I’ve had an article open since March about how all of my unused skills are shriveling up, becoming liver spotted and hunched over from disuse.  I’m totally at peace that guitar is on that list.  Printmaking is on that list, too.  Horseback riding.  Despite being archery trained, I fear that archery is being pencilled in on that list since I haven’t picked up a bow and arrow since the training.

The only thing that I have regrets about is fiction writing.

I know what you’re thinking: Melissa, you write every day.  How can fiction writing be on that list?

All types of writing are different, and while I’ve completed 1 1/2 non-fiction books, I haven’t worked on a novel in a long time.  I’m midway through a book, but I set it aside when life got busy.  The arc of the story feels a little muddy from sitting outside of my brain for so long.  I only meant to be away from it for a week; let me just get myself settled with this new project and I’ll return to it on Monday.  But that Monday was last summer, and I’m nearing the one year anniversary of setting the project aside.

I keep meaning to begin.

But I don’t.

It’s not that I don’t love the story; I do.  I love the story, and I think about it all the time.  I think about the characters; not just the fact that they’re all frozen in place, waiting for me.  I think about what they would do in various situations.  I miss them like friends.  And I want to sit down and visit with them.  But then I think about how I first need to do X and then Y and then I’ll definitely get to them after I finish Z…

I never finish Z.  There always seems to be a new Z.

But this article scared me; the idea that something I’ve done all my life, for which I’ve gotten multiple degrees and taught and published 3 novels won’t be there forever if I let that skill sit there, unused.  I know why I’m not working on the book: Because it’s hard.  If I wanted to make time for it, I would.  But it’s easier to point out reasons for why I can’t work on the book than it is to sit still with a project and go through that terrible re-entry period.

You know those days: You sit staring at the screen, trying to find your groove.  Sometimes it only takes a day or two to find it.  Sometimes it can take weeks before I find my rhythm again.

But that’s it.  It has to happen.  I need to make a half hour for it every day.  Just 30 minutes.  Not that much time, when you think about it.  This skill matters to me.  I need to snatch it off the endangered skill list.

What will you snatch off your endangered skill list?

It’s Friday the 13th.  I have a compulsive need to say that every Friday the 13th.  As you were.

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Hey, remember that whole “do yoga, drink water, get sleep, eat well” thing I was doing?  It didn’t last long.  I’m still doing yoga every morning, but after weeks of drinking huge amounts of water, I’m back to forgetting to drink anything until around 3 pm when I suddenly remember that enormous cup in the kitchen.  I also haven’t layered in a proper bedtime, which should have happened by now.

Forget the whole food thing.

Gizmodo had an interesting article about why we stay up past the point when our body is telling us to go to bed.  I do this.  I know I’m tired, but I stay up anyway.  I definitely don’t get 7 hours, though a lot of that has to do with the fact that it takes me a long time to fall asleep, and then I’m not very good at staying asleep.

I would like to learn how to be a better sleeper.  I wish there were sleep classes.

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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:

• “That Day” (Stirrup Queens) — thank you, Nonsequiturchica!
• “I Want My Kids to Struggle” (Lavender Luz)
• “Starting Conversations” (Bent Not Broken)
• “Week in Review: Motherhood After Infertility” (Leah Campbell)
• “Microblog Mondays: Unnecessary Competition” (Searching for Our Silver Lining)
• “Taller Than I” (Mrs. Spit… Still Spouting Off)
• “Not Having Children” (NotQuiteOld)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Outlandish Notions has a beautiful, poetic Mother’s Day post that made me feel as if I was lying in the hammock, watching the trees as I rock back and forth.  You’ll need to click over and read it to feel it, too.

River Run Dry has two posts this week on the idea of softening.  She points out that soft usually has negative connotations; someone wishy-washy, poorly defined, incapable for standing up for herself.  But as we all talked about it, she realized how tension was affecting her.  She explains: “I can’t believe I never saw this before now. It’s so prevalent in my day to day life, but I never saw it before.”  And that is the beauty of conversation online, which sometimes feels like the backyard fence.  Sometimes you just need to hear, “me too.”

Infertilityhonesty writes about being wished Happy Mother’s Day as a random greeting in May.  She wonders, “what I would say if someone addressed me personally (“I’m a survivor of infertility, so for me it isn’t”) to the greater conundrum of identifying the issue and coming up with a social protocol that includes us all.”  It’s a great post about seeing the holiday through a different lens.

Lastly, Articulation wonders why the really important things in life don’t come with an operating manual.  Moreover, there seems to be people (though I would guess that it’s just an outsider’s perception, and the person living their life sees it in a different way) who can riff on life without an instructions, churning out moments without falling flat.  It’s a great post.

The roundup to the Roundup: It’s Friday the 13th.  I need sleep lessons.  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 May 6th and 13th) 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.

We are barreling towards the end of the school year, and with it, the end of elementary school.  When I flipped the calendar over to May last week, I thought back to a moment one month into the school year back in October.  I was talking to someone in the front office, and I commented that my stomach clenched as I turned the calendar to the second month of school.  “Soon it will be winter break, and then spring break, and then we’ll come back to school and race towards graduation.”

I was right.

It went by so quickly.

