I recently clicked on an article, thinking I was going to get a great productivity piece and instead encountering an explanation for my obsessive impulse to do things now.  Which may sound like a good thing — I don’t wait to take care of tasks that I want or need to do (the same does not extend towards tasks that other people suggest for me) — but usually translates to me feeling anxious because everything has to be done NOW.  This 18-hour project needs to be completed TODAY, not in small chunks over many days.  This vacuum cleaning needs to happen THIS SECOND instead of waiting until it makes sense later in the day.

I get a lot done.  I annoy people sometimes in the process, including myself.  I annoy myself.  I worry a lot — most of it needlessly.  Things usually work out if you just wait for things to unfold instead of trying to nudge it along.

But waiting = worrying.  Doing = controlling.

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On the other hand, I really do love this piece of advice: Make all your resolutions immediate.

Josh and I made a huge goal for ourselves last summer, which we have tried numerous times to begin without much success.  The reality is that it’s goal-focused: Do X so you can be ready for Y down the road.  We don’t do it because it’s so easy to put off anything that doesn’t have to take place now.  I’ve been trying to structure it in my mind in terms of now, in terms of the day-to-day.

And this: “Everything feels urgent and important. Resolve to do something — anything — immediately.”  Sometimes that’s it: just accomplishing one thing per day, making it urgent and checking it off the list, can be the difference between feeling productive and feeling like the day has gone by without note.

Or, maybe it’s this: make all your resolutions do-able.  Make them things you can take action on vs. end goals.  Write five pages per day is an action.  Publish a book is an end goal.  I need to move away from thinking in terms of end goals and realize that I’m missing the here-and-now by worrying so much about what’s far down the road.

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

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Here’s a little “what would you do” situation: Josh and I were having dinner with two friends last week in a quiet restaurant.  There were only two tables filled in the restaurant — our table and the one behind us.  I was sitting with my back to the other table, which contained two women.

One woman lost control (I have no clue what happened because my back was to them) of her wine glass, tossing the contents five feet in the air to land squarely on my coat, sweater, hair, and the floor.  Josh and I tried to clean up my coat (which got the worst of the red wine) while our friends went to get the waiter to help with the clean-up.  The women said nothing.

The one who threw the wine scrolled through her phone, but they literally didn’t interact with us.  They watched us trying to get the wine out of my coat, but didn’t apologize or offer to help or… do anything.  Again, we were the only two tables in the restaurant, and we were at the table next to them.  There is zero chance that they didn’t notice everything happening.

I didn’t confront them because it was really bizarre.  I guess I figured that it wasn’t worth it if their instinct wasn’t to apologize or help.  But afterwards, I wondered why I didn’t.  Would you have said something?

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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.

Elizabeth Gilbert lost her partner, Rayya Elias, almost a year ago to cancer. When she died, she wrote that Rayya was, “my love, my heart, my best friend, my teacher, my rebel, my angel, my protector, my challenger, my partner, my muse, my wizard, my surprise, my gift, my comet, my liberator, my rock star, my completely impossible non-cooperator, my otherworldly visitor, my spiritual portal, and my baby.”

To be described like that; to be seen and understood and experienced so completely.

So this has been a year of grief, and I read something recently that she said about it that I found really moving:

I have learned that Grief is a force of energy that cannot be controlled or predicted. It comes and goes on its own schedule. Grief does not obey your plans, or your wishes. Grief will do whatever it wants to you, whenever it wants to. In that regard, Grief has a lot in common with Love.

The only way that I can “handle” Grief, then, is the same way that I “handle” Love — by not “handling” it. By bowing down before its power, in complete humility.

I love that because it makes sense.  If we can’t control love, force it to come or leave at our will, how could we ever believe that our control over grief would be otherwise?

In the end, Elizabeth adds: “It’s an honor to be in grief. It’s an honor to feel that much, to have loved that much.”  It’s cold comfort when you are in the throes of grief, but it is a truth, too.  Grief can be a statement of love.

I think about friends who have lost children — I think about my own miscarriages — and how the grief never fully goes away.  That is a statement of love.  Our heart holds onto that feeling and shakes us.

It’s Chanukkah this week.  I am not a fan of Chanukkah, though I’ll never say no to my mother’s latkes or the sufganiyot my cousin brings me.  Other than light the menorah, we don’t really do anything else to mark the holiday.

