There was an episode of Doctor Who this season — “Mummy on the Orient Express” — that ends with the Doctor telling Clara, “Sometimes the only choices you have are bad ones, but you still have to choose.”  I loved that line despite it being a little pat.  I mean, it’s cold comfort when you’re deciding between shit and shit.

It made me wonder if choice is inherently empowering, or if only certain choices are empowering.  I guess we need to start from a place of agreement, if you have two terrible options, are you making a choice if you take one option over another (vs. if the choice is made for you).  Or is it not a choice if the options are both terrible.  Did Sophie, for instance, in Sophie’s Choice, really make a choice?

So let’s pretend that you said that yes.

If there are multiple options (even if they’re all bad) and you choose one (instead of having it chosen for you), then you made a choice.  It may be, as the Doctor says, that only have bad options, but you still have to choose.  Well, do you?  I mean, there are certain things you could wait out so the choice is made for you.  And then you didn’t choose.  So you don’t have to choose.  Or is he saying that in order to be empowered human beings that we need to exercise our free will?  We need to keep making choices, even when we don’t want to make choices?

I guess I’ve been thinking about this quote this week due to Brittany Maynard.  She only had bad choices, and all of them led to the same place.  The only choice she got to make was how she reached the end point.

I don’t think I would like the alternative; I wouldn’t want my free will removed.  I don’t like choices made on my behalf.  We try not to make any choices for the kids on their behalf unless we must.  But are all choices empowering?  Do we always want to have a choice?

Big thoughts for a Sunday to think about with whatever part of your brain isn’t being used to compile tomorrow’s #MicroblogMondays post.

After swearing off all refined sugar, I gorged myself on Halloween candy.  Gorged doesn’t really cover it.  Imagine me two-fisting Crunch bars.  I have no willpower.

*******

I cracked myself up this week.  I was prepping Sarah Cottrell’s amazing post about being an Internet troll. (It should be required reading as well as taped near wherever people do their commenting.  We are all guilty of writing a knee-jerk comment from time to time.  Unless you don’t comment at all.  I guess those people are exempt.)  I needed to include an image and made that one.  Every time I see the post, I start to laugh again.

*******

This is COMPLETELY NSFW (curse words abound!), but the other thing I do when I am having a crappy day is watch this clip.

Josh and I borrowed In the Loop from the library, which is the movie length feature they made from The Thick of It, which is sort of the UK version of the West Wing. (Am I right?)

My bullet journal is filled with quotes from that show.  Planet of the teddy bears…

*******

I should probably keep posting reminders through December about the Creme de la Creme.  So… here’s your reminder!

The 2014 Creme de la Creme list is open for entries until December 15th.  No one will be added after December 15th.  Read the post to see how to be a part of the Creme de la Creme, which is open to every member of the ALI (adoption/loss/infertility) community.

Consider that your weekly reminder.

*******

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.

*******

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:

• “MicroblogMondays: Full” (The Truth About T)
• “Here We Are, One Year Later” (Bits and Peaces)
• “MicroblogMonday: Pictures” (No Baby Ruth)
• “Reflections on Egg Freezing” (Searching for Our Silver Lining)
• “A Little Something Good” (Travelcraft Journal)
• “MicroblogMondays: Blink” (Infertile Girl in a Fertile World)

Okay, now my choices this week.

The Lewis Note has a post in response to people who say that they could never be a foster parent because they would get too attached to the child.  Two lines I loved: “I am not some woman with the super power to love and attach only to the extent that it won’t hurt me.” and then this: “When you guard your heart so carefully that there is no room for them in it … They do not disappear. When you dismiss their plight with a wave of your hand and a quick excuse, they are still without a home.”  This post should be required reading, too.

Invincible Spring says goodbye to England in the most gorgeous moving post of all time.  It’s the boiling down of a life: what we learn and the experiences we take with us when we leave a space.  It’s really beautiful.

Lastly, An Unwanted Path has a post about the busy nature of those early years.  She captures the bone-numbing pace well.  “Work I love and would not trade for the world, but I also feel like I’m imploding. My walls are breaking down, I snap more at everyone, I am physically and mentally exhausted, I’m having trouble putting sentences together sometimes, my reserves are just depleted.”  Yes, yes, yes.  Even when you intellectually know that it will get easier (they don’t stay little forever), it doesn’t really help to get you through the now.

