653rd Friday Blog Roundup

I cracked up through Joanna Rothkopf’s piece in the New York Times about exacting revenge in creative ways.  She explains reading Dante’s Inferno and the idea of contrapasso:

While reading the book, terrified and exhilarated, I filled my evenings with grotesque fantasies of the punishments I might receive for my unchecked narcissism and offensive beauty. That is, until I remembered that “Inferno” was fiction and that hell was just an invention, designed to make people fear the consequences of their actions, as well as to comfort those who had been wronged without justice.

So she instead points out the ways she seeks revenge in the here and now, including punishing people who try to skip the line in Starbucks by remaining in front of them and then ordering something complicated veeeeeery veeeeeeery slowly.

But I really love the end thought:

Besides, doesn’t every decision ultimately originate at that same intersection of selfishness and altruism, exactly like that summer service trip I chose to take, looking at once to learn about the injustices of the world and to make out with boys? Aren’t we all a combination of totally horrible and vaguely heroic?

Aren’t we?

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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 in order 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.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “A Vacation Breakthrough that Led to a Healthier, Happier Family & Kindness for All” (Hands Free Mama)
• “Lack of Understanding is a Worldwide Problem” (Infertile Phoenix)
• “Is All This Worth It?” (Countingpinklines)
• “There’s Nothing Quite Like Pregnancy Absence” (Delayed But Not Denied)
• “No Omens” (Lady Part Adventures)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Inexplicably Missing has a post about her mood changing during transfer day.  She realized that hearing the negative side of things (rather than focusing on the positive) was changing her experience with her cycle.  But before she could let the doctor know that she wanted to focus on what was positive about the blastocyst they were transferring, she heard bad news mixed in with the good.  She writes, “So yet again, I left the transfer feeling somewhat deflated. This sucks because in reality, having even just one blastocyst to transfer is a good thing.”

My Path to Mommyhood has a post about a friend getting the adoption agency call and processing her own feelings about being happy for someone else while being sad for herself.  She admits: “It’s a hard balance, this happy-sad dichotomy. I am not any less confident in our decision, and I know that the little voice is the most unhelpful bitch ever. I know we did what was right for us. It’s just so hard to see (and feel) this contrast at this particular moment in time.”

Lastly, A+ Effort has a story about an incident at a museum.  She tells the story in the form of a letter to the museum, pointing out: “I don’t know the volunteer’s name and wouldn’t presume to assign a motivation to his actions, but the impression he gave was that the rules are selectively enforced on the basis of race.”  But it’s the follow-up to the letter, the discussion of privilege extension that gave food for thought.

The roundup to the Roundup: Revenge creativity.  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 June 30th and July 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.