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New Year

It feels weird to celebrate a new year when the world looks so uncertain. I mean, what did the year even do so far except allow the sun to hit its surface another day? But what else can we do? We can’t wait for life: this is the only one we get, and we have to get through this uncertainty, too.

So a tentative hello to 2025. May you bring good things.

January 1, 2025   2 Comments

20240 Pages

For the past four years (2020) and (2021) and (2022) and (2023), I set reading goals tied to the year — 20200 pages, 20210 pages, 20220 pages, and 20230 pages. As of December 30th (which is the date GoodReads last updated my reading stats), I hit 19,676 pages with 56 books, but I’m not sure it counted my final book of the year (Over My Dead Body). Um… it’s close to a win?

I still wish GoodReads would give you a running page count throughout the year.

To stay on-brand, I set 20250 as a goal for 2025.

My favourite things I’ve read this year:

  • All the Queen’s Men and Murder Most Royal (SJ Bennett)
  • Spaceman of Bohemia (Jaroslav Kalfar)
  • Green Dot (Madeleine Gray)
  • First Lie Wins (Ashley Elston)
  • I Promise It Won’t Always Hurt Like This (Clare Mackintosh)
  • Malice (Keigo Higashino)
  • Moderate Becoming Good Later (Katie Carr)
  • How To Solve Your Own Murder (Kristen Perrin)
  • The Husbands (Holly Gramazio)
  • Wives Like Us (Plum Sykes)
  • Lies and Weddings (Kevin Kwan)
  • Very Bad Company (Emma Rosenblum)
  • The Twist of a Knife (Anthony Horowitz)
  • Long Island Compromise (Taffy Brodesser-Akner)
  • The Wedding People (Alison Espach)
  • The In Crowd (Charlotte Vassell)
  • The Examiner (Janice Hallett)
  • Pony Confidential (Christina Lynch)
  • We Solve Murders (Richard Osman)
  • You Are Here (David Nicholls)
  • You’d Look Better as a Ghost (Joanna Wallace)
  • The City and Its Uncertain Walls (Haruki Murakami)
  • Over My Dead Body (Maz Evans)

What is on your list of favourite reads this year? (Feel free to list movies or television shows if books are not your thing.)

December 31, 2024   1 Comment

#Microblog Monday 518: Graveyards

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

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Was it Erin McKeown’s newsletter about writing a will or planning an upcoming trip that triggered this thought, but do you schedule graveyard visits when you’re going somewhere new?

A long time ago, visiting graveyards and photographing graves was one of my top trip destinations. I remember getting to Oslo late in the day, setting down my things, and immediately setting out to find Ibsen’s grave in a nearby cemetery.

Josh was less enthralled with going to graveyards. He wasn’t against it, but he wasn’t taking three modes of transportation to get to a graveyard outside a city just because a favourite writer was buried there. I mean, it makes sense: you’re not seeing a place where they lived. You’re just seeing a stone with their name on it. So graveyards were dropped from the itinerary, and it went from being my number one scheduled activity to a only-if-it-happens-organically activity on trips.

Do other people visit graveyards when they travel?

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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.


December 30, 2024   3 Comments

Will

Erin McKeown recently wrote a newsletter about her will called “to die for.” Isn’t that a clever title? I thought it was a clever title.

Anyway, she writes about drafting her last wishes with her lawyer. Some of them are logistics about the funeral (cremated or not?) and understanding why she is making these decisions rather than leaving them for someone else to make at a later date: “of course, the overarching question of all this: who is this for? it’s not for me, that’s for sure. i will be dead.”

But then the conversation turns to what happens to her things. And that is the part that ties into the title. She writes,

not having a spouse or children and not owning a home in some ways made all the decisions simpler. but also… again…. strange! marriage and children are such shortcuts from hard decisions. if you don’t have those easy answers, the questions are harder.

And I love her answer and the longer unpacking of it, but it comes down to using your things to say thank you:

i have decided that whatever assets i do have at my death, will benefit a range of non-profits that i have had long, personal relationships with. these are not activist-type choices, these are choices that reflect gratitude for places that helped me become a better person.

Isn’t that such a lovely idea? Not to change the world (an activist-type choice) but to thank the world (a gratitude choice).

Erin McKeown seems like a lovely human being, so it fits. Go read her whole newsletter.

December 29, 2024   2 Comments

1018th Friday Blog Roundup

Somewhere around this time five years ago, we first started hearing about this troubling virus. Back then, the only cases were in Wuhan, and it didn’t seem likely that it would reach the US. And if it did reach the US, it would remain on the west coast. By “likely” I don’t mean virologists — they probably had a very different understanding of the disease. I’m talking about the blissfully unaware state I was in this time five years ago.

What would that Melissa think if I told her that five years later, she would still be masking indoors?

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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.

Finding a Different Path explains the point of unhappy thoughts, kicking toxic positivity to the curb though a pack of slogan laden pencils with the best ending ever: “And that’s how the toxic positivity pencil met its well-deserved demise, shattered into a zillion pieces while 13-14-year-olds with pencil-murdering glints in their eyes looked on and cheered.” What is the story? Well, you’ll have to click over to read it.

Lastly, No Kidding in NZ proves the opening message that after five years, COVID is still around. She came back from an amazing trip and immediately fell ill. She shrugs her shoulders: “That’s fine. It’s the end of a long year, and I hope for you it passes peacefully whether you celebrate or not. I’m looking forward to the rest of summer (having missed the start of it in Europe), and health returning.” Here’s to better health soon.

The roundup to the Roundup: Five years of COVID. 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 December 20 – 27) 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.

December 27, 2024   5 Comments

(c) 2006 Melissa S. Ford
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