I read an interesting lifehack about creating a system of habit points.  It appealed to me because it was simple: Do X and receive Y points, then spend Y points on Z.  The biggest habits I’m trying to reinforce right now are getting more sleep (5 points for getting to bed before 11 pm?), staying focused at work (2 points for every Pomodoro cycle?), and recording my meals and exercise on My Fitness Pal (3 points…?)

First and foremost, it was hard to assign a points value to the task.  Getting to sleep early isn’t always in my control, and even when it is, it’s hard to manage the evening and make it happen.  It sounds like it should have a high points value to encourage me to put out the effort, even though it’s a pretty simple task.  On the other hand, staying focused is a really hard task, but I do so many Pomodoro cycles in a day that it seems ridiculous to rack up the points just because I work a lot.  Finally, recording my food is somewhere in the middle: a pain-in-the-ass to remember to do, and the point is not just to record but to eat well, too.

I decided to turn to my vices and found that I don’t have many that do not contradict with my attempted good habits.  Like if I’m trying to gain points for staying within a certain nutritional value range, it seems counterproductive to allow myself to blow hundreds of calories on Cadbury bars.  Everything else isn’t really a vice — Reading a book?  Watching a television show?  Perusing blog posts?  And rewarding myself with food sounds like a supremely bad idea.

I am boring.

That’s what I learned from this: I’m boring, and I need vices.

And then there is the other side of it: If I want to do something, I do it because I am an adult.  This is what I waited for as a kid.  Sometimes when I eat ice cream for lunch, I think, “I am doing this because I am an adult.”  I like being an adult.  I do not want to go back to kidville where you have to earn points or good will in order to have ice cream for lunch.

So I’m not trying habit points because I don’t have anything to spend them on.  Though I like the idea a lot.

What are the point values of your good habits?  And do you have anything to spend your points on?

I’m definitely not jet lagged because I’m not waking up in the middle of the night anymore, but my brain feels like it’s moving slowly.  Like there’s a film covering it, and I have to think really hard to connect to thoughts.  This is the one drawback to travel. (Well, this and flying.  Flying is something I endure, I don’t enjoy.)  That hard landing where you’re trying to re-acclimate to a life that you lived so easily before you left.

I have a friend who is currently traveling the world for the year.  Part of me wants to do that so badly, and part of me wonders how I’d ever fit back into my life here after doing that.  If a couple of weeks in Scotland has made my brain cloudy, what would 52 weeks overseas do to accessing normal life?

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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.

The Road Less Travelled marked the 40th anniversary of IVF (or Louise Joy Brown’s 40th birthday) with a post about the other side of IVF; the one not discussed in all the articles this week.  When it works, it’s fantastic.  But like so many things, it doesn’t always work despite it being presented as a done deal.  She writes, “I am happy that something like 8 million more IVF babies have been born in the years since then, fulfilling so many more couples’ dreams of having a family. I’m happy that it’s worked for some of you who are reading this. But I am sad that many, many more millions of couples have walked away from IVF & ARTs without the baby they’d dreamed of.”  Go over and read the whole post (and video).

It’s common for parents to write blog posts to their children on their birthday, but I really loved A+ Effort’s post to Miss E.  Maybe because I’ve gotten to see her grow up on the blog (she’s seven!).  That’s the best part about this community and, in general, when people keep blogging; you get to see people grow up and change and do amazing things.  Happy birthday, Miss E.  And congratulations on being Queen of the Garden.

Lastly, and I saved this one for last because there are spoilers for The Handmaid’s Tale, but like My Path to Mommyhood, I also identify with Serena Joy.  And it made me vaguely uncomfortable during the first season; like it revealed an ugly truth when I understood her sometimes more than other characters.  In fact, I haven’t watched season two yet because of that, though I was actually happy for the spoilers because it’s the sort of show that I’d rather watch with a heads up.  I may let this one go for a little while until the time feels right because it sounds like there will be tears.

The roundup to the Roundup: Travel muddles (as well as grows?) the brain.  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 July 13th and 20th) 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.

When we left off, we were headed north.  So before every trip, everyone in the family states one thing they really want to do.  The Wolvog chose the Jacobite train.  The ChickieNob chose the Castle of Mey, which is the Queen Mum’s castle featured in the first season of The Crown.  “Sure,” we said, and then we Googled the castle’s location.  It was an eight hour train ride from central Scotland.  When we let the ChickieNob know, her lip started quivering and she told us she would choose something else while she blinked back tears.  Which is how we ended up at the end of the world.

Like it’s literally the end of the world.

It took us eight hours to get to Thurso.  Then another hour to get to Mey, including the mile walk from the bus drop-off point.  It was totally worth it.

It is gorgeous.

