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

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I just read about the “sociocultural history of the line,” a topic that doesn’t sound very interesting but turns out to be fascinating.

Did you know that the first historical recording of people using a line was in 1837?  Before that you just gathered around the counter and joined the push to be served.  I would have never gotten bread.  First of all, I’m usually too short to be seen over a counter.  Beyond that, I would have given up in about three seconds.  I have a weak will to push into crowds.

The rest of the article is about how we behave in line and our willingness to participate in the construction.  Read it — I promise you will think about it the next time you’re in a long line at the grocery store.

Which would you rather do — queue up or join a free-for-all at the counter?

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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 wear a seatbelt.  A helmet when I bike.  I brush my teeth, exercise five days per week, watch my caloric intake.  I go for my annual physical.  My semi-annual pap smears and mammograms.  Teeth cleanings.

I do so many things to protect my body, and then I dive head-first into Twitter.

It’s not fair to put all the blame on Twitter.  It’s Facebook, too.  And blogs.  And conversations with friends.  And news alerts.  And newspapers.  It’s the world in general.  I feel like I do all these things to protect my physical self, but do nothing to protect my emotional self.

It is hard out there.  It’s always hard, but it feels like not only are the events coming fast and furious, but social media has made the events sound so loud.  There are the events themselves, and then there are the verbal responses to said events.  And then there are the verbal responses to the verbal responses.

I finally took a deep breath and started meditating with an app.  It doesn’t really help, but I’m sure that the response to that statement is that I haven’t stuck with it long enough.  Or I’m doing it wrong.  One or the other.

Playing ostrich and shutting out important conversations about race and gun control and the economy and bigotry isn’t a real solution.  But it feels so loud right now; even the statements I agree with feel like they’re being screamed.

Maybe it has to be screamed. Maybe that’s the only way change occurs.

I have a lot of trepidation around Marvel movies after Doctor Strange failed to live up to my expectations. (I’m sorry — I love Benedict Cumberbatch in many things, but he’s not Stephen Strange.)  But Black Panther managed to live up to and surpass the hype.  It is fantastic.

Wakanda is gorgeous, T’Challa is thoughtful, and the women are brilliant.  That last part is maybe the coolest thing: Even though this is T’Challa’s story, three women do the vast majority of thinking and ass-kicking in the movie.

We loved it.  And now I can return to waiting for A Wrinkle in Time to open because I. cannot. wait. to. see. that. too.

Have you seen Black Panther yet?

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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:

• “Ein Paar ohne Kind” (Elaine ohne Kind)

Okay, now my choices this week.

This was the most gorgeous article I read all week, and while it’s about the loss of his husband, I thought there was a lot of advice buried in there that is applicable to pregnancy and infant loss.  Especially this exchange with a nurse after his husband died: “She grabbed my hands and met my eyes. ‘It will be hard,’ she said. ‘It will be long. It will be painful. But you have to keep talking.’ That was the first advice I received as a widower. It remains the best.”  Please read the whole story.

My Lady of the Lantern also has a post about her child asking questions about death, especially about her sibling who died before she was born.  She writes, “Last night she was completing a class project and there she had to write names of her siblings. She had already written M’s name, and then asked me if she could mention CBub. Of course, she could!”  What is difficult for adults is approached differently by children, and it’s an emotional post about including your history.

Trisomy 18 Loss – Music and Musings writes about waiting for her ultrasound appointment.  A scan is never just a scan after a loss, and it’s a moving post about our experiences change us.

Lastly, In Quest of a Binky Moongee has a post about birthday wishes.  For the last few years, all wishes have involved parenthood.  And now that parenthood has come true, her husband pauses while the candle burns.  She writes, “He told me that when it came time for him to make a wish this time, he looked up and saw me, Bunny, and Okra. He did not feel the need to make a wish.”  It’s interesting to think about other ways to use that birthday wish when your constant one comes true.

The roundup to the Roundup: Black Panther was fantastic.  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 February 16th and 23rd) 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.

I love question lists; those exercises where you are supposed to ask another person a series of questions and get to know them better. There is the 36 question list made famous by the Modern Love column in the New York Times (or, more recently, an episode of the Science of Happiness podcast* building off of their Greater Good in Action sheet).  And the New Yorker’s version of the 36 questions.  (I still can’t read that without laughing.)

* Side note: I really loved the point that Kelly Corrigan makes on the podcast that most conversations you have require a back and forth.  You’re discussing something.  Both people are having their feelings heard.  But with question lists, one person is conveying information and the other person is just listening and absorbing.  There’s nothing to interject; no opinion to be expressed.  You’re just a receptacle.  That’s interesting, right?

Anyway, I was interested in Darius Foroux’s list because they are questions to ask yourself, not others.  You’re trying to figure yourself out vs. trying to explain yourself, and that little twist is appealing.

I liked the list through question 10, but then it veered off the life tracks for me because I’m not an entrepreneur.  I do not have customers with pain points.  I mean, I tried to answer the questions pretending that Linus was my client, but all of his pain points had to do with the slow flow of cookies.

I returned to the list for questions 16 – 21, though I clearly lost out on five questions.  I couldn’t think of their replacement, unless I made them about relationships.  How I’m doing as a wife, a mother, a sister, a daughter, a friend.  Whether I’m involved enough in my community.  What actions I’ve taken to strengthen my relationships.  And then two more questions that I haven’t thought of yet.  Damn this is hard.

Asking a good question is harder than thinking up a good answer.  When someone asks you a question, they give you a content frame.  But designing a question is like pulling words from the void.  Nothing exists and suddenly you’ve set someone’s brain on journey.

What is a good question you asked lately?

It feels like I’m being told with increasing frequency that I’m unhappy.  The more I dive deeply into happiness research, the more I find studies charting our underlying unhappiness.  Not as individuals, but collectively, as a member of humanity.

We’re not operating a peak happiness.  We are in an unhappiness epidemic.

Except… they’re two very different things.  I mean, I could be averaging a B+ in happiness, and that is still a damn good grade, even though I could clearly put in a little more self-reflection and gratitude practices and boost my happiness grade to an A-.  Or I could be getting a D in happiness, barely passing this life lesson.

I read that article linked to above because I was interested in the connection to screens and whether social media contributes more positive than negatives to my life.  I wanted to know what is the right amount of non-work-related screen time (since all of my work takes place on a screen).  It turns out the amount is about an hour a day.  More than that and your happiness decreases.  No screen time at all and your happiness decreases, too.

But, again, increases and decreases are very imprecise terms.  Are we talking about a 1% drop in happiness?  Did I drop from a 98% happiness level to a 97% happiness level, and would I really be able to discern the difference between the two levels?  Or did I drop from a 98% happiness level to a 56% happiness level, and it’s so noticeable that I need to fix this situation?

I am fascinated by happiness research and the general sense of whether it is measurable when our memories are so faulty.  How can I compare my happiness level today to my happiness level from yesterday when I only have a vague sense of yesterday?

I guess that’s really where I’m interested; the intersection of memory research (and how accurately we remember things) and happiness research.  Can we really tell our happiness levels?