Chalk this up to my different kind of smart…

I went on my last elementary school field trip this past week.  It was an end-of-year bowling party in one of those newfangled, computerized bowling spaces.  Loud music.  Flashing lights.  A lot of fun and bittersweet.  They all looked so tweenish.

When we got back to school, I ducked into the main office to make copies of the graduation program.  I estimated that I had about an hour to accomplish this task.  This sounds like a lot of time for making copies, but the copier hates me and often breaks down mid-job.  Plus the program ran a little long.  Like 24 pages long… (Don’t judge me!)

But the copier behaved, and I got all the copies made and tucked away for graduation.  Success!  I still had 20 minutes to burn until the end of school, so I settled down in a chair in the main office and started reading a comic book.  I was completely lost in a side story about Black Spectre.  (The one that is hunting the Omega Drive, not the Moon Knight/Carson Knowles Black Spectre.)

But then I started noticing that many parents were coming through the office, stating they were there to help out with class parties.  That’s odd.  Why would so many parents show up under 20 minutes until the end of school if they wanted to help with parties?  Shouldn’t they have come an hour before school got out?  Do the younger classes hold their parties in the last 20 minutes of the day?

Finally I asked about it, and the school secretary smiled at me and said, “Well, Melissa, they’re arriving because there is still over an hour left on the school day.”

I looked up at the clock and realized that there was no reason why I was sitting in the office.

“Oh.”

“Yeah, I wondered why you were sitting here,” she admitted.

I sheepishly collected my things and murmured that I would be back in an hour.  The secretary nodded and said, “Well, at least you got to look at your pictures.”

Yeah.

I like to end on a high note.

This is the 600th Friday Blog Roundup… which means it’s really the 500th one.  At some point they got misnumbered, and blah blah blah.  But it makes sense.  The blog will be 10 years old soon.  I started doing this a few weeks after I started the blog.  520 weeks in 10 years.  By the time we reach the anniversary for the Roundup, there will be 510 or so Roundups.  Which means there has only been maybe one week per year where I don’t do this.

That is a lot of posts read.  A lot of posts discussed.  Just… a lot of posts.

I’ve said this before, but it’s worth repeating.  This is how I choose the posts for the Roundup each week.  I read.  I read a lot and sometimes I bookmark things that stick with me.  And then on Thursday night or Friday morning, I look at all the bookmarked posts and I choose a few to talk about.  I’ve never accepted a request because… that makes it feel like work.  And it’s not work.  It’s just the words that reached into my brain and stuck with me after I walked away from the computer.

Sometimes they’re not the most profound posts.  Sometimes they just capture an everyday moment so well that it feels worth asking if it resonated with everyone else.  But sometimes they’re verbal symphonies.

I know some people think blogging is in a lull, but I still find little gems every week.  You just have to be willing to look.  You have to be willing to jump from comment section to comment section to find new blogs.  You need to step away from the spoon-feeding of links on social media and dive back into blogs themselves, waiting for a great post to rise up.  It’s sort of like fishing in that sense.

Thank you for providing so many fish over the years.

Here’s to the next 500.

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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:

• “A Father’s Advocacy Never Ends” (Stillbirth Matters)
• “The World Outside Is so Inconceivable Often I Barely Can Speak” (Real Life and Thereafter)
• “In Every Sense, Insensitive” (It’s Inconceivable)
• “When the Absence of Hope Is a Good Thing” (No Kidding in NZ)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Um… like someone could write about Lord of the Rings and not have me mention it?  I love Inconceivable’s deconstruction of the ending of Return of the King and how that truth applies to our own personal walks through Mordor.  Grief changes us.  Stressful situations change us.  We can never go back and find things exactly the same.  Sometimes we need to keep fighting so our new future fits our needs.  It’s a gorgeous post.

Grumpy Rumblings has a damn good analogy for finding balance in life.  The post is brief and to the point, so I won’t say much more than that and ruin it.