And it was so light out up north that we could (and did) take photos at midnight.  And since we were already so far north, we hopped on a ferry for a few hours and went to Orkney, passing the Old Man of Hoy along the way.

We LOVED Orkney.  We got there without a plan and went to the local library, which is where we learned about a fantastic bus that would take us around Stromness and Kirkwall.  We got to see the ruins at Skara Brae…

…and the Ring of Brogdar.

We wandered in and out of shops and learned about the Ogham alphabet.  And I begged Josh about thirty times to let us move there.  Finally it was time to head back to Edinburgh.  We went on a puffin tour in North Berwick and also saw about three zillion gannets hanging out on Bass Rock.

We wrapped up our holiday with a tour of Holyrood, the Queen’s residence in Edinburgh.

It was hard to say goodbye.  We left things undone — towns unvisited, statues unseen — so we’ll have to go back there one day.  The ChickieNob started a Google form so we could choose our next location.  It’s still a hard landing coming home, but thinking ahead to the next things we’ll see makes it a little easier.  The twins have turned into awesome travelers, and there is no people we’d rather see the world with than the two of them.

So… you can probably guess where we went based on the title of this post.  We just got back from a trip to Scotland.  The trip was planned a few years ago and then cancelled when Josh was laid off.  Then it was back on and cancelled when I changed jobs.  But like they say, third time’s a charm?

I like to think that it was even better than it would have been if we had gone when we first planned the trip because (1) the kids were older and able to do so much more, (2) everyone pitched in with the planning, (3) we savoured it deeply knowing that it was cancelled twice.  There were plenty of times on the trip when I burst into tears of happiness, so much so that it became a joke where everyone in the family would stare at me when we reached a spot, waiting for me to start sobbing.  So I got to enjoy those, “I can’t believe we’re really here” moments along with the scenery.  Scotland is just a place I’ve always wanted to go.

Just as we had abnormally cold weather in Montreal, we had abnormally warm weather in Scotland.  Everywhere we went, people commented on how Scotland was never like this.  We never saw rain.  It was 70ish degrees every day.  We spent every single day outside, sometimes until midnight because once we got up to the northern towns, there was (at least some) light almost 24 hours per day.

But I’m getting ahead of myself because we started in Edinburgh.  We chose Scotland because we aim to give JK Rowling 100% of our money, and Scotland held the last few Harry Potter sites we couldn’t cover in England.  We went to Greyfriars Kirkyard, which holds the tombstones for Potter, Black, McGonigal, Moody, Scrimgeour, and Riddle.

We toured Edinburgh Castle, went on the best Sherlock Holmes tour, spat on the Heart of Midlothian, and touched the Flodden Wall.

We went on the Royal Britannia, which is currently docked in Scotland, and rubbed Bobby Greyfriar’s nose.

We saw the hotel room where JK Rowling finished Harry Potter…

…and I sat for a moment at her table when we had dinner at Elephant House where she wrote the earlier books…

…and sobbed reading the graffiti that covers every single inch of the bathroom wall (and ceiling) signed with messages of love from Dumbledore’s Army.

After a few days in Edinburgh, we continued on to Glasgow to do a bunch of Charles Rennie Mackintosh things, including a sneak peek into the newly restored Mackintosh at the Willow and tea at a “Mockintosh,” which are the fake Mackintosh tea rooms in the city.

Next we moved into the Highlands, traveling to Loch Lomond, Glencoe, and Glenfinnan where we saw the viaduct from the Harry Potter movies.

We went out to Mallaig and took the Jacobite — the Hogwarts Express — back to Fort William.

We hung out at the Drovers Inn — which is deliciously creepy — and went out to Loch Ness (no monster found) and Pitlochry and Cairngorms National Park.

We loved hard on the hairy coos.

And then finally… we headed north.  Like really really really north.

To be continued.

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

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As the article points out, “Nietzsche detected the handwriting of envy everywhere, observing, ‘Envy and jealousy are the private parts of the human soul’.”  Truth.

The article is about using your envy to discover what YOU truly care about vs. what society has told you to care about.  Because we all feel envy, and if we keep digging into that envy, noting when we feel envy, what we’re envious about on the surface, and then what we’re really envious about deep down inside — for instance, surface envy would be coveting someone else’s house; deeper envy is realizing what you’re coveting is assumed financial stability — then we can learn about ourselves and use that information to make decisions.

In other words, “envy can help us identify our vision of excellence and where need be, perhaps reshape it.”

My envy — like the example above — seems to stem from the idea of financial stability.  Rather than stewing in it, I’ve been trying to read financial planning articles.  The most boring reads of my life, but it’s making me feel like I’m accomplishing something.

What are you really envious of vs surface envy?

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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.