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

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I own a spelunking suit.  It is — without a doubt — the least used item in my house.  I don’t go caving anymore, and I don’t foresee myself doing it again in the future.

It was worth the money when I bought it because I cannot tell you the number of times I was happy to be able to get back to the camp site, wash it off, and be done.  It has a lot of pockets — big pockets — enabling me to carry everything efficiently.  Loved that suit.

Even though it is useless now.

If the point is decluttering, that suit should go.  But it’s an item I will never purchase again.  Meaning, I own it now, but if I get rid of it and then need it in the future, it is too costly an item to buy a second time for how much I will use it.  And yes, I can imagine plenty of scenarios where the suit might be used.

Do you have items that you hold onto because while you don’t need them, you also don’t want to repurchase them again in case it turns out that you do need them down the road?

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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.

Some people are blog purists: if they change a post, they’ll leave a note at the top of the post stating the changes, and they would never dream of deleting an old post (unless there was a very specific reason why it needed to be removed).  Whereas others see blog posts and comment sections as flexible, breathing, and ever-changing.

They’ll delete old posts if they decide to take their blog in a new direction, removing all traces of its old personality as a food blog in order to establish it as a style blog.  Or they’ll leave up a post for three days and then take it down.  Or they’ll change their opinion on something and go back and change the blog post to reflect their new thoughts instead of their original thoughts.

There is no right or wrong way to blog.  But there are definitely different ways of blogging.

Valleywag wrote about it a while back:

It’s an iterative process, and for me the process doesn’t necessarily end once I’ve hit “publish.” I go back and look at things. I see lines that don’t work, and I cut them out. I think of something I like, and put it in. I edit. I polish. I rewrite headlines. I fix and improve, or try to, anyway.

I think editing for clarity or to correct spelling errors is one thing — those are edits to improve.  What about about edits to backpedal?  Or get yourself out of trouble?  Or remove evidence?  Where does that fall in the edit-after-publish realm?

BlogHer had a post a few weeks later about removing (not just editing) old blog posts, a slash-and-burn method to make room for new thoughts or directions for the blog.  She writes,

Whatever it may be, you are not the same. I like to think of myself as a continuous work in progress – mentally, emotionally, and physically.  One of the arguments for keeping your blog intact is for a historical record. I’m thankful I grew up during a time period when your “historical records” were the photo albums your mom put together. I’m glad when I was in college there was no Twitter or Instagram. I didn’t even have Facebook in college.  I’m thankful for that because I’m not sure that I would want the world knowing everything I did or said.

She’s of the delete-if-it-doesn’t-fit-anymore school of blogging.

It’s an interesting thing to think about.  I don’t really look back on old posts very often, and I can’t think of any that make me cringe when I see them.  Do I think my writing style has evolved?  Probably.  I hope so.  But I leave up those posts because maybe there’s a kernel of something helpful amid the crappy writing.

Again, there is no correct way to blog, but where do you stand on the editing or deleting old blog posts continuum?

Side note: Tomorrow is #MicroblogMonday.  Get writing!

Chanukkah begins this weekend.  The ChickieNob mentioned before school one day this week that I hadn’t put up any decorations, and she would really like me to put up the fabric menorah — the sole decoration that I schlep out year after year.

I’m not really a decorating sort; in daily life or for any holiday.  But this is the one decoration I own for what may be my least favourite holiday.  It’s not even a holiday — it’s not like you would ever take off work to celebrate it.  But since the kids were born, I’ve put up this fabric menorah, and I promised I would take care of it while she was at school.

I went in the cabinet to grab it out, and my heart stopped.  The decoration wasn’t there.  The chanukkiahs were there, a few dreidels were there, but no fabric decoration.  I opened up a few other cabinets, wondering if the fabric menorah survived the purge last spring when I gutted the cabinet.  I knew the Purim decorations were recycled, but did I get rid of the ChickieNob’s fabric menorah, too?

20 minutes of frantic searching and a false alarm text message to Josh led me to what I had affectionately dubbed the Jew drawer, a drawer in a dresser that I tucked all the random kipot from weddings.  Apparently I had also thrown the fabric menorah AND a handful of challah covers in there (so that’s where the challah covers went…) last spring when I set up the drawer.  Chanukkah saved.

It made me rethink the holiday a bit.  I didn’t want to celebrate it when I thought I could celebrate it, but I sure as hell wanted to celebrate when I thought the Chanukkah decoration was missing and the holiday was going to pass without it.  So, yeah, though I sometimes slack on it, I’ll light the candles this year.  I promise.

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The BlogHer Writing Lab launched this week, which is like all of the good parts of NaBloPoMo (community, support, advice, prompts, information, accountability), without the drawbacks of NaBloPoMo (month-long commitment, guilt, stress), plus a lot of extra stuff as we spread the focus to all types of writing: blogging, social media, books, scripts, poems, etc.

