If you read enough (or watch enough television or listen to enough music), you begin to notice patterns. A book (or show or song) will be successful, and other artists will try to copy it, putting out similar work. The theme I keep encountering lately is books with terrible characters.

I don’t mean poorly written. I mean that the writer designed a book where every person is awful. They think awful things. They take selfish actions. They are terrible to other characters. And all of the characters are equally awful. In these books, there is no one you can root for.

I know there is an audience for these books because publishers keep making these books. But now that I’ve noticed this pattern in multiple books, I’ve realized that it’s on me to stop reading these books when it dawns on me that there are zero characters I’m rooting for. When I’m okay with everyone losing, it’s time to put the book down.

I woke up Thursday morning feeling terrible. We went to the theater the night before and didn’t get home until late. I didn’t sleep well, and I woke up with a headache. Normally, I would tell myself to get out of bed when my alarm goes off and do yoga, no excuses. But I couldn’t do it.

I reset my alarm for 8 — the first time in years — and then took a pretty lazy morning until my first meeting at noon. It felt so wrong, but I ended up doing better work in that shorter amount of time.

I can’t always take the morning off, but I felt oddly proud of myself for taking care of myself. I feel like I need to leave a post-it note for myself somewhere to remind myself that things will ultimately be better if I give myself the morning sometimes.

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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:

• “My 11th Survivor Anniversary” (Infertile Phoenix)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Finding a Different Path went glamping, and it gave her space to breathe. She writes, “There is something about going somewhere else, about disrupting your regular routines, that presses a reset button.” Yes. It doesn’t need to be far; it just needs to be somewhere you don’t normally go. I especially loved this post for the “Instagram-view” and the actual view photos — a good reminder about careful angling.

Lastly, Swistle has been struggling with a terrible work situation and finally came to the decision to leave it. It was one of those moments where she kept wondering if she would go through with it, walked right up to the edge, and then did the act and felt perfect peace. There have been posts since about the aftermath, but I loved this one because it’s really about taking care of yourself.

The roundup to the Roundup: Give yourself the morning. 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 April 3 – 10) 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.

The Guardian had an essay about an anti-worrying trick that I clicked on because I, as a world-class worrier, am a sucker for any anti-worrying trick.

The “trick” is that you do not allow yourself to worry past 6:30 pm, so your brain has about 12 hours (to 6:30 am) not to worry. You don’t immediately go cold turkey and not worry at all for 12 hours. You tell yourself you can’t worry from 6:30 pm to 7:30 pm, and keep pushing it back an hour. And then you’re asleep for a large chunk of the hours. So… it probably works.

Except I couldn’t see how I could make myself not worry in a certain time window if my brain was still actively thinking. The only way it could work is if I lied to myself and said, “There is nothing wrong,” which is the adult version of telling a kid who is crying, “You’re alright.”

Because yes, it is true. The crying kid is alright. Yes, they have a skinned knee. Yes, something freaked them out. But in the grand scheme of things, they are alright. They are safe. They are cared for. They have food and water and shelter. (Assuming they have all of these things.) And for the adult, unless you are actively going through a crisis (and not worrying about the potential for a crisis), there is nothing wrong. There will be wrong things in the future (not just potentially, but it is inevitable that we will all go through wrong stretches), but in the immediate moment, there is nothing wrong. Between 6:30 pm and 6:30 am, I don’t have to worry about the potential problems.

Maybe it will work? Jury is out on this one.

I read this on Modern Mrs. Darcy, and I can’t tell whether I believe it to be true. The title: “Nobody loves a city like someone who wasn’t born there.” She writes,

Only someone who chose a place can see it that way. Only someone who fell in love with it from the outside can maintain that kind of unmarked appreciation. There’s a kind of love you can only give to a city you chose to fall for.

Is that true? I don’t have a complicated love for where I grew up. I don’t feel that it’s a “complicated love. Heavy love. Love that comes with the suffocation of performing someone else’s dreams in a city that never gave you room to breathe.” It’s actually pretty simple and straightforward. I liked growing up here enough to stay around here.

On the other hand, I also feel a lightness every time we go to London. We collectively love it as a family, and I can feel myself unravel and relax in multiple places: Stepping out of the Gloucester Road Underground station, walking alongside St. James Park on The Mall, sitting down on a bench at the Tower of London, sitting down at a table at Da Mario’s. Do Londoners love it as much as I love it? I have no clue — I’m not in their head. But I fell in love with that city and can ignore the city traits that I hold against other cities, such as New York. Exact same thing can occur in both cities, and in London, it’s charming, and in New York, I seethe.

What do you think about falling in love with a place?

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

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At some point, I told myself that I wouldn’t like Naomi Novik’s Scholomance trilogy. I had it on my TBR and took it off. And then it showed up on a list of books people love who also love The Magicians, and that trilogy is my favourite.

I cannot believe I almost missed these books. They are funny and clever and hit the same spot as Rainbow Rowell’s Simon Snow books. I love them.

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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.