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

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We divide our trips into expansion trips (expand your mind or expand out into the world) and contraction trips (contract into a cozy cocoon of relaxation).  So going to London is an expansion trip, and we generally come back from those trips happily different but exhausted.  Going to the beach is a contraction trip, and we generally come back from those trips the same but rested.

The twins and I have a block of time coming up where Josh is out-of-town and we don’t have any other commitments.  “Let’s go to the beach,” I said.  THEN I found out about this museum about an hour from the beach that details the old communities that existed on the barrier islands.  “Let’s also go to the museum!”  I mean, it’s just one more hour of driving.  For something super cool.

But the Wolvog pointed out that going to the museum defeats the purpose of going to the beach.  That we wouldn’t get true expansion because we’re talking about doing something new for about four hours of our usual beach trip but we also wouldn’t get true contraction because we wouldn’t be hanging out on the beach, relaxing and reading.

Point taken.

Do you prefer expansion-type trips or contraction-like trips?

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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 am fascinated by the story about the journalist who wrote about his experience unplugging, though he didn’t unplug at all.  It wasn’t a joke — he wasn’t trying to make a point about the untenable nature of unplugging.

He believed that he had unplugged.  He didn’t consider things like tweeting dozens of times per day to be spending time online.  He tweeted his news stories.  He tweeted other people’s news stories.  He got into conversations about the news on Twitter.

In other words, he did exactly what everyone plugged in does, called it being unplugged, and refused to admit that online time is online time.

That is one fierce situation of denial.

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I am not unplugging.  I have hours where I’m not online, but I would never describe that time as a digital detox.  I love down time, but I also love social media.

Can we really unplug?  I don’t know anyone who has a job where they can fully unplug for months at a time with zero consequences to their career.  I can choose not to use certain sites, and I can certainly set boundaries and limits with my time.  But that’s not really “unplugging.”  I’m not going to reap major health benefits from turning off Facebook for 24 hours.

I can’t see any employer being cool with me saying, “Hey, I’m not going to go online for the next four weeks.  You won’t be able to reach me via email or connect with me on social media.  In fact, if we don’t meet up for coffee, you’re not going to be able to speak with me at all.”  Or, I mean, I could say that, but I wouldn’t have a job.

Which would be a reasonable reaction.  Unplugging means cutting yourself off from communication tools.

So… is it time for us to stop talking about unplugging?  To admit that it’s not possible; not in the true sense of the word?  That the age of smart phones took that option away?

I am sad that Toys R Us is closing.  The one that I went to as a child closed down years ago, so I can’t even jog through it one last time.  I’m sad for the people who will lose their jobs.  I hope the independent toy stores remain in business and aren’t squeezed out by Amazon, too.  Yes, this is partly because I still buy toys (for me), but… I think in my mind, I tied the toy store news to the walkout; the idea that these kids are growing up and that a lot of the wonder they felt as kids has been sucked out of their lives as they consider reality; that they have to walk out of school and beg lawmakers to place their lives — children’s lives — before guns.

I am sad that Stephen Hawking died.  There are very few times when I archive a news alert, but I archived that one.  Reading it made me feel like a little hole had opened up inside my body.  The world needs great minds; I’m sad that one is now gone.

And I am sad about the Cleveland clinic’s malfunction that compromised 2000 embryos and frozen eggs.  So far the embryos they thawed for scheduled procedures haven’t been viable.  And then, in the same weekend, another malfunction in California.  What a huge blow for potential parents.  If you are using a fertility clinic, you have usually already gone through emotional upheaval to end up in that space.  To have this happen — TWICE — in a single weekend is heartbreaking.

A hard week.

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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:

• “Adolescence and Adoption: How Adoptive Parents Can Support Teens” (GoodTherapy.org)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Infertile Phoenix has a post about failure.  It’s a powerful post, detailing a near fail during her college years and a change in majors, leading up to her attempts to build her family.  She calls herself “an expert at failure.”  She is once again in a situation where the effort expended is not matching the outcome.  But this time, she comes armed with history and knowledge.  “I think I will pass.  I will be okay if I don’t.  I am still going to move to a different state, and I am still moving on with my life.  Just like I’ve done with everything else so far, I will survive.”

One Step at a Time has a moving, raw post about her child’s sensory issues.  She opens with the assessment period, explaining that waiting for the report was nerve-wracking.  “And when it came I was prepared to fight it tooth and nail. I was ready to rip it apart just like they had ripped every part of my son with analysis. And I did that for myself. Just to get it out of my system. But in the end I just didn’t respond.”  The post goes through the ups and downs until she arrives at their current solution.  It’s a wonderful post; even better that she put this information out there in case it helps someone else.

