean, it’s sad that we wanted it and it didn’t happen. It’s sad that we fought for so long and at such a great cost that we had to end our own journey. But it can’t STAY sad. My life is NOT sad.”  It made me want to stand up and cheer.

The roundup to the Roundup: Don’t wait to give comfort.  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 March 22nd and 29th) 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.