You know one thing that has been funny to me about reading books to our almost 3 year old son? How he gets obsessed with a small handful of books and will only want to read those same books for weeks (or months) at a time. It’s funny in a way that if you even try to skip a page or skip a line, watch out. There is no wrath like a toddlers wrath.
After I published this post last week, I realized (and thanks to some prompting from my girl Ali Grace!) that I had more to say on the subject of social media so that’s where I find myself right now writing down the rest of those thoughts.
Like I mentioned, I absolutely had ZERO intentions of quitting social media let alone for as long as I did. If I’m honest, I had no intentions of even mentioning it after the fact. However, the more I thought about it, the more I felt convicted to speak out about what I learned from the experience.
You see, something funny happens when you realize and admit that you have a problem. Step one is admitting you have a problem, right? The problem here for me was that I was letting social media enslave me and control my time. I was not being a wise steward of the precious commodity of time that I have been given.
Before kids, I used to be the person who said they would “never do _______.” Now after having kids, I have realized that saying that phrase is almost always a recipe for taking back my words later. One thing that fell into that category of things I said I would never do, was to tell people about our choices when it came to diapering our child(ren).
As any parent will tell you, there are millions of opinions on what’s good, better and the best for your child no matter what you’re talking about. The last thing I ever want to do is make anyone feel like their choices aren’t good enough. Whatever choice you make, THAT is good enough for you and your family. After all, we just want our child(ren) to feel loved, safe and happy right? Continue reading
So, hi. Hello there. Insert my awkward half wave right here.
I didn’t mean to suddenly disappear like I did, but it sort of just organically happened and here I find myself again…it is 2016.
While the couple months break I took was so good, I’m ready to slowly get back to writing and sharing here in this space again. Sometimes you just need to regroup and re-prioritize life, right? Plus, as weird as it is to write things down and send them into the dark hole of the Internet, I kind of still enjoy it.
Hopefully it isn’t strange to pick up where I left off, even if so much time (practically a year, by Internet standards) has passed since I last wrote. In November, I was sharing my life gratitude project. So fun and also so challenging for me especially most of last year with 2 kids under 2.
December arrived in all it’s multi-colored, jolly glory. With it, there were extra play dates, Christmas parties, date nights, family visiting, and the buzzing anticipation of Christmas day itself. For no reason at all, on the first of the month I deleted all the social media apps on my phone and mostly stayed unplugged (except for texts and phone calls) the entire month. IT FELT AMAZING.
Which of course, got me to thinking and realizing how much time I’d been spending on social media and wanting to make an intentional change about it. How does that look for me? I’ve been deleting all the social media apps every weekend (starting late Friday afternoon through Sunday evening) off my phone and let me tell you, I can’t believe it took me so long to do this. Honestly, as cliche as it sounds I am enjoying living life and being present in every moment, without thinking that every moment just has to be documented. There is no mindless scrolling through news feeds or wondering where half hour just went when I could have been reading a book or having an actual conversation with my husband. I love the freedom to not feel like I have to share every single moment of my life online.
January has historically been my least favorite month. I think it’s mostly the weather (cloudy days that never seem to end) and the letdown after all the excitement of the holidays, which sometimes make me dread getting back into the normal routine. Of course, I’ve also realized that a lot of this angst can be kept at bay simply by changing my mentality and perspective on it. Simple in theory, a little harder in practicality. I’m a work in progress, for sure.
So, there you have it. I don’t have a tidy, put-a-bow-on-it and wrap it up prettily ending to this post other than to say that I’m looking forward to thriving a little more this year than last year. 2015 was all about surviving. My hope is that this year will be more about thriving.
More on that in the coming days…stay tuned.
Thank you for reading along, always.
xo
|| I’m ready, Christmas ||
*This post is a part of my Life Gratitude Project, in which I celebrate things I am grateful for with a photograph to serve as a visual reminder of life’s blessings. You can find links to all the posts here.
