Obviously, I’m mostly thrilled with the midterm results, though it’s bittersweet because if everyone had voted this way two years ago, we wouldn’t be in this mess. All we can do now is launch investigations, control the budget, and reject appointments. Not small things, but we won’t be able to override a veto, even with that majority, unless things change drastically.

So I’m happy-ish. I want to see the people elected make good on their promises. And I want to see the same people who turned historically red spaces blue because they realized they had been electing people who harm them, to show up in two years and do it again.

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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:

• None… sniff.

Okay, now my choices this week.

The Road Less Travelled hit 19 years of blogging. Go wish them congratulations.

Slaying, Blogging, Whatever recounts the events of a hard month. Amid injuries and work stress, she has the added sadness of her father’s first birthday after his loss. I got weepy reading about their birthday tradition with each other and the enormity of it.

Lastly, No Kidding in NZ hits the nail on the head in discussing articles pitting people against one another. She discusses a recent Daily Mail article that touches on childless vs. childfree, and writes, “The tone of both articles is, to put it mildly, unpleasant, and devised to create division.” I’ve found this more and more, so I’ve been reading articles less and less. I’m sure there are other people who love to read things that upset them, so we cancel each other out, but I appreciate having the commonalities (instead of the differences) pointed out.

The roundup to the Roundup: Midterms. 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 30 – November 6) 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.

It’s impossible to link to Book Riot’s newsletter, so I’ll link instead to one of the sources they linked to about series drop off.

In traditional publishing, if book one isn’t widely read and enjoyed, there isn’t a book two. So if there is a book two, three, and four (and beyond), the first book was well-received. People enjoyed it.

Drop-off is the point at which people stop reading or watching something they enjoyed. For instance, I love the Three Pines series, but I petered out at book 12. I’ll probably go back and pick it up again in the future, but book 12 would be my drop-off point. For others, it’s earlier or later, and the average of all of our drop-off points gives insights into how deeply someone will get in a series.

So it’s kind of surprising that only 39.5% of people who read the first Harry Potter continued to book two. It’s a popular series, clearly well-loved, but 60.5% of people who started the first book said to themselves, “I’m okay not knowing how all of this turns out.” Only 57.5% of people who read the first Murderbot went on to the second book. Which means the readership for the third book in a sequential series is smaller and smaller until the series wraps up or dries out.

She explains:

On the other end of spectrum, we have series like Red Rising, Thursday Murder Club, Murderbot, and even Dungeon Crawler Carl. All of these have less than half the stickiness of the other group. That’s not to say these books aren’t huge success stories –they’ve lead to movies and tv shows and millions of books sold. But it also may explain one of the reasons why Richard Osman started a new series.

What is so interesting to me is when there are a limited number of books you’ll need to get through — for instance, five — to complete the series. And a person rates the first book well, but then stops reading the series. Totally understand if you don’t enjoy the first book and drop off, or if you see that reading the series is too much of a time investment. But I’m so curious about the people who drop off who enjoy the first book. Surely staying with a story you know you enjoy is less work than finding a new story that you may or may not enjoy the author’s writing style.

Do you tend to stick with series when you can see there are a limited number of books to get through to complete it? Or watch a television show through all seasons to its end?

There’s this money-saving concept that you should pay yourself first. Put money into your savings account before you pay other bills and such. I’m not sure how helpful it is with monetary situations — I can think of at least thirty situations where that advice could backfire and create bigger problems down the road — but I think it is helpful to an extent when it comes to emotional energy.

Give yourself your emotional energy first. Invest in actions that make you feel settled and sane before tackling things for other people. Even if you don’t have a ton of emotional energy in your figurative bank, taking five minutes away from everything else demanding your attention to focus on fulfilling your own emotional needs will hopefully help you down the road, like those financial savings are supposed to do.

I’ve been saying that to myself whenever I take a moment to take care of myself before I do something for someone else.

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

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I had a lot of fun playing with this site, which gives you deep information on almost 32,000 colours. Sure, there are hex codes and use examples, but if you keep scrolling down, you can see the neighbors and complements. Information on how the colour makes people feel or what it makes them think of.

It’s a nice alternative to doomscrolling. You can keep clicking and finding new colours you love. The ability to save your favourite ones would make this perfect, but for now, I take a screenshot of the ones I love.

Enjoy!

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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.

I know that for many people Christmas or Mother’s Day is their hardest day of the year, but for me, it’s Halloween. I always think I want to see the kids in costumes, but I usually end up standing behind the door at some point in the night, crying. It is bittersweet to see the parents gathered in groups at the bottom of our steps, encouraging their kids to trick or treat, or even the packs of teens enjoying themselves. Our house feels so empty.

Before we had kids, we used to have a big Halloween party every year, and we’d take turns passing out candy while eating dinner. I always thought about how one day it would be me taking the kids around. I didn’t think about that time afterward, when they’re grown up and far away and Halloween continues.