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.

*******

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.

*******

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.

There is, apparently, a book about late bloomers that just came out, which explains some of the recent posts about late bloomers. But the rest are untied to Rich Karlgaard’s book. It’s just a weird coincidence; a moment in time when people are speaking about achievement later in life.

According to a multitude of authors, being a late bloomer rocks. Charles Duhigg points out:

Late bloomers learn resilience. Early disappointments force concessions, as Duhigg notes, and they reshape expectations. It is no doubt sad that the best way to gain strength is by falling and continually bouncing back, practicing, working around obstacles. But this flexibility is critical to long-term success.

Being a late bloomer puts you in good company since all of these articles also include a list of people who have achieved great things later in life. And it saves you from all of the drawbacks of being an early bloomer that are also listed in these articles. (Because you can only prove how great being a late bloomer is by putting down early bloomers.)

I’m being sarcastic mostly because I’ve always felt like you don’t know what sort of bloomer you are until you’ve bloomed, and because we bloom in cycles, blooming in different parts of our life at different times, declaring ourselves one or the other spotlights our life with one accomplishment instead of acknowledging that we make big and small contributions to this world every day.

Though I do like Karlgaard’s explanation of the two types of forces that make people bloom at different times:

It’s the difference between feeling being pushed — which I don’t like and I think a lot of people don’t like — versus being pulled by some vision and dream and higher purpose.

Pushed vs. pulled.

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

*******

I just learned that fantasy birding is a thing. As someone who wants to be a birdwatcher but is incapable of convincing herself to wake up early to go birding, I am fascinated. Oh, and I get a little nauseated looking at the world through binoculars. But I really want to be a birder and like to play games. This is how it works:

Using eBird, a citizen-science database run by Cornell University where birders log their sightings, players select single locations on a map each day, and get credit for a bird if a real-life birder spots that species within a 10-kilometer radius that day.

Sign me up. As in, I just signed up for an eBird account. Now to use it.

What are you trying to get yourself motivated to start?

*******

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.