Oliver Burkeman’s newsletter always makes me think, and a recent issue contained this phrase: Playing in the ruins.

The idea is that you go into a stage of life with a mental image of the ideal outcome, and you rarely achieve the perfection of that mental image. What happens next is a release from that concept of perfection and the chance to play in the ruins of that ideal.

That sounds much better and full of possibility vs. saying, “I tried to build my family and ended up having the whole thing go tits up, and this is how it happened instead.”

He writes:

You’re just seeing it as the scrapyard it is. And then you can look around yourself and say, okay, what is actually here, when I’m not telling myself constant lies about what it’s going to be one day?

Because those ruins are constructed out of the ideal building blocks. All of the same impulses are still there, and you now get to go metaphorically pick them up and see what you can do with that creativity or love or whatever building blocks are left over after the ideal is destroyed.

I think it is hard to enjoy the ruins at first. Ruins don’t look like Instagram-worthy spaces. But making a life for yourself in the ruins and playing there means that you are still surrounded by all of the impulses that drove you in the first place vs. losing all those impulses altogether.

I like the idea of giving up the perfect dream and making yourself happy with what comes next.

One of the best things about the internet is that you have access to 5.35 billion brains. (That’s how many people were on the internet in 2024.) Even if you can’t remember something, such as the name of a book or a restaurant you ate at in 2007, chances are that someone else on the internet read the same book and recognizes the description and can provide a title or lived next door to that restaurant and can provide the name.

I’ve been trying to remember the name of a health center in Massachusetts. I know it was on one of three roads, though it’s gone now. I tried limiting my Google search to Internet pages when I knew it existed. (Did you know you can do this? It’s super weird to see what comes up.) I pored over Google Maps, Apple Maps, all sorts of maps… but I couldn’t find the name.

Not a problem because one of those 5.35 billion brains would remember for me. I posted it on an alumni board populated with people who all lived in the area when I lived in the area. A bunch of people said they knew exactly what I was talking about but couldn’t remember the name. But most people scrolled on by the question and didn’t answer.

It feels strange when the 5.35 billion brain collective fails to bubble up an answer. It makes me feel like maybe I imagined the health center. That makes more sense to me than that so many other people forgot it.

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

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To-do lists are difficult, seeing all of those tasks you need to do listed out. So I thought the triple list hack was brilliant.

The woman lists three things she needs to do each day: one annoying, one uncomfortable, and one painful. She then explains: “Having three of varying discomfort means I am more likely to do the lesser ones as a way to productively procrastinate on the bigger one.”

So she does the minimally annoying one (posting a letter) to get herself out of the more painful one (not eating sugar). She gets at least one thing accomplished.

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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.

As I say every month, I’m shamelessly stealing this idea from Jessica Lahey. She has a recurring monthly date where she reviews all the books she reads that month. Book reviews are important for authors, and I want to get better at doing this.

So. I’m going to review them here and also online, but I’m going to do it a little differently. I’m only going to review the stuff I really liked. I don’t see a reason to spend my time writing about something I didn’t love; it’s just using up more of my energy. So only positive reviews.

These are the books I liked (or mostly liked) from August.

The Bright Sword (Lev Grossman): This is a book you need to own, not borrow, because you will want to take your time with it. It is slow and beautiful, almost a lament to Arthur. I’m a casual Arthur fan, so I imagine a true lover of the Arthurian legends would be over the moon with this book. But I am a Lev Grossman fan, and any story in his hands becomes beautiful.

I Hope This Finds You Well (Natalie Sue): A cute workplace romance (kind of)? It wraps up super neatly, which is why I may be thinking of it as a romance more than straight fiction (plus, crush). Loved the interactions with her mother. It was just a much sweeter book than expected from the opening. I thought it was going to be like Green Dot, but after that Green Dot-y opening, it veered more into romantic comedy territory.

The Wedding People (Alison Espach): Yes, it was sometimes unrealistic (sure, send the 11 year old off with a stranger to run errands despite all of the family there) but the writing and ideas were lovely. It’s about finding reasons to live every day. And it made me want to plan a trip to Rhode Island.

A Talent for Murder (Peter Swanson): If you read The Kind Worth Killing (and enjoyed it), you’ll like this one. It was another great creepy read from Swanson. His books make you squirm a little inside while reading them. And, as always, Lily and Henry are fantastically grey together.

The In Crowd (Charlotte Vassell): Sometimes I was laughing. Sometimes I was just appreciating the writing. I loved Vassell’s first book, and this is a connected story, sharing many of the same characters. There are two related crimes, one has a great twist and the other is a bit of a dud, but the book is so much more about the main characters and their relationships. I love the writing so much.

Death at Morning House (Maureen Johnson): I think I may have emotionally aged out of Maureen Johnson books. I know they’re for teens, but they were enjoyable reads for adults, too. I’m listing this book here because if I was a teen, I would have loved this book. And if you like Maureen Johnson, this has a similar feel to the Truly Devious series.

What did you read last month?

We own a paper copy of Jenny Mustard’s Okay Days that we ordered from Blackwell’s in the UK two summers ago. It’s one of ChickieNob’s favourite books, and she re-reads it (sometimes several times) when she’s home. Once a week, I would check to see if they released it as a US version in the iBooks store. Once a week, I would see versions in many other languages, but the English version was only available in the UK.

But one day… when I went to do my weekly check for her… THE BOOK WAS THERE. In English. For only 99 cents. I normally check that she’s not in class before texting, but I didn’t pause, certain that it would disappear if I waited even one minute. Her reply came back instantaneously — buy it!

We are now the happy owners of Okay Days in paper and ebook.

If you haven’t read this book, go sample the first few chapters. It will remind you of being young and just starting out with plenty of wisdom still applicable in middle age.

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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.

No Kidding in NZ kicks off World Childless Week with a post introducing the topics. She writes: “Our voices are so often forgotten, ignored, or dismissed, how fabulous is it that we have a week heralding our stories, talking about our lives? It is there to help us all feel less alone, and more understood.” So many people are posting on the topics this week — Google and you can find them — and it’s not just for the community to come together and support one another; it’s for everyone to read and understand.

Lastly, Finding a Different Path gets a time reminder when the children of a friend from her infertility support group end up in her school. It’s not sad; it’s just surreal. She explains, “ It’s so weird to think that I could have had a 7th grader had that pregnancy been viable, or a 6th grader had I not miscarried my second ill-fated pregnancy the following summer.”

The roundup to the Roundup: Worth the wait. 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 September 13 – 20) 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.