A long time ago, my cousin and I were in a store in Salem, Massachusetts.  There was a barrel of tarot cards by the cash register, and I got a strong vibe that I was meant to own a certain deck in the barrel.  So I plucked it out and paid for it without a lot of thought.

They look like playing cards, but they have an object on each card along with a short description of what the object means.  The cards came with instructions on how to lay them out and give a reading.

Like the cards, I was drawn to Mental Floss’s recent post about tarot cards.  I especially love that they were historically a form of Choose Your Own Adventure story since my new book is about interactive fiction.

Most of the time they sit in my drawer.  I’m not really sure I believe in it at all. (Even though I totally believe that my body somehow knew I was supposed to buy this specific deck in a sea of decks.)  The ChickieNob is always begging me to read her cards, though I have no clue what I’m doing.  It’s sort of anticlimactic when you need to keep pausing to consult the how-to directions that come with the cards.  It would probably help if I memorized the instructions.

But there’s another part of me that thinks it’s better not to know anything.  That hearing something could make it a self-fulfilling prophecy.  And while I would be okay with life spoilers since I like having time to get accustomed to change, this in between — this maybe real or maybe not — probably isn’t helpful.  Right?

If there was a time traveler who could come back and definitively tell you the highlights and low points of your life, would you want to hear them?  Even knowing that there was nothing you could do to change the path because the time traveler could prove these fixed events in time?  (And yes, this “what if” assumes that you have no free will and your destiny is set, so just roll with that.)  Or would you rather not know anything and be surprised by life in the moment?

A P.S. to the story: I was in Salem a few years ago, and I swung by the store again.  They no longer sell them, and when I asked about them, the woman said they never sold them.  Creepy.

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

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It feels like I should be making a resolution this week.  Setting a goal.  Giving myself a focus for the year.  I did it last year, and that worked well.  But I haven’t come up with one.  There is plenty I would change about myself, but I highly doubt that I would be successful in changing those things.  So why dedicate the time and energy to something that is essentially Sisyphean in nature?  It’s hard to change a personality.

I do question why we always have to be working to change ourselves.  Why can’t we ever be happy with the status quo?  Why isn’t it okay to say, “You know, I don’t have any resolutions this year because there is nothing I need to work on.  I’m happy as is.”

Because… it isn’t.  We live in a self-help culture.  We’re always supposed to be looking at ourselves with a critical eye and then working on… something.  If we’ve got time to lean, we’ve got time to clean.  Or something like that.

Are you making a resolution this year?  What is it?

Like last year, “peruse the list and see if there are any resolutions you can help someone else reach.  Know what they want to learn?  Give them some tips to get started.  Have a great piece of advice that helped you reach the same resolution in the past?  Pass it their way.  Consider it crowdsourcing the springboard to get your resolution going.”

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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.

Up until last year, we always volunteered on Christmas. It made sense. We were off from work, we had nowhere we had to be, and there were plenty of people who were in the opposite position, needing to spend time with family. So we did volunteer work.

And then last year, we didn’t.

And then this year, we didn’t.

This year, we ate appetizers for dinner on Christmas Eve since everything tastes better when it is on a toothpick. Then we piled into our bed to watch Fellowship of the Ring, which is our yearly tradition. Take whatever you sense about my love for Harry Potter and double it, and you come close to understanding how much I love Tolkien.  The books, of course, but I also love the movies.  So every year we watch the trilogy between Christmas and New Years.

Christmas morning, we all slept in and then ate cake for breakfast.  Why?  Because we freakin’ could.  We spent the day reading books and playing video games.  In the afternoon, I pulled together dinner, and then we played more video games and watched the Doctor Who special, chowing down on candy.  By bedtime, I was finally done with sugar.  Though not video games.  I have terrific stamina for that.

It was a really fun day because it was completely hedonistic.  And maybe we need a hedonistic day like that every year, though my Protestant work ethic gave me mad guilt over the idea that we could have volunteered… and chose not to.  Which is a weird feeling.

I felt like Pinocchio in the Land of Toys.  Even if volunteering is optional, there is a strange feeling when you know you can help out and you should help out, but you choose not to help out.  Perhaps my guilt dial is stuck on ten.

Anyway, that was my Christmas.  How was your Christmas?