Lastly, Bent Not Broken honours the four year anniversary of learning she would not be able to have children, a day that she calls “The Day Dreams Died.”  The anniversary rolled around this year on a day when she was going to have to see a new baby and spend time around her nieces and nephews.  She writes, “I know I’ve neglected this space lately, but today, on a day where I’m feeling not being able to have children viscerally, I’m glad I have it.”  THAT is why I love blogging and our community in particular.

The roundup to the Roundup: Hard week.  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 9th and 16th) 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.

Modern Mrs. Darcy mentioned in her last newsletter a practice that she has been doing where she writes down one positive moment, one important moment, and one frustrating moment from every day.  She goes on to admit that seeing all the frustrating moments in her own handwriting was a bit demoralizing at first, but she turned it around and now uses those moments as a motivator.

I write down one sentence per day in my bullet journal, focusing on whatever feels like it defined my day.  Sometimes nothing particularly memorable happens during the day, but most of the time I can point out something I was worried about or thinking about even if nothing momentous occurred.

That bullet journal daily sentence would count for the important.  Sometimes it’s positive — usually it’s positive — but sometimes it’s negative.  If there are two defining moments in a day — one positive and one negative — I try to record the positive one because I want to look back on my year fondly.  I know there are negative moments in there, too — like March 14, 2017 (“Snowstorm made us lose our Yayoi Kusama tickets”) — but I want to flip back through the months and feel like it’s a fun exercise and not a painful reminder.

Psychologist Barbara Fredrickson’s research led her to an important ratio — 3:1.  Three positive thoughts counterbalance one negative thought.  So one positive and one negative and one either positive or negative (since “important” can be either) means that the negatives loom large.  You’d need three positive and one negative to have the two sides balance out in your brain.

It’s important to learn from mistakes.  It’s important to apologize and understand what you did wrong so you don’t do it again.  But I can’t see how it would be helpful to dwell on one of my boneheaded daily moves.  I’m not sure if I would see it as a motivator.  I think if I wrote it down daily it would become proof of my negative qualities vs. a spark pulling me away from them.

This is one improvement practice I’m going to have to skip trying.

What do you think?  Would you find listing frustrating moments motivating?

So you may have noticed that I’ve been trying out a bunch of self-improvement things — decluttering, meditation, productivity tricks.  There were a bunch of popular self-improvement books on sale in January, AND I’m doing research for a project.  Anyway, I’ve started noticing that each source of advice comes with a caveat that the advice will only work if I stick with it long enough.

I think you know where I’m going with this.

But first, a case in point: meditation.  I’ve now tried several dozen meditation apps INCLUDING meditating in VR.

[Sidenote: Can we pause for a moment to talk about that?  It’s divine.  You put on the headset and you feel like you’re sitting on a beach.  You can look behind you and see an expanse of sand.  You can look in front of you and see gently lapping waves.  And then you sit there for a half hour while a voice gently talks you through meditation while you stare at the ocean.  It is amazing.  I want to cry the whole time I’m doing it, which negates the whole meditation thing.  But still.]

[A side note to THAT side note: The Wolvog sent me on a VR adventure in Bora Bora.  I felt like I was standing in one of those bungalows over the water.  I could look around the room; walk over to the deck and peer into the crystal clear water.  It was amazing.  I cried with that, too.  I get a little overwhelmed when he sets up VR experiences for me and get his headset smeary.]

Anyway.  Back to the point.

Every single meditation apps comes with a caveat.  It will take time to get into it.  How long?  They never say because it will be different for each individual.  But the message is that it WILL work if I stick with it.  It may take days or it make take months, but as long as I don’t drop the practice, my mind will one day embrace meditation.

I am totally on board with the idea that things take time.  Learning a new skill takes time.  And I can even accept that meditation is a learnable skill.  But I start pushing back whenever the “stick with it” clause gets mentioned because I’ve experience too many areas of life where I can dedicate myself to a task fully and still not reach the outcome I want.  When I hear that clause, it brings out this contrarian side to my personality that developed during infertility and now comes out to play whenever I hear that something applies to everyone.  Or all.  Or anyone.

No.

I want an app that say, “You may be able to learn meditation, but you may not.  And it’s not because you didn’t try or stick with it long enough.  It just may not work for you, and that’s okay, too.  Find something else.”

THAT is what this contrarian needs.

And at the same time, I’m really bummed by this residue from infertility.  Infertility changes your personality in strange ways; some obviously connected to the experience and others that take a twisting path.  That you don’t realize until you realize it.  And it was a sad day when I realized that the experience brings out this contrarian side, too.