I don’t feel like I blinked and I missed it.  It’s more that I feel like I started off dessert with a big bowl of ice cream and the knowledge that once the ice cream was consumed, it was gone.  And now I’m scraping the melted ice cream drops off the bottom of the bowl and wistfully wishing I had more ice cream.

I am so lucky that I got to have these years, but that knowledge doesn’t really make the fact that the ChickieNob is almost my height and it’s really hard to brush her hair any less bittersweet.  Or that when the Wolvog jumps on my back that he does so ironically — a preteen’s “isn’t this so funny?” moment rather than a little kid not wanting to walk.

Every other level of school will happen at shorter intervals.  Middle school, 3 years.  High school, 4 years.  College, 4 years.  But for the last 6 years, they were in one, cozy cocoon.  Sure, the kids there were kids, which means the kids were sometimes mean.  (Let’s not sugarcoat this and pretend it was an elementary school of cherubic, perfect children.)  But with such a small and young group, the expectations were woven tightly around them, both protecting them and stifling them.  Next year is the next stage, where the community grows and the rules soften, and you wonder whether you’ve prepared them.

Have you prepared them for the truly cruel moments?  The huge disappointments?  The failures?  Have you prepared them to make good choices that balance rather than overwhelm their schedule?  To try new things?  To learn from mistakes?  Have you taught them how to be a good friend?  How to reach out to someone in need?  How to get past their personal imposter syndrome and own what they know and what they can do?

My ability to deeply influence the way they see the world is coming to an end.  The opinions of their peers will start to trump the opinions of their parents.  Their need to fit in will trump following the beat of their own drummer.  I can only hope that we made our messages loud enough that they drown out the bad ideas and self-esteem crushers.

I love them.  In a way that they will never understand because I don’t think we can ever fathom how our parents feel about us, and, frankly, no matter how well you can play with words, I don’t think these types of feelings can be contained with consonants.  But I hope that I’ve conveyed this message to them; that it has burrowed underneath the skin, sunk into their blood and bones.  I love them, and I hope that they carry that love with them as they navigate the world, as they take another step toward coming into their own.

It’s selfish, I know, piggish after getting 6 years of elementary school.  But I want more.

Back when I started in the IF blogosphere 10 years ago, people would write “Children Mentioned” at the top of a post if children were mentioned.  Some people thought this was silly and there were a lot of comments or posts about how people should assume that parenting after infertility blogs might mention children.  Some people thought this was good practice; if people weren’t up to reading a post about teething, they could click away.

I was in the latter category, and I put up “Children Mentioned” before posts that mentioned the twins.  Over time, everyone stopped doing it, myself included.  Most people knew how much I spoke about the twins, and either they weren’t bothered and would put up with the occasional post, or they were bothered and wouldn’t read my blog at all.

Plus, I realized that there were ways to give people a heads up about trigger warnings that fit naturally into the flow of the post.  If you look at the Roundup each week, I try to mention a child in the description if there is a child in the post.  If no child (or parenting itself) is mentioned in the blurb, it’s a pretty safe bet that you can click over and not encounter a story about a baby.

When I can’t figure out a way to weave it into the blurb, I write the words “trigger warning,” as I did for one of the posts last Friday.

While I am not upset when a post or movie or book or game comes without a trigger warning, I appreciate the creator taking the time to give consumers a warning before they dive into the experience.  I think it shows a sign of respect between the creator and the audience, and it sends a clear message that the audience’s experience with the piece is important to the creator.  It’s not that the opposite is true: that people who don’t post warnings don’t care about their audience.  But I do see the inclusion of the word “trigger warning” to be a concrete way of saying, “I care.”

I care that my piece adds to your life instead of detracts from it.

I care that you can ready yourself if you need to ready yourself.

I care about what you’re going through, and I appreciate you taking the time to read my words or watch my film or play my game.

I care that you are a human being and not a bot, so I treat you like a human being with feelings and thoughts and baggage you may carry into an experience with what I created.

There are universal moments that need trigger warnings such as rape or hate speech.  And then, within communities, there are specific moments that need trigger warnings.  In our community, I think it’s loss as it is happening (as opposed to generally discussing the concept of loss) and babies.  The absence of someone who was once here, and the existence of someone who is here.

I don’t know if we need to slap “Children Mentioned” at the top of every post on a parenting after infertility blog.  I tend to agree at this point that the network is such that people generally know what they’re getting before they click over to read.  (As opposed to when the community was so new that you were meeting new bloggers on a regular basis.)  But I still support the idea of giving people a “trigger warning.”  Just as a sign of respect.  Because I care how they feel after they read a post.

Where do you fall on the spectrum of giving trigger warnings?  Do you wish posts in the community still came with a “Children Mentioned” note at the top?

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

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Remember how I couldn’t find the jacket for Harry Potter 4?  I finally bought a new copy this week so the bookshelf in the kitchen would look orderly.  I now have an extra copy of the book (actually, a 4th copy of the book), and beyond donating it, I was trying to think up something creative I could do with it.

There is a British artist who turns old books into jewelry.  I don’t think I would want to wear Book 4 — but it made me think about which book I would want turned into jewelry.  I would love to wear The Phantom Tollbooth, first and foremost.  After that, Fellowship of the Ring.  After that, The Magician’s Nephew.

What would be your top three books to wear, not read?

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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.