I wrote this several years ago for BlogHer, but that site is gone, so I’ll post it here:

So this is what Chanukkah is about: it’s a somewhat insignificant holiday meant to commemorate the time that King Antiochus instated laws not allowing Jews to practice their religion and the Maccabees fought back. It’s a story about guerrilla warfare and a revolution. About not waiting for G-d to intercede on your behalf, but fighting back against injustice. It is about a time when life sucked hardcore for the Jews and instead of putting down their heads and crying, they rolled up their sleeves and restored the Temple.

In other words, it’s a pretty cool holiday on its own, but where gifts and sweetness have a place in a birthday celebration for Christ, presents and candy don’t really commemorate a war. Jews don’t celebrate war victories — recognizing that death is a large part of war — so this holiday is more about relief than outright joy. It would make more sense to use Chanukkah to go into the community and right a few wrongs. Or do a habitat for humanity-like project to fix up a home in need of repair. See, it’s not really a holiday that can be celebrated like Christmas.

…

Chanukkah is a holiday about fighting assimilation, so it’s sort of weird that a holiday about fighting assimilation has become assimilated in order to be more like the majority holiday close on the calendar. Jews should be proud of the holiday — it’s essentially a story of thanksgiving — and pump up the parts that matter: family, friends, and fried foods.

So, yes to the family, friends, and fried foods.  No to the rest of it.  Which means a really quiet week, holiday-wise.

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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.

No Kidding in NZ has done it.  If you’ve read her blog, you know that she always has sound advice up her sleeve.  She pulled together an e-book of thoughts from the blog and quotations and beautiful images.  It’s comfort in paper form.  I especially love the quote about remembering without pain.  You can order the book from that link.

In Quest of a Binky Moongee is looking for a preschool for her twins when she encounters a very strange wording on the application.  The application asks if she is the “natural” parent, and she doesn’t know what to answer after their experience with surrogacy.  “What do we circle? I mean technically I am not my twins’ ‘natural’ parent. And we did need to get step-parent adoption in order for me to be legally their mother. But do we circle Parent/Step-parent? What if they ask us about the ‘natural’ mother?”  It’s a strange wording that people who conceive without difficulty probably don’t think twice about, but it sticks out for anyone who has built their family with assistance.

HopefullyMyLinesNow (old blog, new name) has a post about how pregnancy is different due to so many losses.  She points out all the ways she wanted things to go with pregnancy and the delivery, and how she has had to adapt.  She writes, “Why do I feel compelled not to grieve over all the hopes that won’t be met simply because I’ve known worse grief? I realize that loss has taken so much away from me, and now I’m letting my knowledge and associated guilt force me to adapt in ways I don’t want to adapt.”  It is about the endless act of letting go of (or adjusting) hopes and dreams.

Lastly, Life Without Baby has a post about being sideswiped by sadness when grief comes out of nowhere.  She writes, “The point is that sometimes, even when we’re sure we have it together, even when we’ve done the grief work, even when we’ve cried an ocean and think there’s nothing left to resolve, sometimes we just get sideswiped.”  Go over and join the conversation about your experience.

The roundup to the Roundup: A very quiet Chanukkah.  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 November 30th and December 7th) 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 about the concept of centireading, reading the same book 100 times.  It’s worth clicking over to that article to understand why a person would read the same book 100 times and what is gained from the experience.  The author gives two examples of centireading, both started for very different reasons and, therefore, the experience is very different for each; implying that there are dozens of reasons for undertaking the endeavour and numerous benefits that can gained depending upon your initial reason.

But I really loved this line: “You can be acquaintances with many books, and friends with a few, but family with only one or two.”

I have one book that is family: The Phantom Tollbooth.  I own about 30 copies, and I have the e-book with me at all times.  I started reading that book when I was six, and I’ve never stopped.  It is the single most important book in my life.

I have books that are between friends and family.  They’re fictive kin.  I haven’t read them 100 times, so they aren’t in the family category, but I’ve read them… a lot.  Like 20, 30, 40 times… a lot.  The Handmaid’s Tale (I like to read it yearly.  No, I’m not sure I’ll read the sequel next fall), Harry Potter (all of them), Candide, The Visit, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

And then there are the good friends, such as The Magicians trilogy, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Hobbit, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the Narnia books.  And the acquaintances I’d like to be closer with, such as All Our Wrong Todays.  And the acquaintances I’m just happy have come into my life, but I’m probably not going to invest too much in the relationship now that our time together has passed.

But hearing about centireading made me wonder if it’s time to choose a new family member to join The Phantom Tollbooth.  Which book would be worth reading 100 times?

What do you think of this idea?  Is there a book you could read 100 times and be happy you’re doing it each time?