We were having dinner in a favourite restaurant; one that we go to about six times per year, whenever we’re in this certain town.  The owner knows us by now because Josh and I have been going for 17 years, and we’ve been bringing the twins for at least 10 of those years.  She usually swings by to catch up with us at some point in the meal.

This time, she started asking all sorts of questions about the twins.  Their age.  Whether they got along.  Really, all of the questions were fine, and they were politely answering them, making conversation.  And then she looked at me and said, “These two are your only kids?  A girl and a boy.  Good for you.  You don’t need any more than that.”

And then everything at the table stopped.

It’s as if we all turned into stone people; like someone had stepped on a land mine and we had heard the telltale click and now we were panicked into stillness.  She left the table, flitting over to help someone else.  We stared at each other.

Sometimes you say something.  Sometimes you don’t.  Sometimes you say something back to make them feel what you are feeling.  Sometimes you say nothing at all and carry the feelings with you into the night.

As someone who can’t talk herself into sleeping in a tent anymore (my camping days are over), I was enthralled with GQ’s article about the capture of Christopher Knight.  He lived in the woods for 27 years, supporting himself by stealing — about 40 times per year — from people’s homes while they were away.  He entered the woods when he was 20.  He left the woods at 47.

Knight stated that over all those years he slept only in a tent. He never lit a fire, for fear that smoke would give his camp away. He moved strictly at night. He said he didn’t know if his parents were alive or dead. He’d not made one phone call or driven in a car or spent any money. He had never in his life sent an e-mail or even seen the Internet … He engaged in zero communication with the outside world. He never snapped a photo. He did not keep a journal. His camp was undisclosed to everyone … He was an uncontacted tribe of one.

That’s the starting point.  The rest of the article unpacks what happens when the author tries to connect with Knight; first through letters and then showing up at the prison. (Knight goes to prison due to the break-ins.)  He visits the place in the woods where Knight slept, and explains how he got through 27 Maine winters.

Why.  That’s the question that keeps looping through the article.  What would make someone leave the world behind and live on their own for so many years that they forget how to speak, how to look at people, how to navigate a conversation?

Knight admits:

Isn’t everybody, he said, seeking the same thing in life? Aren’t we all looking for contentment? He was never happy in his youth—not in high school, not with a job, not being around other people. Then he discovered his camp in the woods. “I found a place where I was content,” he said. His own perfect spot. The only place in the world he felt at peace.

When he can’t physically return to that spot post-prison, he recreates it by withdrawing while living in the mainstream world.  He’s here, but he’s not really here.  He has no connections to other people.  No words to share or ones he wants to hear.

It’s an interesting counterbalance to the Instagram world.  If we can accept the idea of someone finding their contentment in gathering followers, we should be able to accept the idea in someone who wants no followers, no friends, no family, no connections.  Not something I would choose for myself, but I was fascinated by the glimpse inside the world.

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

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The twins’ school recently had an open house, and I swung by when I could slip out for an hour.  I ended up in their French class, which is one of their favourite classes.  Their teacher is fantastic, and it’s a pleasure to watch her teach because she clearly loves the language and passing it along to the kids.

I took French for many, many, many years.  Being in that classroom brought out my French panic.  My body was on high alert that the teacher could call on me.  And I would be asked to speak in front of her students.  And… emergency emergency emergency.

I don’t feel this way about any other subject.  I couldn’t always do the math problem, but I wasn’t worried about getting called on in class.  The same with every subject; I was okay being called on in every other class.  But there was something about language classes.  I was so worried that I’d be asked to speak aloud.  And while I’m okay reading things in another language, I feel this panic come out every time I need to actually speak to another human being in that language.

Which language did you study in school?  Do you also have language panic?

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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 read My Oxford Year by Julia Whelan.  The opening was fantastic, but then… well, let’s just leave it on the positive: the opening was fantastic.  There was also a single bright moment towards the end of the book.  The main character needs to make a choice.  She makes the choice, and then says this on page 316:

I can’t finish. I choke up. It turns out, the act of making a choice, of choosing a path, doesn’t mean the other path disappears. It just means that it will forever run parallel to the one you’re on. It means you have to live with knowing what you gave up. Which isn’t a bad thing; if anything, it only serves to strengthen my resolve.

We’ve all made choices in life — maybe the best possible choice in a difficult situation — and had to continue on the path knowing the road not taken is running parallel to the one we’re on.

It makes me think of when you’re taking the Jersey Turnpike, and you see I-295 through the trees.  You’ll forget about the other road, and then the trees thin for a moment and you spot the other cars on the road not taken.  The two roads aren’t perfectly aligned; at times they go off in two different directions.  And then you glimpse the other road again.

I made a choice to stop treatments the second time.  It was the best choice in that moment; we got on our right road.  It doesn’t erase the other one.

I wanted to see an old BlogHer post, so I Googled a keyword + BlogHer that would have brought it to the top of the search results.  But it didn’t appear.  There were blog posts about the blog post, so I clicked over and used their link.  It looped me to the main SheKnows page.  I tried searching SheKnows but… it was gone.  Every last post was gone.

I mean, it’s not gone-gone because I was able to go into the Internet Wayback Machine and do the same search, finding all the times that particular post had been cached.  I could read the post that way, and I could even send people to the post by using the Wayback Machine’s URL.  But… it’s not the same thing.

I have a list that has the original URL for every BlogHer post I wrote.  I scrolled down that list, looking at the URLs for the thousands of posts that I wrote over 10 years.  Thousands.  I thought about the hours that it takes to write over 2000 posts.  And all of it gone: Deleted or moved to a private space that only the content owner can access.

A chef doesn’t mourn when her hard work is consumed and the plate is empty.  She has been paid for her effort, and she knows her food was enjoyed.  I’m trying to take that attitude.  I was compensated, the posts were enjoyed, and now they’re gone.

But it still hurts.

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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:

• “Ignored at the End” (X365 Take Two)
• “Wanted” (Empty Arms, Broken Heart)
• “36 Hours” (Much Ado About Nothing)

Okay, now my choices this week.

No Kidding in NZ gives advice to the grieving.  They are mourning the loss of her mother-in-law, and she offers up everything she knows.  I especially love this thought: “Grief brings opportunities, but you have to let yourself grieve first before looking for them.”  So true.

Inconceivable! has a post about Meghan Markle’s pregnancy.  Even though she has resolved her infertility, she writes, “Pregnancy is my kryptonite, though.  Pregnancy announcements still feel like being socked in the gut.”  Yes.  I mean, if I could make a blog post nod in solidarity, this blog post would be nodding in solidarity.  They still hurt after all of these years.

Baby Ridley Bump has a post about Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month.  She writes beautifully about the shame she used to feel about how she processed her early losses, and it took the birth of her daughter to drive home that she should be okay with how she mourned.  “Once I was finally able to see the life that was created, I realized that each one of those ‘chemical pregnancies; could’ve been a potential child just as amazing as the one I was finally holding in my arms.”  We are allowed to feel what we feel, and she captures a truth about how we process pregnancy loss.

Lastly, Jewish IVF has a post about primary and secondary infertility mixing in the same support group.  Their common denominator is being Jewish, which means that the feelings of those with children bump up against the ones without children, sometimes bruising them in the process.  There are no easy answers for her questions, and they’re ones that our blogging community has struggled with over the years.  But it’s always food for thought.

The roundup to the Roundup: 10 years of BlogHer posts are gone.  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 October 12th and October 19th) 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.