The nicest thing is you tailor it to your needs.  Hang out in the Facebook group 24/7, commit to a weekly challenge, only blog on Tuesdays — it’s up to 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 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:

• “Pilgrimage” (Infertilityhonesty)
• “Rent-a-Mum” (Stirrup Queens) — thank you, Raven!
• “Sometimes We Have to Talk About the Hard Things on Social Media” (BlogHer)
• “Heart-Sore, Heart-Sick, Heart-Broken- Levels of Grief” (Catch, Neuter & Release)
• “Thanksgiving Thoughts” (My Path to Mommyhood)
• “Nurture Yourself” (No Kidding in NZ)
• “Bookapalooza” (Lavender Luz)
• “Island Farewell” (Stirrup Queens) — thank you, Jess!
• “Thanksgiving Weekend Recap” (Bent Not Broken)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Thanksgiving obviously featured prominently on blogs this week.  Neither Here Nor There has a post about the holiday from the perspective of an adult adoptee, balancing her full family.  I thought it was a lovely and insightful post about reunion, but moreover, I loved this thought: “Finally walking through the pain of grief unlocked my ability to feel and embrace the love that my family(ies) were trying to show. The love I so wanted to be able to feel and embrace and return.”

A Little Bit More is looking for a word that describes her role in life.  She explains: “There should be a name for an aunt like me, who is a second mother to their nephews/nieces…who is caught in this delightful and dreadful in-between place where I am partially a mother, but not quite one.”  I suggested More-Than Aunt (MTA), but surely someone else could come up with a better term?

Makingbabiesishard writes about how infertility affects the whole family as she navigates everyone else’s excitement and expectations as she tries to build her family.  She writes, “Desperation to make all these wonderful people in my lives grandparents, aunts, uncles and grand-aunts and grand-uncles. Such longing to make my wonderful husband a father.”  I think this post will resonate with a lot of people.

Lastly, A+ Effort has a post that stuck with me a long time after reading it.  I kept turning over the incident in my mind.  I don’t want to summarize it because I think it would ruin the impact of the story (and the assumptions people make about what they think they see), so please just go over and read it.

The roundup to the Roundup: Going to celebrate Chanukkah this year.  BlogHer Writing Lab.  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 November 27th and December 4th) 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.

Mali recently wrote a wonderful post about the importance of nurturing yourself that contained this nugget of wisdom: “I simply realised that, in the interests of fairness, I was just as worthy of my consideration as anyone else.”

I definitely think that we accept flaws in others that we would never accept in ourselves and that we hold other people’s opinions more important than our own.  But afterwards I kept thinking about whether you can really consider yourself a compassionate person if you don’t practice compassion for yourself?  If you are not included in the equation, or if you don’t give yourself an equal amount of compassion as other people.

I mean, if someone admitted they were a compassionate person except towards blue-eyed people, I don’t think we’d nod and say, “Oh, that’s completely okay.  We still think you’re a wonderful, caring human being.”  We’d think, “Holy fuck, why does this person hold such messed up views towards blue-eyed people?”

So replace “blue-eyed” with “you,” and ask yourself the same question: are you a compassionate, caring person if you do not show care towards yourself?

Of course it calls into question all sorts of questions, such as where does care for one person begin and care of another person end, since human beings often have conflicting needs when it comes to their care.  And it certainly blows the narrative of the martyr out of the water, since someone who sacrifices themselves for the sake of others isn’t really caring for the whole since they are part of the whole.

Which calls into question the whole Superwoman discussion, and the concept of not only having it all, but doing it all in the most Pinteresting way possible.

So.

It certainly gave food for thought, especially in a season where we’re constantly encouraged to do more and give more to remember that we fit into the equation, too.  That our happiness is valid, and our needs equally important.

Your thoughts?

I had to get a new phone this week.  It was the second time in two months, and the whole exercise filled me with dread.  I had that panicky feeling all day; the kind you get when you need to initiate a difficult conversation or when you’re waiting for news.

When my phone died a few months ago and I had to get a new one, Josh and I planned that I would give him the new phone when his phone died, and I would get the new-new phone.  I use the camera a lot for work, so it made sense that I should have the device with the better camera.  Plus the kids use my phone, so… three against one?

Anyway, we thought this was a brilliant plan until we had to put it into practice.  To do this, I needed to back up my phone, wipe my phone, give Josh my phone so he could take it to the store and purchase the new phone, set up the phones with the correct phone number, re-sync the phone with the backup.

There was so much room for error.

It’s interesting how my gut instinct was that this was not going to work.  I was going to run into a lot of frustration.  Either the backup would be corrupt or something would be wrong with the new phone.  In any case, exchanging phones was a fool’s errand that would suck hours out of my week and leave me phone-less for days.

Whereas the kids were excited.  New phone?  That meant new features and new things to figure out.  They were puzzled why I was so worried about this.  Just plug in the phone and technology will take care of everything.

I assume technology will always fail and am amazed when it works.

They assume technology will always work and are confused when it fails.

I don’t like change.  I am not a good person for a yearly phone upgrade program.  My stomach was in knots while I attempted to load everything on the phone.  It mostly worked.  It took a really long time, and it got stuck in a continual loop at the end.  But it’s fine.  I think.

Do you assume technology will always work or do you assume technology will always fail?