I realized something due to No Kidding in NZ’s recent post about being sick over Christmas and New Year’s. In olden times, when you were sick, you stayed home and maybe watched daytime TV. You intellectually knew that other kids were going to school or adults were going to work, but you were cocooned in your home, thoughts of what other people were doing far from your mind.

But now, we spend time while we’re home sick on social media, so we can see exactly what people are doing out and about in the world, healthy and happy.

Isn’t that strange?

You can always choose not to go online or avoid social media, but let’s be honest, we won’t.

I guess I hadn’t really thought about how being home sick had changed. Mali — hope you’re fully better.

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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.

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And now the blogs…

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.

A Separate Life gives great insights learned from three months of travel. The post is a gift, and I pulled out a bunch of thoughts to take to heart. Travel sooner rather than later in terms of wear-and-tear on the body; I think I would rather do short trips than long trips hearing the reality of being away; pack as light as possible; and get packing cubes. It inspired me to start jotting down my own travel advice that I’ll post soon.

Lastly, Scientist on the Roof points out some things that I didn’t realize about the number 2025 that made me like the year a little more. But I also loved this summing up of life: “Life is a mish-mash of happiness, heartbreak, sadness, frustration, fury, curiosity, wonder, and so much more: the only thing missing is balance (I wish!).”

The roundup to the Roundup: Beyond The Price Is Right while home sick. 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 Jan 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.

About twelve years ago, I wrote about an electrician who brought his twins out to the house when he came out one night to fix the electricity in the house because he understood the night light situation. The four kids had an impromptu play date while their dad got our lights working.

We saw them from time to time over the years through the town baseball league, but we lost touch because they went to different schools.

We had a loose light switch toggle a few weeks ago, which felt like a fire hazard. We called two electricians — and the same guy was able to come out over the weekend. We got to hear an update about the kids, and it’s so funny to think about that random pyjamas-clad play date between the kids and how life turned out.

Sometimes, it’s nice to have a loose light switch toggle and get to hear the next part of the story.

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I learned about the musical Ride the Cyclone because our friend’s child sang a piece from it for a competition. I had never heard of it, despite it having a recent run nearby.

I listened to “The Ballad of Jane Doe” one time, and I found it stuck in my head. And a day later, I started listening to the album from the beginning to see if I would like the rest. And I quickly became obsessed with this show. Which is odd because musical theater is meant to be seen on the stage, but I was consuming it solely as a cast recording, having to imagine how it would look if it played out in front of me.

Have you heard it? And if not, start here:

Isn’t that haunting?

Apologies if it now gets stuck in your head, too.

It has been on my to-do list for over a year, but I finally got around to cleaning out my closet and drawers. I took every article of clothing out and placed it on the floor. And then I only put back things I would wear today OR during a special situation. For instance, I have a cocktail dress that I clearly do not wear to work, but it fits, and I would wear it if I had to go to a cocktail party.

My closet and drawers were pretty empty by the time I finished, but at least I could see what I owned that also fit. Figuring out what to wear to a meeting suddenly became a lot easier.

But I felt anxious about getting rid of so much clothing all at once. Most of it didn’t fit, but what if I wanted to return something to the closet that was on the line? I put all of the clothes in storage with a note to return to them in one year. If I haven’t missed them in one year, I could look at them one more time and then release them.

It was sort of the best of both worlds: low risk (getting rid of something I may want in the future) and high reward (easy-to-navigate closets and drawers).

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

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I read a fascinating piece on the power of retelling stories. Not your own story (though there is a different power in that), but taking Shakespeare or a Greek tragedy or a favourite fairy tale and giving it new life by playing with elements of the story.

The reason:

There’s comfort in returning to worlds we already know the rules of and characters we already love and understand … writers are drawn to retellings because they’re often the stories they grew up with, or have heard again and again. These stories might have taught us what stories were.

More than the story itself, it is the choosing of the story. Why are we drawn to certain situations? Certain characters? Certain settings? How does changing one element of the original story change your entire understanding?

What story would you love to see retold? I’m drawn to a bunch of Hans Christian Andersen stories, including “The Nightingale,” which sounds so much cooler when you call it Nattergalen.

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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.

It may or may not be International Blog Delurking Week. The first full week of January (January 5 – 11, 2025) is when we’re supposed to slither out of the reading closet and check in with an “I’m here” comment. I don’t know if anyone does this anymore. In the olden days, people would pop out of the woodwork. Nowadays, not so much.

So let’s see what happens.

So welcome to International Blog Delurking Week. I make a badge every year to mark the occasion, giving you full permission to right-click and grab it for your own.

My reward for remembering to do this (when I could have just as easily forgotten) is that you have to delurk for this worldwide holiday, which is super serious and important. Right?

It is relatively easy. Leave a comment in the comment section below, admitting that you’re here. You can raise your hand and meekly acknowledge that you’re here with a simple, one-word “here” comment; or you can proudly raise your hand and tell us all a bit about yourself (my preferred method); or you can tell me the last good book you read (see, I’m trying to make it easy for you by even providing a comment prompt). The point is that I want to know about the people who read me since there is a huge discrepancy between the number of readers in actuality and the number of readers I actually know are reading. Or a tongue-twister like that.

And that’s all you have to do to celebrate.

So (clears throat to nudge you along), who is here?