807th Friday Blog Roundup

I ended up with a new phone in the middle of the pandemic. Josh needed a new phone—it wouldn’t charge or connect to the computer—but because my phone was over five years old (whereas his phone was only two), I took the new phone and he took my old phone to see how much more life we could squeak out of it while he waited to see if his old phone could be revived. We’re sort of all playing musical phones right now.

The Wolvog did the heavy lifting, setting up the phone so it looked exactly like my old one. He sat with me while I logged into all of the apps, patiently answering questions because everything felt unfamiliar even though things looked mostly the same. And then he wiped Charlie (fine, I only gave my phone a name about two hours before I handed it over to Josh, but it still counts) and uploaded Josh’s content onto the phone.

I love having more room. My old phone was almost full because I kept a lot of photos on it. The new phone feels like it has room to grow.

But it doesn’t feel familiar yet. We haven’t gotten to know each other. It’s funny to think of a phone like a friend.

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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:

• None… sniff.

Okay, now my choices this week.

Inconceivable captures that time between being “not really healed and not really acutely wounded any more” after a loss. I was struck by this thought: “It feels odd to cheer myself for things I do generally without any thinking at all.” But it is a big deal to take care of the day-to-day things after a loss. When almost all of your energy needs to go toward dealing with emotions, it is no small thing to borrow from that energy and put it towards running errands or exercising for ten minutes.

Much Ado About Nothing made me cry with her post about saying goodbye to a doctor, dying of COVID-19, and a hurt dog that she helped save. She writes, “Sometimes all the medical advances in the world can’t save a human, but a few people can come together and save a dog.” It’s really a gorgeous story of loss and love and life.

Lastly, Risa Kerslake writes about how the pandemic is affecting her child’s first birthday. It’s just a day; but when you’ve waited for your child for so long, no milestone day is just a day. She writes, “I know that a first birthday party has everything to do with me and literally nothing to do with a baby that will have no recollection of the banners, birthday cake, and coordinating plastic forks.” You can read the first part on her blog, and then follow the link to a second site.

The roundup to the Roundup: New phone. 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 August 14 – 21) 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.