We just discovered that Josh’s co-worker’s mother is younger than he is.  She had her child in her twenties, and her child just passed into her twenties herself a few years ago.  The math makes sense.  It just makes me feel old.

My co-workers are mostly my age.  I think.  Sometimes it’s hard to tell.  I guess I could point in their face and say, “Where were you when you heard about the Challenger?”  I know that someday I will have a co-worker who answers, “I was an infant.”

I am also aware that YOU may be reading this and thinking, “Where were you when Nixon resigned?”  Um… I was an infant.

I recently read a piece on how art and culture gets lost as generations age, and how little remains in the collective consciousness over the years.  It made me sad to think that, one day, people may not know John Lennon.  That, right now, there are groups of people who cannot identify the song “Imagine” much less something like “Starting Over.”

Popular pieces have a lifespan of 5 – 30 years and then start to pass out of the collective consciousness, remembered by fewer and fewer people over time until very little remains.  Take a look down this list of books published in 1919.  How many do you actually know (vs. recognize the author’s name)?  How many have you read?

Three — I’ve read three on the fiction list.

And yet back in 1919 or 1924, people would have been familiar with these works.  They would have read Winesburg, Ohio.

Can you imagine people in 2119 reading John Green books?  Or Twilight?  Perhaps Harry Potter will survive the next 100 years, but I can’t imagine most people still knowing Rainbow Rowell even though there will always been a small sub-set of people who remember books the general public has forgotten.

I’m sad about that future world where people don’t know about John Green books.

They’re probably sad about our world and how we didn’t live to see their greatest AI author, AlphaZ.

What items (books, movies, television shows) that are popular today do you think we’ll still remember in 100 years?

I probably should go directly to Battlefish, my resource for all things Scandinavian, but this was too delicious to just go in an email.  I just read about Finland’s National Jealousy Day (likely a media-created name), which falls every year in November.  This is the day that the tax administration gives access to every citizen’s taxable income for that year.  In the interest of absolute transparency, you can look up any person in the country and find out how much money they made.

I sort of love it.  On one hand, employers are pushed to pay fairly because they know they’ll be called out for providing some people with a lower salary.  On the other hand, Finland has a 16.5% gender pay gap.  America has an 18.2% gap, so clearly worse, but you’d think that the pay gap would be much lower with that transparency.  Regardless, the transparency means that people pay their taxes.  Imagine how different our elections would be if everyone needed to make their tax information public.

Yet it also sort of makes me uncomfortable in the sense that it encourages assumptions.  How many hurt feelings arise out of people judging generosity since they know the other person’s salary, even if they don’t know the person’s financial needs or the plans they have for their future?  Or how many people resent their co-workers when they discover they’re being paid more, even though maybe they should be paid more for their expertise or exceptional output?

Would you look up people in the database?

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 trying not to eat the Girl Scout cookies in the kitchen.  (I really really really want the Thin Mints in the kitchen.)  I had to buy them.  My niece is so adorable that my heart started shrieking, “You must buy them all!” the second she started her sales pitch.  I was limited to two boxes because I won’t donate them.  I will eat them.  And I will tell myself only one more, but I will really eat four more.  Because.  Thin Mints.

The man who invented the Marshmallow Test recommended replacement as a method of self-control.  You distract yourself with something else so you don’t think about the thing you want to eat/smoke/do/etc.  So if you don’t want to eat Thin Mints (but I do want to eat Thin Mints), you do a crossword puzzle.  Or you go for a walk.  Or you scroll through photos.  Anything so your brain is occupied instead of thinking about the Thin Mints.

It didn’t work for me because, last night, I replaced thinking about Thin Mints with thinking about Pepperidge Farm Brussels.  But we don’t have Brussels.  So I ate a Thin Mint because those were in the kitchen.  Okay, I ate two.  Really, that was it.  I ate two.  For now.

What do you use to distract yourself?

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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 recently paused reading a book.  I like to say “paused” instead of “stopped” because I believe that if there was something that attracted me to the book in the first place, but I’m not connecting to it in the moment, there may be a point in the future where the words and I click.  The book — Solve for Happy by Mo Gawdat — started off great, but then I lost interest around chapter five.

So I set it aside and tore through Heather Lende’s Find the Good.  I’ll admit that I bought it due to the lemon on the cover.  Looking at the lemon made me feel happy.  The essays were set in her remote Alaskan town; a small slice of finding the good in every life.