Kmina’s Blog just celebrated its 7th anniversary, and she muses on the state of the world today as well as a hope for next year.  Again, just a lovely post that is so brief that it would be ruined by more description.  Just click over and read it.

River Run Dry has a gorgeous piece about the shooting in Orlando, her words shaking with rage.  She writes, “Our right to bear arms means our country allows anyone to by an assault weapon, without background checks. It means the CDC can’t even research the causes of gun violence.  And our right to bear arms means that more mothers will sit there, trapped, unable to protect their children.”  It is a must-read for anyone who is shaking with rage over gun violence.

Lastly, Pages, Stages, and Rages has a post about Renee Elise Goldsberry’s speech at the Tony’s announcing her family building struggles to the world.  It was such a profoundly moving moment, and I bawled when I watched it.  Sometimes you just need to see a reflection of your experience inside the greater whole.  Thank you, Renee Elise Goldsberry.

The roundup to the Roundup: The 500th/600th Roundup.  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 June 10th and June 17th) 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.

Yesterday I was at the United State of Women White House summit. It was an amazing line up of speakers: The First Lady, President, and Vice President. Oprah, Amy Poehler, Kerry Washington, Loretta Lynch, Nancy Pelosi. Hundreds of amazing speakers, all talking on the same theme: Today we’ll change tomorrow.

Many of the speakers began with a moment of silence or recognition for those killed in Orlando… except one. Bamby Salcedo from the TransLatin Coalition asked for a moment of power. In other words, no more silence. There was a time for silence immediately following the murders when we were trying to untangle our brains and pay our respects, but now, days later, it is time to scream.

We all let out a roar, and it was probably the most emotional moment in a very emotional day. To hear all those angry women screaming for gun control laws, screaming for the right to be able to go out of the house and be safe, screaming for communities to come together and demand better from lawmakers.

Because at this point, moments of silence feel more akin to a lack of action.  People are using silence and prayer to fill the space rather than doing something to effect change.

That was my take away from yesterday. There is definitely a time for silence. But after that silence is over, it’s time to scream.

Thank you, Bamby Salcedo, for reminding us of that.

I’m working on making a game, and it’s really hard.  It’s hard to find the story in something that isn’t linear.  It’s hard to write in code.  But mostly, there is something I want to do with the game that would make it better for a larger audience, but it’s really hard to do, and I’ve been trying to give myself permission to not do it.  Because it’s hard.

And I’m not a fan of hard.

Lifehacker had an article about making doing hard things a family affair, and I assume the same would go for forming a “hard thing” group of adults and promising to each other that you’re going to stick with what you decide to do.

But here’s the thing: Those articles never tell you “how” to stick to that hard thing.  Just that you need to push through and stick with it.  I get that the specific answer will be different depending on the project, but I’ve yet to find a good piece of advice that helps me get past the realization that I could trim something down and do it in an easier manner but stick with the harder route anyway.

Currently, I’m still pushing through because it feels like the right thing to do, and I’ll always wonder if the game would have been better if I had made it the original way.  I’ve reached out to friends to set up a “hard thing” group so I have people to talk me out of quitting.  But damn, it’s hard to stick to something hard when you know that there is nothing stopping you from choosing the easier route.

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

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This was supposed to be a happy post.  I was going to tell you about how we marched in the Capital Pride parade this weekend.  It was my first time marching in a parade vs. watching from the sidelines, and it was fun and overwhelming and emotional.  We waved and danced and blew kisses to hundreds of thousands of people.  The ChickieNob and I tucked rainbow flags into our hair, and the Wolvog zig zagged across the route, passing out candy to the crowd.  It was an enormous party.  I have never been cheered on by a crowd, and we left that night with our bodies buzzing from all the excitement.

And then we woke up, and Orlando had happened.

The amazing high to the lowest low; both defy words.  Our hearts are with the families of the victims at Pulse, and with the entire community.

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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 posts.