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

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I really like this game. It has had staying power, like Bracket City and 368 Chickens. Every day, you get a picture turned into a 7 x 7 square of dots. Click the dot, and it breaks into smaller dots. Click those dots, and they break into even smaller dots. If you could click every dot, you would see the pixelated image. But the trick is that you only have 60 clicks.

I don’t stress about the clicks (for instance, I don’t try to keep it to only 10 clicks) and find that I can usually guess the image correctly in 30 – 40 clicks.

Have a go at it.

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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.

Mother’s Day didn’t work with the twins’ schedule this year — finals — and nothing is more important than their studies (except their health), so we moved it to a better date on the calendar.

You can do that. You can take any pretend or real holiday, and just move it. Or change it. Or decide not to acknowledge it. Or go all-in.

I mean, it helps if everyone has the same expectation and is on board with the move, but assuming they are, you can literally decide to celebrate Christmas in February, Thanksgiving one week early, or your birthday in a random month.

Is it lovely to mark the actual day? Of course. I will be celebrating my mother today. But it’s also fun to be the only one celebrating something while everyone else believes it to be a random Tuesday.

Whether you are marking the day or avoiding the day, happy Sunday.

If you missed Mr. Bates vs. the Post Office the first time around, PBS is re-airing the miniseries (only in the US) until May 18 to celebrate the show winning a Peabody Award.

It is a bonkers story about the 2009 (or thereabouts) British Post Office scandal where hundreds of subpostmasters were wrongly charged with theft because of a computer glitch. And Alan Bates (with many other subpostmasters) took on the post office and exposed the crime.

If you haven’t seen it, this is your chance to see it for free if you live in the US. It’s four episodes, or a little under four hours to see the whole thing. And really well done.

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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:

• None… sniff.

Okay, now my choices this week.

Dear John updates her late husband on their daughter’s upcoming graduation and life this spring. She writes, “You’ve missed all the triumphs and the drama. The friends, the crushes, the dating, the dances, the driver’s license, her work experiences…” It’s a bittersweet post about life continuing.

Lastly, All & Sundry has a post about lasts. She muses on what we can get used to, even when it feels like we can’t in the moment. She writes about a time when both kids will be in college: “It’ll be all too soon before he’s also off figuring out his next steps in life and I’ll be having to get used to a house that’s too quiet and too clean. And I will, even though it won’t feel like it at first. It’ll all keep going and changing, if we’re lucky enough.” I like the hopeful note that she ends on.

The roundup to the Roundup: Watch Mr. Bates vs. the Post Office for free (until May 18). 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 2 – May 9) 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.

There is a social media site that is only open for three hours every day. At all other times, if you click over, it tells you the site is closed and when it will reopen — 7:39pm to 10:39pm ET.

The point, of course, is “Because social media is better when we’re all online together. No endless scrolling. No FOMO. Just 3 hours of fun every evening.”

That was always the joy of live tweeting or Facebooking around big events: Everyone was on at the same time. The feed was chronological; when you stepped into the conversation, you were stepping into the last thing said. Everyone saw your posts in the same order, in real-time. Even if you were just reading and not posting, you felt part of the conversation, like you were listening to someone tell a story at a party.

So it’s kind of a brilliant idea, especially because it’s time-limited. Either you get on while it’s open and talk to people, or you have to wait to see updates the next day.

What do you think?

P.S. I tried it, and it’s pretty quiet right now, but it’s just getting started.

Erin McKeown recently told the story of a breakup that ended without a final conversation, a lot of music created out of the experience, a book written by the other person that didn’t mention Erin McKeown at all, and a final touch point that closed the door firmly.

It’s an interesting story.

But there was a paragraph that I kept returning to because it held a really important question:

i never heard from my person again. i believe the children call this “ghosting” but that term has some slippage too. i certainly tried a few times to finish the conversation by reaching out. but there was only silence, digital and otherwise. i think ultimately my person made the right choice for them, obviously, but in the end also for me. the thing was just better off left alone.

When you make a decision, you, of course, make the best decision for yourself. That’s the way it works: we think about what we need, and then we make that happen. And sometimes the best choice for you is also the best choice for the other person, too. Then it’s easy. But sometimes, the best choice for you ends up being the worst choice for someone else. Then it’s hard. Because do you make the choice that works for you, full stop? Or do you compromise your choice to try to meet the other person partway?

Do you have any obligation to take some middle road if what is right for you is wrong for someone else?

It changes from situation to situation, and when safety is concerned, there really isn’t a choice: A person needs to protect themselves. But in all other circumstances, what do we owe each other?

I kind of feel (only knowing what is in the newsletter) that a final, tiny conversation — maybe whatever could be asked and answered during a walk with the dog — or even one or two emails back and forth would have been a kind middle ground. Or maybe it would have just prolonged the pain. But it’s still an interesting question.