I really didn’t want to hear the BBC’s answer to their question —  does mindfulness really improve our health? — unless it was affirmative.  I’ve kinda sorta been trying different mindfulness exercises since January.  It’s a bummer to have someone pee in your Cheerios about something that is working for you.

The article makes a fair point — there hasn’t been enough (or long enough) research done even though anecdotal evidence looks interesting.  I’m all for more research.

This is what mindfulness does (for me): it reminds me to exist in the present.  Some of the things I do — such as now writing my worry list — helps me compartmentalize the past and future so they don’t cover up the present.  That’s all they are: fences.  And when I meditate before working, that’s a gate.  I open the door and step through it and spend at least five minutes in the present moment, fully focused on the present moment, which is longer than I spent on the present moment before I started keeping lists and deep breathing.

It has been interesting to learn about myself.  I think of myself as a nostalgic person, always trying to hold onto the past.  But I’ve noticed that I spend a lot more time worrying about the future.  Like deep into the future; not worrying about upcoming events but spending hours thinking about things ridiculously far off in the distance.  Like decades down the road.

It has been eye-opening to remind myself that the world decades down the road isn’t like the world I’m living in now.  There will be global changes, societal changes, and some of the things I worry about may be a moot point because those events won’t be taking place in the same world I’m living in now.

So I’m grateful for those fences and gates.

I am one Roundup away from my 700th Roundup.  It’s falling quite close to the anniversary of the very first Roundup, which was on July 21st.  I didn’t know how to hyperlink text back then.  It also seems like I didn’t know how to get the permalink for the post because I only included the main URL for the blog.  Oh weren’t we all so adorable back then?

Next week, I will write the normal 700th Roundup, but the week after that, I would like to celebrate by asking YOU to dive deep into your memory and come up with a post (or posts) that stuck with you.  You can go back as far as July 21, 2006.  You can nominate your own OR you can choose someone else’s post.  I’m giving you two weeks fair warning so you have no excuse.  Be ready to celebrate on July 6th.

And yes, I have a blog post chosen.  It is one that I have returned to read many times, and I think about all the time.  It is the best framing I’ve ever read.  It has changed my life; I hope it changes yours for the better, too.

So show up with your post and get ready to party.  Because… come on… 12 years of pretty much every single Friday?  That deserves a celebration with my favourite people.

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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… (dude, you guys better do better on July 6th — see above)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Wild and Precious Life has a post about how the separated families makes raw her own loss.  How she has to squelch that — this is about their situation — but also how it drives her because she knows what it feels like to live a nightmare.  It’s a beautiful, aching post about a truly awful situation.

Empty Arms, Broken Heart has a post about changing names now that the adoption is finalized.  The kids call all adults by their first name prefaced with Mr. or Ms. (As in, Ms. Melissa.)  And now it’s time (maybe?) to transition the kids to calling her parents something akin to Grandma or Grandpa.  And it begs another question: “I guess the biggest issue, regarding what my kids should call my parents, is really the very large elephant in the room, which is what do my parents call my kids?”  This post made me think about the complicated nature of names.

Lastly, Inexplicably Missing has a post about being in a waiting space.  She explains, “I promise I’m not stagnating. I just happen to be still. Hanging out. Watching. Waiting. Somewhat planning my next move. Somewhat not.”  Thinking and breathing are both good things.  Love this little post.

The roundup to the Roundup: July 6th — Roundup celebration (be there or be square).  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 June 15th and 22nd) 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.

NPR had a deep dive into parenting advice last month, covering not only what we do but what we don’t do.  Hint: other cultures deeply value people who aren’t the parent but play a critical role in the child’s life.  You can be infertile, therefore, and parent.

More on that in a second.

It begins with looking at parenting advice.  Most parenting advice — especially the stuff pertaining to raising babies — is opinion.  The stuff printed in books: opinion.  The stuff from experts: opinion.  So many of us get our knowledge about parenting from said books or the Internet, and it’s sometimes untested and not used in the rest of the non-Western world.

In many instances, what we think is “necessary” or “critical” for childhood is actually not present in any other cultures around the world or throughout time. “The list of differences is really, really long,” says Lancy… “There may be 40 to 50 things that we do that you don’t see in indigenous cultures.”

That, of course, is true of everything outside parenting, too; what is important to one culture is unimportant to another, hence why we have such a hard time successfully repeating another culture’s ideals, even when they’re spelled out to us in a how-to book in no uncertain terms.

I loved this article for the stuff that comes in closer to the end about alloparents.  Alloparents are all the adults who help out with the child — grandparents and aunts but also teachers and friends and neighbours.  Therefore, you are parenting, even if you are not the mother or father; playing a role in shaping that child.  The former teacher in me loved this idea.

In Western culture, we’ve created what NPR calls, “a mom stuck in a box, often alone, doing the job typically performed by a handful of people.”  We diminish the alloparents in the name of control, to be the leader in charge of shaping the child but if you take a step back and really look at it, we’re making this trade-off at our own expense.

I’ve written about this idea before, but I’ve never seen it summed up quite so well as this NPR post depicting WEIRD culture and the way we find the advice we hold onto so tightly.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the piece.

I worry.  A lot.  I like to share those worries with Josh.  A lot.  John Mulaney has a joke about why he married a Jewish woman.  “With Jewish women, you do not have to guess what they are thinking
They will tell you.”  I like to tell Josh things; the things inside my head.

But I really do like this idea from Forbes about creating a “to worry about” list throughout the day, and then setting aside time for the worrying when it’s convenient.  It’s pretty simple:

Make an ongoing list of things that you need to worry about … Designate a time to sit down and review the list. When you do, you’ll realize most of it was nonsense. However, there will be a few points on there that require your attention. Instead of ruminating, make an action plan to address or resolve what’s bothering you.

I have this on-going “happy” list that I started because Mo Gawdat told me to start this list when I was reading Solve for Happy.  Putting things on my happy list makes me happy.  I like lists, and getting to write down pleasurable things is really pleasurable.  I am very specific: “I am happy when I’m eating a good cucumber (not the sour, yellow, malafafonny types)” — malafafon is Hebrew for cucumber, and I associate a certain type of disappointing cucumber that I once purchased at a shuk with that word — or “I am happy when I find something that was missing” or “I am happy when I think about the possibility of one day having my very own puffin!” or “I am happy when I am 100% certain that a space is cricket-free.”

It feels good when I put a new item on that list.  I wonder if it will feel equally good to write out my worries on a daily basis and then reflect on them during a set time.

I guess I’m going to find out.  Come with me on an adventure where I write out all of my concerns in a single space and then read the list over and over again…

Do you keep a happy list?  Do you keep a worry list?

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

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“The instinct to gossip has been with us ever since there were more human beings than Adam and Eve. Once you went beyond the first two, there was gossip.”

I normally love gossip — at least in the form of People magazine — though I’ve gotten more sensitive to it in this past year.  There’s something about unnamed sources coupled with the age of manipulated news that sours me even to the most innocuous stories.  But it is so hard to tear myself away from celebrity stories.  Plus… it’s sort of sociology if you look at it the same way as this WashPo article:

Lui, 44, is a gossip evangelist. She believes in its value and its power: As a communication tool, a collective finger on the pulse of our culture, a means of sussing out our morals, our insecurities, our aspirations, our fears. She’s part investigative reporter, part breaking-news ethicist, part social anthropologist.

What do you think our gossip scene is saying about us as a people right now?

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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.