I’m reading Liane Moriarty’s new(ish) book, Nine Perfect Strangers.  It’s set at a health resort.  The story doesn’t exactly hang together, but I’m enjoying most of the characters.

One of the caveats of the resort is that you need to hand over any devices.  It’s ten, screen-free days.  Frances, one of the guests at the resort, laments the idea of giving up the Internet for 240 hours.  On page 106, Moriarty writes, “How was she going to cope for ten days without instant answers to idle questions?”

That is exactly what I would miss about the Internet.

I could stay off of Facebook for ten days: I love you all, but I could skip reading your updates for ten days knowing that Facebook’s algorithm ensures that I never see every post anyway.  I’m going to miss a bunch whether I’m on or not.

I could not write in this space or read someone else’s blog for ten days.  I would miss writing and reading, but I could always journal and catch up on my feed reader when I return.  I wouldn’t miss television shows or movies or games.

But I’ve grown dependent on instant information.  On being able to look up the answer to any random question that bubbles up in my mind.  I get so frustrated when I hit a question and there’s no easy answer, or I’m trying to find someone online and I can’t.

For me, that would be the hardest part about giving up the Internet.  What would be your hardest part: idle questions, FOMO, a feeling of disconnection, or… ?

Tomorrow is Random Act of Kindness Day for Thomas, a yearly event created by one of our own.  Kristin was a blogger for a long time in the ALI blogosphere.  Her son, Thomas, was born on March 9th and died on March 10th.  Every year, she asks people to do kindness in his name, filling the world with the goodness he would have contributed himself if he had lived.  I love this idea.

It doesn’t have to be big.  It can be as small as moving through your day thinking about ways you can make it a little bit better for the people around you.

As always, I’m looking to do good in Thomas’s name tomorrow.  Hope you’ll join along, too.

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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:

• “#MicroblogMondays – I’m a Writer” (An Engineer Becomes a Mom)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Dwelling in Possibility has a gorgeous, bittersweet post about loss.  She is remembering her child, who would have been 21 years old this week, and connecting that loss to the loss of her husband three years ago and sending her living children into the world.  She writes, “This year, though, feels loaded. When I realized the date, and how many years it has been, I started thinking about what it feels like to launch a child into the world … It will be quiet and lonely in this big house all alone. His father was supposed to be here to muffle some of that quiet. But he’s with Ari.”  It is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever read.

I missed this post last week, but The Road Less Travelled had a post about finding her tribe with a listserv of other parents trying again after a loss and losing that tribe as the listserv shuts down.  Even if she hadn’t posted there in years, it was a big part of her life when she needed it most.  It’s a sweet goodbye to support that held her up during a hard time.

Lastly, No Kidding in NZ has a post about divides in a larger community, using the divide that exists between people who refer to animals as a fur-baby and those who don’t to prove a point: “Perhaps we should be a wee bit careful when we try to speak for our group. We’re not all the same.”  It’s a great post about how ideas are not one-size-fits-all and that sometimes what we’re taking offense at may not have had offensive intentions behind the words.  It’s a thought-provoking post.

The roundup to the Roundup: Please be kind tomorrow.  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 1st and 8th) 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.

This article was being passed around the internet last week, and I just got a chance to read it in full.  It’s 15 brief interviews with people who came into a sum of money.  Some of the payouts were enormous — a million, for example — and some were much smaller in the thousands.  Some came from hard work and some came from strange luck.  And it’s a really interesting read.

I found myself thinking whether I would have spent the money the same way or felt the same way about receiving the cash.  Sometimes I just let the words wash over me:

A lot of the emotional work I’ve done is trying to distinguish myself from this money. We live in a culture that makes us personally identify with any money we have, and we believe our money is us and we are our money. It’s put a lot of work in my lap in terms of figuring out the responsible thing to do with it.

That was money from a trust fund.  And another from someone who spent money while he was ill building a magazine that changed other people’s lives:

I was really proud to spend all this money. And had I not been so ill, I’m not sure I would’ve been so altruistic.

Or the MacArthur grant winner: “People don’t want to admit the price you pay for working.”  Or the lawsuit winner:

It made me appreciate what a difference money given can make in someone’s circumstances. If someone gave me $10,000 right now, that would be great, but it would also be very different than being given $10,000 that early in my life, before I had loans, and before I was working, and before I had commitments. That $10,000 would go to bills now.

I think people are very reluctant to talk deeply about money, so an article like this feels like peeking into a window.  I’m so grateful to the people who told their story for it.

I have such mixed feelings about turning books into movies and television shows.  We’re currently watching Umbrella Academy with the ChickieNob, so she keeps asking how it’s different from the comic.  And it is massively different from the comic, but it doesn’t bother me in the least.  I love it.  The show is so well done.

And I am beyond excited for Good Omens, even though I suspect it will be nothing like the book.  How could it?  It takes hours upon hours to get through that thing and the details and bit characters are the best part.  You know they’re going to trim it for television, but I want to watch it anyway.

And then there is the Handmaid’s Tale.  They changed some things in the Handmaid’s Tale.  I could not get over how they changed the Handmaid’s Tale, and I refused to watch beyond the first season.  That is where the book ends; I don’t want to see the story continue.  Maybe I’m missing out and the second season was fantastic.  But I can’t bring myself to watch it.

And I haven’t been able to closely look at the cast of the Magicians much less watch a single episode.  I was excited when I first heard that it was being turned into a show, but I love those books so much.  If the Quentin and Alice in my head don’t match the Quentin and Alice on the screen, it will break my heart and mess with the way I visualize the story when I read it.  So I didn’t give it a chance.

So zero rhyme or reason for why I’ll watch one adaptation and not another.

What do you think has been done well?  And what has gone really really wrong?

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

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There’s a company that is looking for two strangers to go on an all-expenses 50-day, 5 continent trip together and agree to have the whole thing filmed.  No, I’m not entering.

Not just because being filmed for 50 seconds (much less 50 days) sounds unappealing.  The other side is the stranger aspect.  They could turn out to be an awesome travel partner, which would make the trip fantastic.  Or they could be a terrible travel partner and end up ruining 50 days worth of sights.  So much of the enjoyment that comes with a trip is taking it with people you like.  Seeing things with people you want to have a conversation with afterward.  Going on a trip with one other stranger is also veeeeeeery different from going alone on a trip with an organized group.  With a group, you may have time apart or multiple people to choose from.

Plus… the judges are three white men.  If the goal is to thoughtfully place two people together who can travel in harmony, they may want to get more diversity on the team.  Unless that isn’t their goal.

So while I would love an all-expenses 50-day, 5 continent trip, cameras and strangers are deal breakers.

Would you travel (filmed!) with a single stranger?

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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.