I thought I’d make an excellent butler when I read Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day back in high school.  While I sort of suck at keeping an expressionless face, I’m excellent at being silent for hours at a time.  I enjoy keeping things neat and organized.  No one remembered me at my high school reunion, proving that I am good at being invisible.

But I recently read an article about what it takes to be a butler.  The instructor (because, yes, there are butler schools) posed a question about your child at the hospital and asked what you would do.  “If your answer was ’I would leave,’ this life’s not for you.”  Touché.

Still, I love this thought: “A happy butler is a Buddhist monk in tails, taking pleasure in the duty itself. Serving, but never servile.”

If I had a couple of thousand lying around, I would send myself to butler school to see if I have what it takes.  Maybe they’ll teach me how to keep a straight face.

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

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I wrote a few days ago about a Marcus Aurelius stoicism quote about choosing not to be sad if something is distressing you, and I still stand by the lack of worth in the words once he mentioned that this idea is applicable to anything and everything.

But I also found an old Modern Mrs. Darcy post on the same idea, only applied to the small stuff.  She mentions a friend whose husband was in a frustrating situation, and she said, “Eh, that’s life, she said. You can’t freak out about stuff like this. And she went on to explain that mix-ups like this happened to everyone at some time or another, and that’s just the way it is, and you have to decide to not get upset about it when it’s your turn.”

Your turn.  Like if you think of it like jury duty, this is just your turn.  Nothing you can do about it, so you might as well accept it and move on.  I am terrible at this — the idea of just rolling with things — but this is an idea I can get behind while I reject Marcus Aurelius.

What do you think?  Do you think people can actually choose calm when they’re frustrated?

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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.

The most interesting post I’ve read in a long time was on Quartz, and it was about the app Replika.  Replika is an app — you can download it right now in the app store — and you chat with it.  And as you chat with it, it is building an AI version of yourself, one that speaks like you and answers like you and remembers what you like and don’t like.

The idea both thrills and frightens me at the same time.

I haven’t downloaded the app because I don’t have a good sense of how the information I provide will be used in the future.  The author of the article writes that the creators don’t even know where this is headed:

But its creator, a San Francisco-based startup called Luka, sees a whole bunch of possible uses for it: a digital twin to serve as a companion for the lonely, a living memorial of the dead, created for those left behind, or even, one day, a version of ourselves that can carry out all the mundane tasks that we humans have to do, but never want to.

A digital twin.  A me who is not me.

I wrote about this bot exactly one year ago, and it was strange to encounter another article about it as I was debating whether or not to download the app.  I still stand by my feelings last year: I would want everyone I know and love to build a bot version of themselves.  What I struggle with is giving the same gift back: a bot me.  Because it’s not as simple as just answering questions.

The author writes,

A question to contend with as I was building my bot: In your everyday life, how open are you with your friends, family and coworkers about your inner thoughts, fears, and motivations? How aware are you yourself of these things? In other words, if you build a bot by explaining to it your history, your greatest fears, your deepest regrets, and it turns around and parrots these very real facts about you in interactions with others, is that an accurate representation of you? Is that how you talk to people in real life? Can a bot capture the version of you you show at work, versus the you you show to friends or family? If you’re not open in your day-to-day interactions, a bot that was wouldn’t really represent the real you, would it?

Maybe that is it: a bot is flat, unable to pivot and speak to each person the way you speak to each individual person.  So the author finds a completely different use for the bot, one that gives him deep insight into his own brain and way of processing the world.  Think of it like having a therapist who is always with you because it IS you…

Really, read the whole post and let me know if you’re going to start to use Replika.  I am so curious to hear about another experience.

So once upon a time, we were at a Hebrew school crossroads, trying to decide how/if we wanted to continue.  I was really on the fence, not sure the best path forward.  That day, I received a note through the Listserve.  I’ve been on the list since the first note because I signed up for it before it began since I wrote an article about it.  I never left, and I read every single one that comes into my inbox.

I’ve written three Listserve writers since it started in 2012.  One was a fellow infertility blogger.  One was a funny coincidence that I felt had to be shared.  The last was the author of the note I just mentioned.

