I received the oddest SPAM call this week.  Most of the time, SPAM calls shows up marked as SPAM.  Sometimes, the number is not marked as such, but the call comes from a name of someone I don’t know so I don’t answer it.  But this time, the phone rang and it showed the name and number of our local burrito place.

The first thing I thought was, “Oh, Josh must have gone to lunch with a co-worker and left something there.”  So I picked up, and it immediately launched into one of those robot-spoken “you’ve been chosen” credit card spiels.  Well played, SPAM caller, spoofing our burrito place phone number because you know I’ll pick up if tasty salsa is involved.

Things like that make me want to go telephone-free.

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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:

• “Thinking About Christmas” (The Road Less Travelled)

Okay, now my choices this week.

By the Brooke remembers her daughter on what should have been her eighth birthday.  She muses about what life would be like and then writes, “Eight years is long enough that grief sits familiarly. The week leading up to her birthday wasn’t too bad this year–sometimes the days proceeding are harder than the actual day. This year that wasn’t so much the case.”  It’s a moving post about how everyone in the family processes the day.

My Path to Mommyhood says goodbye to a house with a big, exciting move on the horizon.  Moving means packing, and packing means letting go of things that they won’t bring with them to the new space, including books she collected for a different future.  She writes, “But then there’s the sad ones. The ones that were clearly meant for a child who didn’t come. The ones that have nameplates from my shower with notes from the people who gifted them to us, addressed to our nonexistent baby, declaring love for this amorphous being in the ether who didn’t materialize, imagining storytimes snuggled up in a cozy blanket together that just will never be.”  It’s a bittersweet post about the tangible reminders of change.  It is so hard to let go of things again and again and again.

Lastly, The Road Less Travelled has a really big blast from the past: TCOYF (for those of you who spent time on IVFC and remember that acronym.  Wait — is IVFC still around?).  I actually just found my copy a few months ago when we culled out books.  Yes, yes, yes to this: “TCOYF was ‘the Bible’ of the subsequent pregnancy after loss e-mail group I joined that fall, where everyone was either pregnant after a loss, or desperately trying to be.”  I can’t even tell you how many times we went on a trip and I packed my copy because I wanted to be able to consult the book at all times — even when we were doing treatments!  It brings back a lot of memories.

The roundup to the Roundup: Very creative SPAM callers.  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 December 7th and December 14th) 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.

Until this week, I avoided the book When Breath Becomes Air.  Not because it sounded terrible; just the opposite.  I heard it was amazing — moving and well-written, a Pulitzer finalist and on everyone’s year-end “best of” list.  It’s a surgeon’s first-hand account of being diagnosed with cancer and all that came before and after.

I avoided the story because I could avoid it.  Meaning, I had the choice to not face his difficult story and accept the gift of his words by not picking up the book.  This is something that his loved ones couldn’t do.  It’s something millions upon millions of people don’t get to do: Avoid the story.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the posts I wrote a while back about diversity and reading lists and this privilege fits in that discussion, too.  As a reader, I get to choose what I read, therefore, I can avoid all the stories I don’t want to hear.  That I’m scared to contemplate.

This is different from deciding not to read something because the subject matter doesn’t interest me (example: me + historical romances… except Outlander… I’m strange interested in reading Outlander) or because I don’t know about the book.  This is more akin to turning my head and pretending not to see something.

But what if someone said to me: “I’m not going to read your story because infertility is sad, and I just don’t want to feel sad.  So I’m going to accept that I may go through life knowing nothing about infertility, but I’m fine with that because not being able to build a family is depressing.”

Okay, by not reading When Breath Becomes Air, I’m not saying those hurtful words to his family’s face.  (A writer — or their descendants — has no clue who is reading and who is not reading or why unless told.)  But making the conscious choice to avoid his book just because I believe it will make me sad accomplishes the same thing on my end.  There are so many stories that I’ll never encounter because there are too many people and not enough time.  I accept that.  But not encountering, again, is very different from avoiding.

The book went on sale, and I bought it because the writing was amazing.  While it was sad, I didn’t feel sad reading most of it.  Instead, I found my finger (it’s an e-book) underlining interesting thoughts or phrasing that I wanted to be able to find in the future.  Up until the end, it was much more about living than it was about dying in the same way that infertility can be more about yearning than it is about losing.

I’m glad I abided with his story, not just because it made me understand death better.  As his wife writes in the end on page 151, “Paul’s decision not to avert his eyes from death epitomizes a fortitude we don’t celebrate enough in our death-avoidant culture.”

Are there any books you’ve avoided reading because you’re concerned how you’ll feel as you move through the pages?

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.