Tonight is Jewish New Year’s Eve.  The last day of 5774.  It feels ridiculously futuristic when you write the date like that.  It feels ridiculously ancient when you consider the world by the Hebrew calendar.

Despite my overwhelming Western-minded dependance on clocks (in Judaism, our days aren’t 24 hours.  They’re sundown to sundown.  One day may be longer or shorter than the next.  Isn’t that an odd thought, to the Western world?  To not have a specific time set for an activity, but instead to be waiting to see three stars or divide up the length of that day’s sunlight to find the proportional hour) my brain tends to lean more towards the Hebrew calendar than the Gregorian calendar.  Starting the new year in the fall makes sense.  School starts in the fall.  Activities start up in the fall.

There is this thing we do at the end of the year where we look back and rate our year.  I mean “we” as in most people.  (Though you Christian people tend to do it in the winter.  Or on your birthday.)  “This was a terrible year” or “this was the best year.”

I was thinking about what a dumb-ass thing this is to do.  There’s a lot that goes on inside a year, and 600 billion things that don’t go on within a year that need to be counted too.  It’s not just that I published a book this year or lost my aunt.  I also didn’t contract ebola or win the lottery. (Not that I played.  I guess you really do need to be in it to win it.)  And yet, we rate our year anyway.  We mark our year as good or bad, despite the fact that most of the time, it just is.  That even amongst the terrible events, wonderful things happen.  And even when we’re at our happiest, shitty things happen all around us.

I’m going to be honest: 5774 sucked by my life’s standards.  Someone else may look at my 5774 and say that it looks pretty damn sweet from the outside, but living it has been like a scene out of Candide, where crappy things happen and then I try to convince myself that it’s fine by pointing out how it technically could be worse.  I’ll remember this year as a time of job loss and death and a never-ending cold that seems to pop up again two days after I get rid of it.  It is all little stuff in comparison to the otherwise.  It is all big stuff when I’m in the middle of it.

Josh and I often go to bed, reassuring ourselves with an “at least.”  We set a pretty low bar.  “At least blood didn’t spurt out of our eyes today,” I’ll say.  And he’ll agree.  “We have that going for us.”

Last week, the Wolvog struck out at a baseball scrimmage, and when he was coming off the field, he threw his bat in frustration.  Later in the practice, he had a gorgeous catch that resulted in an out, and a great hit that scored an RBI.  Though he avoided me after the strike out, he trotted over to me after that inning, beaming.  We had a talk about how it’s easy to be in a good mood when things are going your way, but it’s practically a magic trick to still keep your inner calm when things are in turmoil.  To not take your bad mood out on the people around you.

It’s so easy to say that to your kid.

It’s so hard to live it as an adult.

We’ve gotten through harder things.  We’ve gotten through harder deaths with fewer coping mechanisms.  We’ve gotten through failed cycle after failed cycle, loss after loss.

One time when I miscarried, I threw my glasses across the room when I saw the blood.  It was this instinctive action, my muscle’s own volition.  A disbelief over what I was seeing.  And then I had to feel my way towards my glasses because I couldn’t see them on the floor.  I was scared that I was going to step on them, so I slid my feet forward without lifting them until my fingers touched the frames.

Sometimes, when things are shitty, I remind myself that once upon a time, there was a moment that I was certain I would not live through.  That there was a time when I stood in a bathroom and I cried like an animal after I threw my glasses in surprise.  And look, I’m still here.  The sun has continued to set and continued to set and continued to set, carrying me to 5774.  And now to 5775.  It’s an easy memory to use as a touchstone.  I always have my glasses with me.  I can always touch my face and feel them.

I sleep and wake by the maybes.  Maybe this day will be better.  Maybe this week will be fantastic.  Maybe something I didn’t expect will happen this year.  I mean, there’s always a chance.

Happy new year.

This may fall under the most unnerving things I’ve read today:

“The practice of ‘baby role-playing.’ Participants generally hijack new parents’ photos and use them on Instagram to enact fantasies about adoption and basic childcare tasks—though sometimes it gets much, much darker.”

So it’s a role-playing game.  Except with photos of actual humans who did not consent to become part of this game.  As in, baby humans.  Like maybe your baby human.

And while the article points out that the majority of “players” in the games tend to be teenage girls, I’m willing to make a little wager that the assumption in some people’s minds is that this is an outlet for infertile women*.  You know, the same infertile women that people assume want to steal their child.

So just to break this down for you:

• You post pictures of your baby online.  So cute!
• Someone saves a copy of that picture of your baby to their hard drive.  Oh.
• Someone uploads that picture to their Instagram feed for a fantasy role playing game.  Really?
• Other people join in and “adopt” your child so they can play a role playing game staring your child.  Crap.
• Sometimes they’re just feeding and burping your kid.  Why?
• Other times, they’re pretending they’re abusing or killing your kid.  What?
• And this has been going on for a while.