The roundup to the Roundup: I ate Halloween candy.  That picture cracks me up.  Love The Thick of It.  Your friendly Creme de la Creme reminder.  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 October 31st and November 7th) 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.

This post is not meant to point a finger of blame.  This post is only meant to make you think.  To talk about that uncomfortable thing called low comments… or no comments… or low blog traffic… or no blog traffic… or that general feeling of frustration when your hard work or emotions are met with what you perceive as indifference.

Okay, I had one last follow up to discussing where you are on the Internet after I read Tiara’s comment.  We need to own that we all play a role in the life of a blog.  Writers and readers.

Comments and readership fill a space.  You have all certainly made me write more.  If I know you’re going to be here, I’m going to show up here too.

But the opposite is true as well, if we stop going to a space or if we don’t comment, we inadvertently send a message and play a role in that person perhaps deciding not to write.  Which is not to say that I am assigning blame or fault: everyone needs to own their own actions and if someone decides to stop blogging, they have made that choice, no one else.  There is nothing stopping a person from coming back and writing because they love to write, even if they’re not getting other things they want from their space.

But we also can’t minimize the weight of our actions in not reading if we’re going to celebrate our actions in reading and commenting.  I’ve read so many posts of people explaining why they love blogging and the comfort they’ve received, and I’ve written those posts myself.  But if we recognize that as a truth, we also have to understand what our (inadvertent) withholding of those things does too.  It sends a message.  Do they end up thinking their words aren’t interesting enough or their project isn’t needed?

There is a balance.  People need to be realistic and know that there are many many reasons why someone reads or doesn’t read (or comments or doesn’t comment) on a post.  I’m not assigning blame.  But we also can’t pretend that we only have a positive impact on other people’s blogging experience.  We also sometimes have a negative impact, inadvertently.  We affect people with our inaction as much as we do with our engagement.  Maybe more so since like all negative things, inaction weighs more than action just as hurtful words weigh more than kind ones.

And it’s a strange weight that calls to mind that famous Elie Wiesel quote that “the opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference.”  It is harder to write something and get no response than to write something and get an angry response.  Okay, maybe not on an individual, post-by-post basis, but overall, I think most of us would rather deal with anger from time to time than to deal with day after day after day after day after day of silence.

We have a saying on the Internet: Don’t feed the trolls!  Don’t give the trolls attention.

But we don’t equally have the opposite sentiment being used to instruct our Internet behaviour: Don’t starve the good bloggers.

If we’re not using up precious Internet time interacting with people who write inflammatory posts, why don’t we use that saved time to dedicate it to supporting a kind blogger that we want to have stick around?  If we’re not feeding the trolls, why don’t we instead feed one or two kind, thoughtful bloggers per day, giving them a comment or our attention?  Make a post go viral out of love instead of indignation.

Just as a restaurant closes if customers stop coming in for meals, there are blogs that close because the readers dry up.  While we don’t have a responsibility to read everyone who decides to write, we do need to be mindful that we run the risk of losing that person’s writing when we don’t read or comment.

People need to own the decision to write or not write their blog; you can’t place that burden on the readers’ shoulders.  You aren’t owed your blog to be read just because you write it.  But as readers, we do need to own that we play a role.  Not in the sense that we need to apologize for our actions or explain them to anyone.  We all know that everyone’s time is limited.  One person can’t save the blogosphere.  But we can step forward into the Internet noting which blogs are important to us and doing everything we can without driving ourselves crazy to make sure those blogs stick around.

I read the news on Sunday night: Brittany Maynard had taken her life as she said she was going to do on November 1st.  I felt sad in the sense that this person was no longer alive, no longer in this world, so to speak.  It was a horrible situation, and I had followed her story mostly through BlogHer and a People magazine article.

I went upstairs and Josh asked if I had heard yet that Brittany Maynard had died.  I admitted that I was sad, but I added that I didn’t really know why.  At least, I couldn’t put it into words.  I didn’t know her; I don’t think I could name 10 facts about her.  And certainly, she wasn’t the only person who died this weekend.  Many more people died this weekend much closer to home.  There were women who died here in Washington, D.C. and I didn’t feel sad, per se, about their death.  I mean, yes, I felt sad in the sense that if I read about them, I would feel sad that someone’s life had ended.  So why was Maynard’s death weighing heavier than all of those deaths?  Why was her’s comment-worthy whereas the women who died in D.C. this weekend left the world without my knowledge?

