I would describe myself as a rational pessimist; I believe the worst will happen because it often does.  A case in point, I worried about whether we had done enough prior to the election, and look where we are now despite Nate Silver’s polls.  This is not to say that all my fears come true, but I’m not basing my pessimism willy-nilly on a gut feeling.  No, I am a rational pessimist who has examined the facts and thought: “Yes, whenever possible, things go tits up.”

According to SuperBetter, this mindset is not working for me.

On page 132, Jane McGonigal distinguishes between the way we look at problems: do we see them as a threat or a challenge?  If you see your problems as a threat — something that is making your life difficult or that you need to endure or overcome — you will be stuck fighting an exhausting, possibly unwinnable fight, especially in situations where after a certain amount of work, the rest is left to chance.

Whereas if you look at your problems as a challenge — something that is testing your endurance and will show you what you are made out of — then you can approach your problems with a different energy.  You’re not fighting against; you’re fighting for.

Okay, a lot of this is easier said than done for a self-proclaimed rational pessimist.

McGonigal describes the two mindsets on page 137:

In a threat mindset, you focus on the potential for risk, danger, harm, or loss.  You feel pressured to prevent a negative outcome rather than to achieve a positive outcome … In a challenge mindset, you focus on the opportunity for growth and positive outcomes.  Even though you acknowledge that you may face risk, harm, or loss, you feel realistically optimistic that you can develop useful skills or strategies to achieve the best possible outcome.

In other words, view your problems “as a challenge you’re capable of meeting, rather than as a threat that will overwhelm or harm you” (p. 137).

Some of the work comes from something that McGonigal calls cognitive reappraisal (on page 135), which is changing the way you look at a situation.  Her example involves turning anxiety into excitement, since the emotions mirror one another in terms of your body’s response.  In both cases, your heart starts racing, your stomach may hurt, or you may feel light-headed.

Which means that it’s easier to convince yourself that your nervousness is excitement (since your body will be feeling the same thing) vs. convincing yourself that your nervousness is calm (since your body will be feeling opposite sensations).  Instead of telling yourself, “I’m calm,” tell yourself, “I’m excited!” even when you’re actually really nervous.  It can change the way you approach tackling the situation.

Wait, but don’t work against yourself by reminding yourself that you’re lying.  Simply say these words, “I’m excited, I’m excited, I’m excited” as you bounce up and down.

Once you have done that, you will open your mind to the possibilities ahead of you vs. the stress that you’re in right now.

So take something that is stressing you out and state it as a threat, and then pause for a moment, and rewrite it as a challenge.  Go!

I’m writing about SuperBetter the app as well as SuperBetter the book because… well… I learned about them via a podcast and now I want to talk about everything I’m learning on them.  If you want to talk about them, too, join along.  If not, skip the posts marked SuperBetter.

This post contains a spoiler for the movie Passengers.  You likely have already heard about it because it happens in the first few minutes of the movie, and every review has mentioned it, but in case you haven’t, stop reading now.

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I’m not going to see the movie Passengers because the mishaps-in-space trope fills me with dread*, but I realized that I got the story wrong after reading Nerdist’s take on the plotline.  My assumption was that both people woke up at the same time on the ship, and the movie is trying to figure out why these two passengers and none of the others are destined to die in space.

But noooooo, Chris Pratt wakes up 90 years too early and then decides to wake up one of the other passengers so he won’t be alone.

Nerdist asks an interesting questions (which sounds like it comes from the movie): “If you were stranded alone on a desert island, as star Chris Pratt pontificates early on in the movie, and you had the power to strand someone else there with you, would you?”

Like, if you were going to be locked in a spaceship, doomed to die, would you grab someone else to join you on-board so you wouldn’t have to be alone, knowing that you’re dooming that other person to the same fate?

I know the “correct” answer is “of course not!”  The kind person says they would stoically endure their indefinite solitary confinement and talk to themselves until the end of their days.

But… really… I mean, if you had the ability to have someone with you, wouldn’t you take someone with you?  There is a reason why solitary confinement is considered a cruel punishment.  People literally go insane only speaking with themselves.  But once you decide to do it, the question gets trickier: Do you pick someone you know or someone you don’t know?  And if it’s someone you know, do you go with an acquaintance, a friend, a family member, or your favourite person in the world?

Listen, I know this makes me a terrible person, but I think I’d grab someone.  I mean, first and foremost, I would hope that they would naturally be in the same mess with me so I’m not to blame for their situation, but if that’s not possible, I think I’d grab an acquaintance.  I think.  Best not to know me, right?  Oh my G-d, but then the guilt factor kicks in and I think, “No way could I deal with the guilt.  Better to die alone.”

What about you?

*It doesn’t matter whether it’s real, like Apollo 13, or fake, like Gravity.  I can read book versions, but I can’t see movies.  I panic just thinking about them.  I’m still freaked out about the “Resurrection Ship” episode of Battlestar Galactica where Apollo is floating through space.

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

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How is this for meta: a MicroblogMondays post about MicroblogMondays.

If you are looking for a resolution for this upcoming year, look no more.  You should make the commitment of writing in your own space on the Web at least 52 times in 2017.  One post each week; at least one sentence long.  There is no rule that blog posts must be 500 words.  I’ve seen posts that were one sentence or one paragraph, and they were just as thought-provoking as long pieces.  Ask your readers a question.  Tell them what you are doing at that very moment instead of putting those words on Twitter.  Anything.