Fast Company has a longer article** on the phenomenon.

It’s not shocking in the sense that we all know that anything we upload on the Internet — even for just an hour before taking it down — has the potential to be taken by another person.  What is shocking is that there are probably people I walk past on a daily basis — people who look as normal as pie, walking around the food store, checking out library books, sitting next to me at a restaurant — who do this.  They steal someone else’s photos and make a game out of it.

I don’t know why humans continuously shock me.  But they do.

* Though it is an infertile woman who finally gave birth to triplets who had her images stolen and uploaded to Instagram in the Fast Company article.  The images were taken from her infertily-turned-pregnancy-turned-parenting blog.

** Word of advice, don’t read the comments.

Speaking of wanting to live in a book…

The twins are obviously now back at school.  They drifted back to school happily.  I sat at the kitchen table and cried.  I don’t do very well with the start of school.

I volunteer a lot at their school, mostly doing tech projects with the various grades.  But I also hold a weekly book club for about 15 kids.  There is a monthly host for the book we read at home, but on the three or four off weeks between book discussions, we also have a book we read aloud and discuss together.

This year, we’re kicking it off with Harry Potter.

But no… not just sitting on a stool and reading Harry Potter.  We’re making butterbeer and doing a Bertie Botts Every Flavour Bean dare.  We’re making our own wands and learning how to cast spells.  We’re being sorted into the various houses and doing a year-long House Cup championship.  (They can win points by answering one of my close textual reading questions correct and lose points for smacking someone else with their lunch box.)

AND WE’RE PLAYING QUIDDITCH!

Another parent said she couldn’t imagine I’d be given permission to do this, but our principal is wonderful and allows us to run with any interesting, educationally-based idea we have.  So she is allowing me to organize an Quidditch game during recess with two of the grades.  About 90 kids, all running around on brooms, searching for the snitch and trying to get the quaffle through the hoop.

It is going to rock.

We are living Hogwarts.

It has made going back to school a little easier for me.

P.S. I got Ravenclaw robes as my 40th birthday present from my brother.  I was so excited that I may have peed in my pants.

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

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I am reading Lev Grossman’s The Magicians, and I have to read it slowly because it sort of hurts my heart.  I want it to be true.  I want there to really be a magic college called Brakebills.  And I want to go to Brakebills.  And I want to meet Quentin.  And I just really really really want to be there so badly that sometimes I need to put the book down and curl up in a ball and wish instead of read.

The last time I felt this way was with Harry Potter.  And before that, Life of Pi. (I didn’t actually care if the rest of the book came true, but I desperately wanted to see the island with the meerkats, and it hurt my heart to not be able to go to the island of the meerkats.)

So what good book have you read lately?  Something so good that it affected your whole mood?

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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.

So I’m obviously a complete and utter liar since I said that I would never remind you about #MicroblogMondays again, but really, if you want to blame someone, blame Loribeth because she is the one who sent me this brilliant article.

If you’re not going to click over and read it, it basically says that people who write, even a small amount, reap health benefits.

No matter the quality of your prose, the act of writing itself leads to strong physical and mental health benefits, like long-term improvements in mood, stress levels and depressive symptoms. In a 2005 study on the emotional and physical health benefits of expressive writing, researchers found that just 15 to 20 minutes of writing three to five times over the course of the four-month study was enough to make a difference.

I am guessing when they talk about writing for 15 minutes, they do not mean throwing out flippant Facebook status updates.  They’re talking about a blog post.  Even a microblog post.

One study found that blogging might trigger dopamine release, similar to the effect from running or listening to music.

So… yeah… it matters to me that you do this.  Not just because I’m a selfish bastard who now looks forward to Mondays because I know I have a solid block of posts to read (vs. the weekends when my feed reader is bare, bare, bare).  I want you to do this because it could impact your overall health and emotional well-being.

Writing could very well save your life.

Tomorrow marks the fourth #MicroblogMonday, and hopefully, by now, it is becoming a habit. (Because I swear, one day I will stop writing these reminder posts!)  Thank you for participating and giving us a tiny glimpse into your world. Even if you don’t accomplish another post this week, you at least know that you got up one. And you did it before the week really began.

So at some point between Monday morning and Tuesday morning, post a brief update. It can be as short as 1 word (“blech!”) or as long as 8 sentences.  Actually don’t get hung up on the length. Micro just means small. Anything you’d post on Twitter or Facebook, or an image you’d post on Instagram… that’s all this is.

So… see you tomorrow with your mini post.

And in the meantime, do you feel different emotionally on the days you write vs. the days you don’t write?