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

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The day after Purim is usually a bit of a letdown.  There is relief because I pulled off all the costumes and presents, but there are also hours where I feel down because so much energy was directed at getting through the holiday, and now the holiday is over until next year.

I imagine that is what Christmas is like, too.  I mean, most people are off today, so that helps to extend the holiday feeling.  But all good things must come to an — albeit temporary in the case of annual traditions — end.

How do you get through the blues that occur after a big deal event has passed?  Any Christmas traditions for a soft landing?

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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.

Pssst… are you up?  Are you awake?  What are you doing?  Are you eating something special for Christmas?  Are you wearing Christmas pyjamas?  You are, aren’t you?

Have you opened gifts yet?  Did anything surprise you, or did you sort of know what was underneath the tree?

What are you doing now?  How about now?  And now?

I am actually not as bored as I sound.  I really like Christmas because it is the one day a year that you know nothing will be open, no one will be working, and you can pretty much play video games for 12 hours straight with zero consequences.

Actually, that is what I did last year.  This year, I will still play video games for a little bit, but I’m mostly working through 501 essentially backgammon problems.  Every year I like to set a goal for myself, and this year’s goal is to become a good enough backgammon player to consistently beat the computer on the hardest setting.  A secondary goal is to start competing.  A tertiary goal is to become the best backgammon player in the world before 2018.  I like to aim high.

I hope you are having a relaxing day if you’re celebrating Christmas or not.  That you’re keeping warm (or cool if you live in the Southern Hemisphere) and eating good food and reading books and being with friends or family.

So what are you doing now?

In the vein of last minute Christmas ideas — an activity and a stocking stuffer.  Actually, those would be two last minute Christmas ideas because the activity is not the stocking stuffer.

Anyway.

We participated this year in a really fun idea called Cookies for Cops.  It’s a program through MADD where local families bake cookies for police departments around the area.  I have a fantastic friend who arranged for all of us to drop off our cookies at her house, and she delivered them for us.  If you Google “MADD Cookies for Cops,” you can see if they’re holding a program in your area.  And if not, start one because you get the fun of baking and then other people get the fun of eating.

Speaking of baking, my silicone spatula broke while making muffins.  This is the second time the clear handle has snapped in half, so when I went to Bed, Bath, and Beyond, I decided to get a different brand.  I ended up with a blue Core Kitchen spatula, and I love this thing so much that it makes my heart hurt.  For some reason, it’s not on the store’s website, but I did find it on this one.  There are huge display cases of them in-store by the baking aisle.  It’s really heavy and sturdy.  Even my muffin batter can’t break it.  I think.

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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:

• “Beginnings, Endings, and Messy Stuff in the Middle” (Torthúil)

Okay, now my choices this week.

IF Pomegranate has two posts: one about waiting and then the followup after the phone call musing on a future conversation with her sister about egg donation.  It’s all the considerations that the average person doesn’t think about such as the risk to the egg donor and genetic links.  I empathized with the first post, and I was glad she received the phone call with the second.

The Road Less Travelled has a post about the Syrian refugee family that has moved in across the street from her parents’ house, watching them as they experience snow (perhaps for the first time).  In a week when Monday was filled with bad news from the Electoral College vote, it was sweet to encounter this story of a Canadian Christmas scene.

Anabegins returns with an update.  I love the magic of the RSS feed reader that always lets you know when someone has popped back up.  She ends the post with a sentiment that I feel, too: “I wish I could feel hopeful that next year will be better — and the threshold is set pretty damn low here — but it seems like the world is falling apart around us, spiraling downward faster than I can blink.”  Holding strong with you for 1461 days.

Lastly, Bent Not Broken has a post about celebrating Christmas and finding triggers where she didn’t expect them; namely, a baby that shows up at the party.  She writes, “It seemed like most of the day there were two themes of conversation: breastfeeding and our president elect.  I did not wish to engage in either of these conversations so I found the bathroom to be a welcome escape.”  Something I suspect many people will deal with this holiday season, so I echo her sentiments at the end: wishing you “a happy, or at least not terrible, holiday season.”

The roundup to the Roundup: Cookies for Cops and excellent spatulas.  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 December 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 would describe myself as a rational pessimist; I believe the worst will happen because it often does.  A case in point, I worried about whether we had done enough prior to the election, and look where we are now despite Nate Silver’s polls.  This is not to say that all my fears come true, but I’m not basing my pessimism willy-nilly on a gut feeling.  No, I am a rational pessimist who has examined the facts and thought: “Yes, whenever possible, things go tits up.”