Why do I think this is important?  Because I think posting things in your own space not only gives you the warm glow of ownership over your ideas, but it also makes people more circumspect.  It makes people support their thoughts with examples, provide links to sources, and unpack their feelings.  When it’s your own space, you think twice before posting.  When it’s your own space, you tend not to forward or link to other articles without checking them out first.

I think blogging in your own space helps keep balance with the quick-moving world of other social media sites.  It’s like the front porch to a house where people sit down to talk and listen.  People don’t quickly scroll past blog entries.  And I think blogging is even more important — especially first-hand accounts of the world — in this day and age of fake news and slippery facts.

So I’m just putting this out there: Go write in your own space in 2017.

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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 that are connected to businesses or are sponsored post.

Bookmark this post because you are going to want to come back to it if you don’t have 45 minutes right now.  I promise that this tiny game will be well-worth your time.

I stumbled upon the Seers Catalogue much in the same way the character in the game finds the mysterious ad in the back of a magazine that leads them on their adventure.  Random clicks brought me to an article on The Verge, and the name of the game stuck in my mind when we were picking our next selection for our interactive fiction club.

“Let’s play Seers Catalogue.”

Where are we? 

A hiding place.

The game takes about 45 minutes to read through.  While you can leave it open and walk away from the screen, you cannot save your progress.  This is — perhaps — a good thing in the sense that the game lulls you into a dream state, and it’s better to commit to reading it vs. playing in drips and drabs.  It can only be accessed from a computer — not a mobile device.

It was like Mysterious Benedict Society for adults (though I didn’t see anything in the first play-through of the game that was inappropriate for kids, and I’m letting the twins read it).  It felt like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in game form.  There is no way to lose the game, but a few ways you can twist the story.

“Anything that is important has power,” says Mr. Bud. “And this is what the powerful use to maintain their control.”

Bookmark this post because after you play, I want you to come back here and tell me where the story took you.

Truman went back to the vet this week.  I thought his eye looked a little strange when I gave him breakfast, but it was still dark in the room and I was barely awake, so I chalked it up to weird lighting and moved on.  Later in the day, there was a cricket in the house, and I think you are all aware of the loud screams that I emit when I see a cricket.  Afterwards, I went to (1) calm Truman and (2) calm myself by getting love from Truman when I saw that his eye was red.

Like weirdly red.

I waited about a half hour and then called the vet because as I waited, it looked like Truman’s eye was turning inside out.  I would post a picture, but it may make you throw up in your mouth.  They told me to bring him in, so we drove over while I sang Truman’s favourite song — “Strike the Bell” — over and over again.

She checked that it wasn’t a brain tumour and then determined that there was an injury to his eyeball.  About three days earlier, I had opened a new bag of hay, and Truman had been happily rubbing his face in it while chirping on about how good it tastes by wheeking non-stop.  In fact, I had moved him several times when he tried to sleep with his face in the hay bowl, something that confused him because was I aware that this bag of hay was particularly delicious?  It seems that Truman has poked himself in the eye with said hay.  Good going, sport.

We’re only a few days into the eyedrops, but his eye has mostly gone back to normal.  It’s still clouded over, but at least it doesn’t look like it’s turned inside out.  The injury is still there, which freaks me out because the next step would be taking him to a guinea pig ophthalmologist.

Has he learned not to rub his face in the hay bowl?  No.  He was doing it again within 24 hours of returning from the vet.  Because the hay is that freakin’ good.

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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:

• “It’s Not Just a Brick” (The Empty Cookie)
• “Dinner Parties” (Ms. Infertile)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Notes from the Ninth Circle has a post contemplating her worth.  She bleakly wonders, “I wonder sometimes if the reason why God won’t give us another baby is because I’m not worth enough because I don’t do enough, don’t do well enough, at taking care of the family that I do have and the child that He did give me already.”  Even when your brain rationally knows your worth, it’s hard to convince the heart to shut its mouth.  Thank you for writing this.

Birds, Bees, and Medicine is taking care of herself, and that means calling a therapist to check herself for depression.  It’s an important read; moreso because she is a therapist herself, and she points out the importance of having an outsider judge your mental state vs. relying on yourself.  Good advice for non-therapists to take to heart.  You wouldn’t self-diagnose cancer, right?  You would go to a doctor if you felt something abnormal and allow them to judge the facts.  The same goes for our brains.

The Empress and the Fool has a post about people who give her know-it-all advice on the babies she is gestating.  The reality is just as nothing can prepare you for some life events, no one can know how your parenting experience is going to go.  I love this: “I am under no delusions about the rigors of raising children, while I am simultaneously humbled by the recognition that this is something I will not concretely understand until I am inside the experience, but treatment and miscarriage are also exhausting, except they are of the soul-sucking sort and entirely bereft of the joys that make parenting gratifying.”

Lastly, POF and Now What? has a post about family myths, those stories we tell ourselves about how our life should look.  She counters the list with all the myths she has removed from her definition of self, and all the things she actually is accomplishing.  It’s a really important post, and I hope everyone pauses to make their own three lists.

The roundup to the Roundup: Truman’s eye injury.  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 9th and 16th) 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.