In both cases, I was reading the book as part of my 15 minute improvement plan.  I’ve stuck with it for about three weeks now, and I’m tracking it in my bullet journal.  I may not be better… yet (growth mindset!), but I feel like I’m filling my head with helpful thoughts instead of scrolling through Facebook again.

Anyway, there are tons of posts out there telling people how to push on through and finish reading books that they start.  And other posts out there telling people that it’s totally okay to stop reading a book because we’re adults now.  But there’s nothing lukewarm out there telling people to pause and return to books.  So I’m filling that gap?

Do I ever return to paused books?  Yes.  I can’t remember any off the top of my head right now, but I know I’ve done this.  When I return to the book, I start over from the beginning.  OH — Good Omens.  There, that’s a book that I paused and returned to because while I liked it enough as I was reading it the first time, I could tell that I would probably really love the book if I read it at another time.  And I was correct.

But there are many other paused books whose stories are suspended in figurative aspic.  My goal is to come back to them one day.  Maybe.  If it ever feels right.

It’s not goodbye; it’s see you later.

Do you ever return to books you stop reading?

I have been pleasantly surprised by Deborah Harkness’s A Discovery of Witches.  More than one person warned me that I wouldn’t like it, so I avoided it because the first few pages didn’t grab me.  I thought I’d wait and see the television version because the story intrigued me.  But the television version is only offered on streaming sites, and I’m not getting a subscription.  So I grabbed the book from the library, and I’ve been enjoying it in the same way that I enjoyed Twilight.  Is it great writing?  No.  But I love vampires and witches, so… let’s just say that this book is exceeding expectations.

I love Tig Notaro’s I’m Just a Person.  The ChickieNob discovered Tig this week, so I got out the audio book.  But I expected to love this book because (1) I love Tig’s joke writing and (2) I love her delivery.  And you get both with the audio book, even though she’s detailing dark moments in her life.  So this book is meeting high expectations.

I like Becoming by Michelle Obama.  It is a solid book.  A sturdy story.  I remember post-election, pre-White House, I was standing in line at the grocery store with an older woman, and we were both commenting on how happy we were.  “She’s going to be our Jackie O,” I said, “completely redefining the role again.”  And she did.  She invited us into their story, made the White House truly The People’s House.  So my expectations were high for this book because Michelle Obama is an incredible person with an incredible story.  And I’m totally liking it, but I’m not blown away.  It could be the hype that preceded the book and there are zero surprises because it was all discussed in articles before I ever got my hands on a copy.  So in this case… the lead up is making this not meet expectations.

But if I have to rank them in terms of great to decent, it goes I’m Just a Person, Becoming, A Discovery of Witches.  In one case, expectations made me like something more, and in another case, expectations made me like something less.  I’m not sure what this means except that it’s interesting to see how expectations about a book affect the reading of it.

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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:

• “FB Posts from the Other Side” (Battlefish) — see below, I read it late
• “Yes, ‘Relentless’ is the Right Word” (Not a Wasted Word)
• “Ready to Grow” (Stirrup Queens) — thank you, Cristy!
• “Budgeting Life” (Inconceivable!)
• “Why I Have Zero Regrets About My Childless Life” (Different Shores)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Movable Type has a post about the new year.  She writes, “When I turned 45, anticipating a mid-life crisis of some sort, I started working on a memoir as well as some fiction writing, giving myself freedom and permission to explore writing as a craft. I asked myself what is it I want so much I can taste it? I want to see my name in print.”  I love this.  I love the idea of setting a goal as a way of making the inevitable mid-life feelings navigable.

Old Lady No Baby’s mind is blown because her babies turned five.  Really, how many people think beyond babyhood when they’re going through IF?  But kids grow up and become five year olds and ten year olds and twenty year olds.  She writes, “It took us 14+ years of trying and put us in a ridiculous amount of debt, but our dream of having children finally came true.”  Happy birthday but also congratulations on reaching the happy milestone.

Battlefish writes about Facebook memories and how she feels getting those updates of what was happening a year ago or beyond.  Are they sometimes bittersweet?  Of course.  But they also help her remember how much things have changed, especially when she encounters one that took place during a pregnancy, even if the baby isn’t mentioned.

Lastly, Mine to Command has a totally fascinating post about whether or not to introduce Santa in your child’s world.  Santa fascinates me, especially how people explain why Santa delivers X to one child but Y to another.  So… I just thought this was a really interesting post that left me with food for thought.

The roundup to the Roundup: Three books and expectations.  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 January 11th and 18th) 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.