According to SuperBetter, this mindset is not working for me.

On page 132, Jane McGonigal distinguishes between the way we look at problems: do we see them as a threat or a challenge?  If you see your problems as a threat — something that is making your life difficult or that you need to endure or overcome — you will be stuck fighting an exhausting, possibly unwinnable fight, especially in situations where after a certain amount of work, the rest is left to chance.

Whereas if you look at your problems as a challenge — something that is testing your endurance and will show you what you are made out of — then you can approach your problems with a different energy.  You’re not fighting against; you’re fighting for.

Okay, a lot of this is easier said than done for a self-proclaimed rational pessimist.

McGonigal describes the two mindsets on page 137:

In a threat mindset, you focus on the potential for risk, danger, harm, or loss.  You feel pressured to prevent a negative outcome rather than to achieve a positive outcome … In a challenge mindset, you focus on the opportunity for growth and positive outcomes.  Even though you acknowledge that you may face risk, harm, or loss, you feel realistically optimistic that you can develop useful skills or strategies to achieve the best possible outcome.

In other words, view your problems “as a challenge you’re capable of meeting, rather than as a threat that will overwhelm or harm you” (p. 137).

Some of the work comes from something that McGonigal calls cognitive reappraisal (on page 135), which is changing the way you look at a situation.  Her example involves turning anxiety into excitement, since the emotions mirror one another in terms of your body’s response.  In both cases, your heart starts racing, your stomach may hurt, or you may feel light-headed.

Which means that it’s easier to convince yourself that your nervousness is excitement (since your body will be feeling the same thing) vs. convincing yourself that your nervousness is calm (since your body will be feeling opposite sensations).  Instead of telling yourself, “I’m calm,” tell yourself, “I’m excited!” even when you’re actually really nervous.  It can change the way you approach tackling the situation.

Wait, but don’t work against yourself by reminding yourself that you’re lying.  Simply say these words, “I’m excited, I’m excited, I’m excited” as you bounce up and down.

Once you have done that, you will open your mind to the possibilities ahead of you vs. the stress that you’re in right now.

So take something that is stressing you out and state it as a threat, and then pause for a moment, and rewrite it as a challenge.  Go!

I’m writing about SuperBetter the app as well as SuperBetter the book because… well… I learned about them via a podcast and now I want to talk about everything I’m learning on them.  If you want to talk about them, too, join along.  If not, skip the posts marked SuperBetter.

This post contains a spoiler for the movie Passengers.  You likely have already heard about it because it happens in the first few minutes of the movie, and every review has mentioned it, but in case you haven’t, stop reading now.

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I’m not going to see the movie Passengers because the mishaps-in-space trope fills me with dread*, but I realized that I got the story wrong after reading Nerdist’s take on the plotline.  My assumption was that both people woke up at the same time on the ship, and the movie is trying to figure out why these two passengers and none of the others are destined to die in space.

But noooooo, Chris Pratt wakes up 90 years too early and then decides to wake up one of the other passengers so he won’t be alone.

Nerdist asks an interesting questions (which sounds like it comes from the movie): “If you were stranded alone on a desert island, as star Chris Pratt pontificates early on in the movie, and you had the power to strand someone else there with you, would you?”

Like, if you were going to be locked in a spaceship, doomed to die, would you grab someone else to join you on-board so you wouldn’t have to be alone, knowing that you’re dooming that other person to the same fate?

I know the “correct” answer is “of course not!”  The kind person says they would stoically endure their indefinite solitary confinement and talk to themselves until the end of their days.

But… really… I mean, if you had the ability to have someone with you, wouldn’t you take someone with you?  There is a reason why solitary confinement is considered a cruel punishment.  People literally go insane only speaking with themselves.  But once you decide to do it, the question gets trickier: Do you pick someone you know or someone you don’t know?  And if it’s someone you know, do you go with an acquaintance, a friend, a family member, or your favourite person in the world?

Listen, I know this makes me a terrible person, but I think I’d grab someone.  I mean, first and foremost, I would hope that they would naturally be in the same mess with me so I’m not to blame for their situation, but if that’s not possible, I think I’d grab an acquaintance.  I think.  Best not to know me, right?  Oh my G-d, but then the guilt factor kicks in and I think, “No way could I deal with the guilt.  Better to die alone.”

What about you?

*It doesn’t matter whether it’s real, like Apollo 13, or fake, like Gravity.  I can read book versions, but I can’t see movies.  I panic just thinking about them.  I’m still freaked out about the “Resurrection Ship” episode of Battlestar Galactica where Apollo is floating through space.