This was a mind-blowing read.

I first read it on the day of my double vaccine session, when I knew that the best course of action would be to step away from trying to accomplish anything and instead allow myself to mentally disconnect and heal. And, clearly, I was not doing that because I was reading this essay.

I put the post in a folder, signed off the computer, and came back it after I had let myself not accomplish anything but just take care of myself for the sake of taking care of myself that weekend.

We’ve been talking a lot about how it’s not time for accomplishments (thank you, Middle Girl’s commenter, 8thday), and maybe I need to hear the message in multiple ways to really hear it.

I also love this:

So you don’t need to choose between peace of mind and the thrill of pursuing ambitious goals. You just need to understand those goals less as vehicles to get you to a future place of sanity and good feeling, and more as things that unfold from an existing place of sanity and good feeling.

Very wise.

I’ve been rewatching The Good Place, giving myself one episode a week each Friday. I’ve been doing this for years — working through feel-good series, one Friday at a time — and things land differently the second (or third) time around.

For instance, I noticed so many things I missed the first time around with Ted Lasso. Little moments happening in the background that I didn’t look at because I was so focused on following the story in the foreground. It reminded me a little of the end speech in About Time, where he talks about living each day twice: once with all the chaos of trying to keep up, and once by slowing down and really paying attention to the moments you miss while you’re running around.

I liked The Good Place the first time around — loved it, in fact — but I didn’t realize what an amazing show it was until this viewing. Seeing the episodes back-to-back, knowing what is coming next, makes me slow down and notice everything. And I’m also seeing it in context with the current world.

I love the part about how every decision is so complicated that even good decisions lead to bad outcomes. You buy vegetables so you can eat vegan, but those vegetables have an enormous carbon footprint because they came from far away, so this good decision — eat vegan to be good to the world — becomes this decision that harms the world.

Or I just read an article about shoes made from recycled plastic, and how it sounds like a great idea to keep plastic out of landfills. You feel great about your decision. But then those shoes will one day end up in a landfill. You’re just delaying the time when the plastic will be poisoning the earth.

Where am I going with this? I have no idea except that I’ve hit season 4 of The Good Place, which I know will be enormously moving because I remember it from the first time around. Though I hope that this time, I catch all of the tiny details I missed the first time along the way.

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

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Like I said on Friday, today marks the 19th anniversary of the first Friday Blog Roundup back in 2006.

What is amazing is that there are still posts I think about, so many years later. One that continues to bring me enormous comfort — and I’ve linked to it many times before — is Toddler Planet’s “ It’s Not Fair.” She wrote it about six months before she died from metastatic breast cancer.  These lines may not make sense without reading the longer parable contained in the post, but I think about them all the time: “We each get one life, one daily wage, and that’s it. The guy next door gets one life to live. The mom down the street gets one too. No one ever promised us the same life, the same opportunities, the same blessings, or the same time to live. No one ever promised that. We are promised one opportunity, one life, and how we live it is between us and our Creator (I believe). There is no comparing.”

She did a lot of amazing things while she was on this planet, and I’m eternally grateful for her writing, which put the imbalance of the world into perspective and gave a frame for considering all moments. I hope that if you are also finding this time tumultuous and upsetting, her words help ground you.

And please share what moved you. The posts you remember, so many years later.

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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 connected to businesses or sponsored posts.

The ChickieNob and I were lounging around, talking about a snack we ate in Bury St. Edmunds at the Cornish Bakery, a bakery chain that sells cookies, pastries, and pasties. We had been in search of cake, but we ended up there and bought squares of Cornish pudding, eating them out of paper bags while we walked.

We loved this Cornish pudding. And quickly became obsessed with the idea of recreating this Cornish pudding or seeing if there was a restaurant in the area that carried it.

Herein lies the problem: There is no such thing as “Cornish pudding.” Yes, there are a bunch of recipes all labeled as such, but the accompanying pictures showed us sweet and savory bread pudding-like concoctions. There were many many many things called Cornish pudding.

The store described the dish on social media: “Layers of gooey pastries soaked in vanilla custard and topped with blueberries, raspberries and white chocolate before being baked to perfection.” So we started building a bread pudding recipe containing brioche, blueberries, raspberries, and white chocolate, all soaked in a vanilla custard.

The result was delicious but definitely not Cornish Bakery’s Cornish pudding. We are not deterred and are still trying to figure out the pastry part (croissants?) because it definitely wasn’t puffy like brioche. If anyone has reverse-engineered this or knows how to make something closer to the Cornish pudding at the Cornish Bakery, let me know.

Monday marks the 19th anniversary of the first Friday Blog Roundup back in 2006.

It was a few weeks after I started the blog, and I realized that I was reading stuff and wanted to talk about it with other people, so the Roundup was born. Every week, I would post things that I thought about after I closed the browser. If I bookmarked the piece, or I talked about it with someone else, or I thought about it at a random moment, it went on the list.

I like the idea that sharing is baked into the structure of the internet. It’s literally a tool for sharing information, perspective, advice; an infinite backyard fence in the form of a hyperlink. I am grateful for a world where there are still writers slogging past the words produced by AI to deliver their own unique thoughts to get under our skin and shift the way we see the world.

I’m going to ask you on Monday to share posts you still think about, so go look at your bookmarks and get ready to tell us the words that have stuck with you.

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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 to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

And now the blogs…

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But first, second, helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week. To read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “July 4th Anniversaries” (Infertile Phoenix)
• “No children. Just us. And it was more than enough.” (The Next 15,000 Days)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Scientist on the Roof feels time poor, and I related to her missing minutes (hours?) 100%. She writes: “I am not sure if I am just so disorganized… or if I am experiencing some weird time-related quantum phenomena.. or if some things are just taking longer than they should.” I also feel like there are tasks each day that should happen, and yet… I don’t have time to do them.

The Next 15,000 Days writes about a thoughtless comment delivered by her uncle about a recent trip to the beach. She summaries the moment: “I sat in silence, struck by the sheer thoughtlessness of it all. How wrapped up people can be in their own joys, blind to the quiet sorrows seated right beside them. How carelessly words can fall, without the faintest thought of who might be catching them.” It’s a good reminder to think before you speak.

The roundup to the Roundup: 19 years of Roundups. 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 July 11 – 18) 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.