Brittany Maynard isn’t the first person who utilized the Death with Dignity law.  Since late 1997, over 700 people have used it.  So it’s not a weekly occurrence, but close to it.  About 41 per year.  6 of those people have been under 35.  (The vast majority of the people using the law are much much older.)  Why didn’t we hear about those 6?  Was it because she was gorgeous?  Because she was so young?  Well-spoken?  Willing to put her story out there?  Were we just willing to listen because a young woman discussing the need for this law draws our attention more than a 70-year-old man?  What does that say about us?

I am sad that Brittany Maynard is no longer in this world, even though I didn’t know her.  I’m also sad that I don’t know the people who died in Washington, D.C. this weekend.  That their deaths went unnoted in the newspaper unless their family placed an obit or their death was violent enough to make the crime section.  I guess I am just sad, all-around.

Sad that life contains this: an ending.

So I should have been more clear on yesterday’s #MicroblogMondays post. When I said where I am online, I meant where I post.  Let’s say that I start the week with 500 words to say on the Internet.  I’ll use about 300 of them here on Stirrup Queens.  I use about 150 of them on BlogHer.  And then I scatter the remaining 50 on Facebook, Twitter, Ello, etc.

If we were to look at what I’m actually doing online, you would see a grotesque amount of time given over to Hay Day.  Like take whatever you remember from my obsession with Candy Crush and dial it up to 11.  I wake up early to play that app.  It’s sick.  I miss out on 15 minutes of sleep so I can have time to virtually farm while I drink coffee.

Okay, so after Hay Day, you can find me on email or reading blogs when I’m not writing.

So how does all of that play into blog stats or Facebook friends or Twitter followers?  People tend to go where you are the most.  You know that if you want to hear what I have to say or see a picture I’m going to post, it’s going to be here.  No one would think to look for me over on Facebook.  I’m on there, but I’m certainly not updating there consistently.  Same goes for Twitter.  In both places, I tend to consume more than I produce; meaning, I read a lot but I don’t often post my own status updates.

It is hard to find the balance between being on social media accounts vs. being in your own space (your blog).  Sometimes people just prefer Facebook or Twitter, and they camp out on those sites, not really caring that people aren’t coming to their blog anymore.  But other times, I hear the frustration from people who have worked hard to build networks on those other sites because they were promised that it would drive traffic to their blog.  And it does.  But not if you’re camped out on those sites.  Because then people get the message that Facebook or Twitter or Pinterest or Google+ is where YOU want to communicate.  So they meet you in those spots and then don’t think to continue over to your blog.

It would be like meeting a friend for dinner, catching up through the meal, and THEN being surprised when you suggest a second meal back at your house but they turn you down.  Your friend is full.  They’ve already socialized with you.  Why would they want a second dinner?  (Except, of course, that sometimes a second dinner is delicious.)  The opposite scenario is walking through the restaurant, pausing at everyone’s table to say a few quick words, and then announcing that you’re holding a meal back at your place and leaving.  Some people will remain in the restaurant because that’s where they’re happy.  But people who want to hear what you have to say (or see what you’re serving) will come over to eat.

Did that make any sense?

I think the reason why I’ve never seen a rise or fall in blog traffic (everything has been pretty consistent for years) is because this is where you know you’ll find me.  Which isn’t to say that I won’t find you on those other sites.  I know some of you like Facebook or Twitter, so I visit you where YOU are.  But this is where I like to communicate, and this is where you will find the vast majority of my words.

If you miss your blog, I would join up with #MicroblogMonday next week. (Or hey, there is still time to do it this week.  I usually don’t close the list until late Tuesday afternoon to accommodate late stragglers.  There are a lot of people who microblog on Tuesdays.)  It’s a simple way to signal to people where you will consistently be on your blog every Monday.  You’ll be in your home; in your blog.  And once people know that, they will visit you there.  And you will meet new people who blog via that link up because I have met new people who blog via that link up, so I know that it is possible.  It has been one of the nicest weekly parties online.  It makes my whole week better to know I have dozens of posts to read before people scatter back to other social media sites.