He wrote about being in Israel and how all these decisions and events from his past led up to his current life.  First of all, it was just a really smart, well-written piece, but secondly, he specifically mentioned how his Bar Mitzvah didn’t really mean anything to him at the time, but how it informed these other life choices.  And he wrote, “This is all to say that I’m learning about the power of knowing your history, of being able to continually connect your present experience with the past—the now with the then.”

It felt like a sign from the universe; to get this note delivered to my inbox exactly when I needed it.  We decided to keep with the whole traditional Hebrew school to B’nai Mitzvah path, and look, here we are.  Anyway, I wrote him at the time to tell him this story, and we went back and forth with notes.  I promised I would write him in 4 years and let him know if the kids thanked him or cursed him.  It has now been 4 years, and I got to write to thank him for his words all those years ago.

The point of all this: You write something and you have no clue how your words will change someone else’s life.  They’ll make a different decision or they’ll try something new, and their life will go off in a new and wonderful direction.  I like to believe that the right words generally reach you at the right time if you’re open to hearing them.  I know they did that night when I opened the Listserve email.

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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:

• “Sometimes, You Can’t Run After Them” (Inconceivable!)
• “‘As a Father’ (Same Song, Second Verse)” (The Road Less Travelled)
• “Squawk Box: Secondary Losses” (Unpregnant Chicken)
• “Read Your Own Story” (Stirrup Queens) — thank you, Cristy!

Okay, now my choices this week.

So, yes, she’s above, but I only read Inconceivable! over the weekend to find her gorgeous post about The Runaway Bunny.  She writes, “The Runaway Bunny seemed particularly apt.  If you run away, I will run after you, the mother bunny promises her little bunny.  I had run after this child, first with all the poking and prodding, then medications, and finally the IVF.  Right then, it seemed perhaps I had finally caught this baby.”  It is a post marking Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness month, and it is such a gorgeous, heartbreaking post.

Misconceptions About Conception explores whether genes matter to her after she gets back pictures from a family photo shoot.  She admits that she has no comparison, no way of proving she is correct, but she knows what she knows with her heart.  It’s a beautiful post about love.

Lastly, My Path to Mommyhood has a post about being asked the “do you have kids” question while she was trying to enjoy herself at a ball.  (A ball with video games?  I am so there.)  My favourite line: “I think sometimes people feel better if they think that they’ve given you hope, even though for us hope came finally in the letting go of that possibility so we could focus on the rest of our life.”

The roundup to the Roundup: When the right words come at the right time.  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 October 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.

I recently read a quote that gave me pause.  It came from the stoic text The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. One translation of the 167 AD text went:

If thou art pained by any external thing, it is not this thing that disturbs thee, but thy own judgement about it. And it is in thy power to wipe out this judgement now.

The more common way this quote is written — on inspirational posters and coffee mugs:

If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it, and this you have the power to remove at any moment.

In other words, if you’re upset, it’s not the event or situation or person causing you to be upset but the power you’re giving that event or situation or person.  You can just snap your fingers and say, “you know what?  I’m not going to be upset anymore.”

I call bullshit.

I always call bullshit when I encounter this attitude.  Does it work on small things: absolutely.  If I’m frustrated because the house is a mess or someone cut me off on the road or someone isn’t returning an email, it is in my power to decide not to let these things bother me.  I know this is true because sometimes they bother me and sometimes they don’t, depending upon my current mood.  If I just received great news, I’ll laugh at the fact that the house is mess and turn it into a funny Facebook status update.  If I’m in a terrible mood and everyone leaves their shoes by the front door… watch out.

The word that makes me call bullshit is “any”: “any external thing” or “anything external.”  Once we lump all pain together and say all emotional pain should be treated equally by our hearts and minds, I’m going to call bullshit.  To paraphrase John Green, some infinites are larger than others.  And in that vein, some pains cannot be contained or changed; they can only be endured.

This community knows you can’t just decide to feel otherwise; at least not on your own timetable.  Feelings change over time, but that is just it: it’s time that wears the rough edges smooth.  There are things that you can do to speed up the process, but you feel things when you’re ready to feel things, and those feelings may not come when you force them but mosey into your heart like a cowboy entering a saloon, casually eyeing the room for danger before deciding to sit down at the counter.

I guess I just showed my hand in how I feel about stoicism in general.

What do you think of the quote?