Updated at the Bottom

Like everyone else, I felt sad when I heard on Christmas that George Michael died.  As a Gen-Xer, it is my duty to make the next generation care about our 80s idols.  While I have done an excellent job on the video game/book/movie front, I have not really driven home the greatness of 80s music, though the twins know George Michael from being subjected to “I Love the 80s” weekends on 97.1 FM.

The part I always try to drive home to the kids is how risqué Faith was back in 1987.  The video for “I Want Your Sex” is fairly tame by today’s standards, but I remember a huge divide between kids whose parents allowed them to listen to it and those who had to listen to the radio edit version.  One day an older girl walked down the aisle of the bus, asking every kid if their parents allowed them to play the song at home.  Not only did I have the song, but my parents owned the VHS tape of all the videos from Faith.  Did that make me cool?  I believe the answer is yes.

There were a lot of “I hate you, 2016” posts on Facebook this weekend, but it’s not as if there has ever been a year without a slew of artists dying.  This is not a uniquely terrible year; it is just a year.  I mean, in terms of celebrity death.  For many other reasons, it’s okay to say I hate you to 2016.

Right now, I’m just trying to have faith.  We all have got to have faith-a-faith-a-faith.  Thank you, George, for the good music.

Updated:

And now Carrie Fisher has died.  This really has been a horrible end of year.

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.