I have a new favourite podcast that I need to tell you about.  Maybe need is too strong a word, but it balances out the numerous times I have tried to get everyone here to listen to Gimlet Media projects.  This one came at the suggestion of my friend.  I love this podcaster’s voice as much as Manoush Zomorodi’s voice from Note to Self.  The podcast: What Should I Read Next.

Her guests talk about three books they’ve recently loved, one book they didn’t like (I kinda sorta don’t like this section because well… I don’t want to talk about things I don’t like.  I have 3000 things I do like, so I don’t have time for not liking things), and a book they’re looking forward to reading next.  The woman’s voice is so relaxing; I want to put on a sweater and drink tea the second she starts talking.

So if you’re looking for a new podcast, that’s it: What Should I Read Next with Anne Bogel.  Bogel, by the way, is Modern Mrs. Darcy, and I’m equally smitten with her daily newsletter.  It’s how I learned about and bought and read Sleeping Giants.

*******

I was standing in the allergy medication aisle at the food store, looking at my non-drowsy options, when a silver ring bounced several times and finally rolled to a stop in front of me.  I picked it up and turned to the boy standing at the end of the aisle.  “Got it,” I told him.

“Got what?” he asked.

“Your ring.  The ring you dropped.”

I held out the ring, and the boy stared at me strangely.  “That’s not my ring.”

I looked around, but we were the only people nearby.  I walked to other aisles, holding out the ring and asking if anyone had dropped it.  Everyone agreed that it was a gorgeous ring, but no one knew where it had come from.  I finally brought it to a manager, asking if anyone had reported a lost ring.  No one had, but she now has it behind the desk in case someone drops by.

The only other possibility is that it was resting on top of the allergy medication box when I picked it, dislodging it from its resting place.  Maybe I’m watching a little too much Dirk Gently, but it felt like the universe was trying to tell me something.

*******

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.

*******

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:

• “Microblog Mondays: From Infertile Soil” (Searching for Our Silver Lining)
• “Community and Voice” (Anne Heffron)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Mrs Spit… Still Spouting Off wrote a post at exactly the right moment that I needed to read.  It was a post about failing, but being okay with it, and it gave me a whole new way of looking at the world.  This is the best part of blogging: when you read something that makes you say, “Oh, everything is okay.”

A Woman My Age has a post about not making her child a life story book; both why she hasn’t and how she wishes she had now that he has more questions about his origins.  I had chills go down both arms when he asked his question in the store, but I loved her ending: “I started his book tonight and instead of trying to make it perfect, I’m just going to do the best I can.”

My Path to Mommyhood has a post about things she has changed this year.  She writes: “I narrowed my life for no tangible reason. I mean, there was hope that something would change, which fueled this sense of CLEAR MY SCHEDULE!, but nothing did, which just left me feeling irritated and let down.”  It’s an important point (and an important post if you are also narrowing your life): that the waiting is even harder if you give up everything and all you have is the waiting.  I’m glad that she wrote this.  (And that she changed things this year and brought all this goodness into her life.)

Lastly, I was deeply moved by Family Rock’s post about marking the 7 year anniversary of her sibling’s death as well as all of the changes that have occurred (or temporary things that turned out to be more permanent) since adopting her children.  It’s an honest post, by which I mean that it is a raw post, and it may be hard for some to read.  I cried reading her final lines: “Even though it’s been 7 years, you never stop remembering. You never stop grieving. And you certainly never stop loving… that’s the only thing that keeps you going.”  It’s a really gorgeous post about grief.

The roundup to the Roundup: Download this book-filled podcast.  The ring that came from… nowhere.  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 21st and 28th) 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.

So I’ve really gotten into SuperBetter and have expanded to reading the book while I fiddle around with the app.  I’ve put a link to both the book and app at the bottom of the post in case anything I write resonates with you and you want to join along.

Anyway, I’ve been sailing through the information, nodding nodding nodding until I hit a thought that triggered an internal question that will probably be familiar for many of you.  I should preface this with a fact: Jane McGonigal talks about her own infertility in the book, so it’s a familiar topic for the author.

Somewhere near the beginning of the book, she writes about how games get us comfortable with the concept of losing.  Think about the games you play: The vast majority of the time, you don’t win, right?  I mean, yes, you ultimately clear the board in Candy Crush or get all the cards to line up in Solitaire, but there’s a reason most games come with multiple lives or chances.  She even states later in the book: “Gamers, after all, spend on average 80% of the time failing when they play their favourite games” (p. 86).

I am completely fine with losing games.  I am about as competitive as a slug.  In fact, the slug may care more about the outcome of games that I do.  I’m not competitive in the real world, either.  I don’t run races or care what the neighbours are doing… I just don’t feel particularly moved over whether I “win” or “lose,” even in everyday life.