It’s Christmas day.  I hope if you’re celebrating that you’re having a wonderful time with all the festivities.  And if you’re not celebrating, that you’re having a wonderful time having a day off.  And if you don’t have a day off, that you’re at least getting a good piece of chocolate into your body.  And if you hate chocolate… well… a particularly satisfying carrot?

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This post has zero spoilers for The Force Awakens.

I got to see it on Wednesday. It was everything I hoped it would be and more. I would rank it third for Star Wars films (Empire is 1st, New Hope is 2nd, and Force Awakens is 3rd).

I cried four times — big, gasping, shaking crying jags that freaked out the elderly woman next to me. I’m happy to tell you where if you want to know. I just don’t want to post it here and possibly ruin anything for anyone.

But the best part for me was seeing it with my dad. I saw Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi with him in the theater, so this was our third Star Wars movie together.

Now the hard part: the ChickieNob doesn’t know if she wants to be Leia or Rey for Purim this year. Decisions decisions.

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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:

• “Being Up to the Task” (A+ Effort)

Okay, now my choices this week.

We’ll kick it off with the best Christmas post I read this week.  A Half Baked Life has a beautiful post about being okay with the darkness and even finding the benefit to sitting with the unknowns that creep out when we’re without light.  I loved this line: “It was like coming home, almost, to people who didn’t judge me for leaving.”  We should all find spaces like that in our lives.

Infertile Fantasies donated her embryos, and the recipient is now pregnant.  This is a gorgeous post about the ambivalence she feels, swinging between extreme gratitude that the embryos burrowed in and implanted and the grief in knowing the embryos burrowed in and implanted.  I especially loved this thought: “Suddenly my heart was lighter, like it just then realised it didn’t have to go through it all that night, because it would in any case be going through it piece by piece each day.”

Today’s the Day has a post about her word of the year.  I love this post because while I see lots of posts in January about a person’s word of the year, I rarely see posts in December that reflect on how the word served them over the 12 months.  So it was nice to hear how the word kept her company, goaded her along, or sometimes made her feel guilty over the course of a year.

Lastly, One Step at a Time has a post about a negative right before Christmas.  Days of nausea convince her that she’s pregnant, but after she gets the beta results, she writes, “I just could not believe it. I was sad, but I was also angry about all the nausea I was having. I was fine with it if it meant I was pregnant but now it just seemed like a cruel joke.”  It’s a post about being grateful for what you have and missing what you don’t at the same time.

The roundup to the Roundup: Merry Christmas.  Happy Force Awakens.  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 December 18th and 25th) 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.

I was debating whether or not to post the rest of the week.  I mean, is anyone really going to read it?  Probably not.  Y’all are busy making Christmas dinner and wrapping presents and prepping for Santa.  Whereas I am ready for the start of Lord of the Rings night and the Doctor Who Christmas special.

It sort of felt like “If a tree falls in the woods…,” you know?  Is it worth posting if no one will read it?

Clearly, I think the answer is yes.

I mean, the answer was yes when I started this blog and no one knew it existed.  And if it was yes back then, why wouldn’t it still be true now?  It enhances the experience when a post has an audience, but it’s still worth going through the writing process even if the words will not be read.  Even inconsequential drivel like this.

If I only write when I have an audience, I will never get better, I will never express myself, and I will be putting the power in someone else’s hands rather than keeping it myself.  So I’m posting, whether or not anyone reads this.

But if you are reading this, I am going to tell you two things I learned about Christmas trees due to social media that I never knew until this year.

One, when you buy a Christmas tree from an outdoor lot, you are supposed to inspect the tree for chipmunks and other… critters… before tying it to your car roof and heading home.  If not, when you unfurl the branches inside your house, a chipmunk that was hiding inside could race out.

Two, you are supposed to balance the ornaments on the tree so that you have equal weight all around.  If not, the tree can fall over.  Again, had not considered this though it makes perfect sense.  I think I would only purchase/make wooden or fabric ornaments knowing that a tree could fall over and glass ones could break.  I am glad I read about this because I’m going to go with sturdy ornaments as gifts going forward.

There are probably other things about trees that I have no clue about having never had one.  But what a wonderful world it is where there are still things to learn in middle age.

Merry Christmas.