Except in one place.

Losing during a cycle triggered the deepest grief, and I still can’t explain the reaction to this day.  Was it because I saw the stakes higher?  That doesn’t sound quite right, since the stakes are pretty damn high when it comes to other facets of life such as career, marriage, or health.  Was it the time factor — both the idea that time mattered when it came to fertility AND the length of time between tries?  It’s very different when you have to wait a month or two for another chance to play vs. being able to drop in a quarter and hit start to play again.  The effort expended with no “win”?  But it didn’t matter if it was a medicated or unmedicated cycle: I reacted the same way every single time.

I ultimately never found a way to be comfortable with losing when it came to trying to conceive.  I cried and raged and internally begged my way through every cycle.  Would it have been different if I had used the concrete exercises in this book back then?  Or do we all have places in life that are untouchable; that are therapy-proof?

I don’t have an answer: It’s just an observation about myself.  That while I can be okay losing at lots of things, the baby making game isn’t one of them.

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.

Eighteen years ago, I set up a cloud-based email account.  My boyfriend at the time talked me into it, saying we could use these cloud-based accounts to keep in touch while I was on a research trip.  Up until that point, all of my email was downloaded to an email client on my computer.

I kept using the account after I got back; in fact, I used it until the day the kids started school.

I recently had to go back into that old account to search for an old email, and while I was there, I decided to download all of the emails and save them to my computer.  I spent an hour clicking around, re-reading old notes that I had either sent or received.  There were emails back and forth with friends overseas after the Bush-Gore election as we were all trying to figure out who was president.  There were all of the emails I sent on September 11th when we were trying to account for everyone who worked in the Pentagon.  And then there were the personal moments; birth announcements for kids who are now in high school, telling people about our engagement, my own failed cycles, and finally the birth of the twins.

But my favourite emails to revisit were the first few emails I sent back and forth with Josh.  Yes, I have the first emails that we sent each other as well as the ones I sent my friends dissecting every early date, phone call, and interaction with Mr. Ford.  I was so nervous!  Rightfully so since I only know that everything worked out in retrospect, but still, so nervous and excited.  I loved getting to revisit those moments.

I downloaded over 12,000 emails, so I’ve only scratched the surface, returning to dates that bubbled up to the top of my mind.  I set the emails aside as a good snow day activity, delving into the past and seeing who I was back then.  Ready for the next blizzard.

Do you still have access to your old emails?  How far back can you go accessing messages?

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

*******

The twins and I still read aloud every night.  Once upon a time, I worried that they would outgrow it, but we still like to sit down together at 8:30 pm.  I read aloud a chapter and we discuss it in real time, even though they read books on their own the rest of the day.

We’re currently reading Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One.  I didn’t know if they would get into it, so I was holding another book in reserve, but they have been rabid about this story.

It’s interesting.  I don’t think it has anything to do with the games or movies listed in the book, though they have  certainly played almost all of the games and like a lot of the movies.  I think it’s more that the Wolvog relates to Wade.  He’ll point out similarities between them.  It’s almost as if, by reading the story, he’s understanding himself.

Have you ever found yourself in a story or related to a character in such a way that you understood yourself better?

Mine?  Arthur Dent.  I often feel like a female Arthur Dent.

*******

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 have a deep, abiding love for BBC programming, so when an email arrived from a producer with the subject line “BBC request,” my first thought was, “Oh my G-d, they totally know how I feel about them and it’s muuuuuutuuuuuual.”  Like we were middle schoolers and the BBC had asked me out and I had said yes so now we were going steady.

Except being their one and only was not the request.  The producer just needed me to be on a panel.  Oh.  Yeah.  No, I get it.  This love is one-sided.

Story of my life, BBC, story of my life.

The producer, who had the greatest accent of all time (I know because we ended up jumping on the phone), asked me to be on a panel for The Food Chain, to speak about being a lifelong vegetarian raising meat eaters.  He found me due to an old blog post about explaining my vegetarianism to the kids.

So I went down to a nearby iHeartRadio station and they patched me into London.  It was my first time being in a recording studio, and the kind man at iHeartRadio had a lot of misplaced faith in my ability to choose the correct buttons on the enormous computer board.  But I got through it and hopefully said smart-sounding things.

Afterward, the guy at iHeartRadio gave me a tour of the station, which was a lot of fun because they have a ton of machines with colourful cords and flashing lights.  It was just cool to see the space where shows are being produced and then drive home listening to said shows.

If you would like to listen to the episode, it was released yesterday so you can grab it on iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts (the episode is called “Vegan Babies: Should You Restrict Your Child’s Diet?”), or you can listen on the BBC site.  You know, the BBC (my boyfriend).