Ditching Distractions

If you have never googled the phrase “Social Media Quotes” and then clicked Images… PHEW!  You might just be blown away at some of the quotes there.  They cut deep.  You may even feel personally attacked because you relate so much.  Here are just a few that popped out to me:

“Social Media is addictive precisely because it gives us something which the real world lacks: it gives us immediacy, direction, and value as an individual.” – David Amerland

“I hate that our generation feels the need to share everything with the internet first before connecting with another person”

“Don’t use social media to impress people; use it to impact people” – Davewillis.org

There are lots more, but these are the first few that jumped out at me.  Before I go much further, I feel like I need to give a few disclaimers.  This post may sound preachy and I do not mean for it to in anyway.  Mommas who love technology, who use it for their businesses, who for one way or another have to be in contact with their phone and can’t really avoid it, I see you, I feel you, and I get you.  There is nothing wrong with that.  We live in an age where if someone makes a choice for themselves or has an opinion, others feel personally attacked.  Please know that this post, this choice I am making and exploring, is for me and me alone.  It is not meant to sound as though you have to do this too, I am merely sharing my findings in the hope if someone out there is feeling the same way, it may just help them too.  Are we on the same page here?  I sure hope so!  Let’s dive in.

A few days ago I posted the following on my facebook page:

“PSA: Choosing to be mindful about my phone usage and social media. I am going to be deleting some apps from my phone in the upcoming week. As of 8/19, if you need to get ahold of me, Facebook messenger/Facebook won’t be the best way. If you need my cell phone number or email address let me know and I’d be happy to get it to you.

I know that my phone is a distraction. It is so easy to get pulled into it, to simply open a notification and minutes later I’m mindlessly browsing. I am choosing to be intentional about being present. I don’t want Millie’s memories of me to revolve around a cell phone and I know that I am a more productive and present person for myself and my family without the distraction. I’ll be sharing more about this on the blog at an upcoming date, but just wanted to give a heads up if you are trying to reach me after this week here and there is a delay in response. Lots of love friends!  Xoxo”

Since then, I have had a lot of text messages, facebook messages, comments, etc. saying they would miss seeing Millie posts or updates on life, etc.  To be honest, I have felt AWFUL.  I guess when I posted, I wasn’t clear, and for that I am sorry.  This blog post, I hope, should clear things up a bit and explore a little deeper into why I am making this choice. 

I want you to close your eyes.  Crud.  Your eyes are closed now and you can’t read this.  Okay, so this backfired.  Have you opened your eyes back up yet?  I hope so.  Let’s just metaphorically close our eyes, shall we?  So “close your eyes” and think back to being a young kid.  The exact age isn’t really that important.  I want you to think about the influential adults in your life at the time.  For some of us, that might be our parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, family friends, etc.  You get the picture.  Pick out a couple of people and I want you to think about what they had in their hand.  For me, I am fortunate that there were so many people I can pick.  My Grandma Legg would have had a crossword puzzle book and pen, a garden tool, a tv remote occasionally later in life, and cooking/cleaning utensils in her hands.  I can remember them vividly.  My Dad would have had a pen and paper if he was upstairs in the restaurant office, cooking utensils if he was downstairs cooking in the restaurant, a newspaper if he was home in the mornings, and the steering wheel of a tractor or truck.  My Mom played taxi so a steering wheel was definitely in the picture, but so were clothes for laundry, food, bandaids to fix whatever we had done.  There are more people I could go through, but I think you get the illustration.  In all of the things I listed, one thing that exists in our time is not.  Not one of them say cell phone.  Now, before you get mad at me, hear me out.  I know times have changed.  I know we live in an ever-evolving world.  With that being said, I am a firm believer in two things: 1) how we spend our seconds, our minutes, the moments in our days will eventually be how we spend our lives.  Time moves so fast, before you know it days turn into weeks, which turn into months, which turn into years.  We can’t get that time back, so how we spend just a few minutes, looking back is how we have spent our lives.  2) if we aren’t intentional about that time, those precious moments, our lives will fly by with us in the passenger seat just along for the ride.  I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be in the passenger seat.  I want to be intentional, I want to make choices about how my days are spent in the hopes that someday if I am looking back on my life I won’t say “What did I do with that time?” or “I wish I had…” or “I regret that….”.  I am not interested in feeling those feelings if I can help it. 

Ever since having Millie, my thoughts on time and on myself have shifted a lot.  I have never been one to worry about taking care of myself.  I constantly overbook myself, stretch myself too thin, worry about everyone else.  Now that Millie is here, I know that I have to be careful with myself.  I am raising a beautiful girl who I want to take care of herself.  How will she ever know that that is important if she watches me never take care of myself?  Kids learn by example; they learn mostly by watching.  If that isn’t a frightening conclusion, I don’t know what is.  That is an insane amount of pressure, but I want to do right by her and that means that I need to be very intentional and conscientious about myself and my actions, in the hopes that she will learn by watching and be better off because of it.  Back to the items in people’s hands.  The memories I have of my childhood are precious… actually, they are PRESENT.  When my Grandma was with me, she was with me.  She may have been distracted because she was multitasking, but she was present with me.  She wasn’t comparing her life to others, she wasn’t reading a meme online, she wasn’t following someone else on twitter, it was me and her, for worse or for better.  The same goes for my parents.  When I think of how different Millie’s childhood memories might be because of all of this technology, my heart SHATTERS. 

Now, don’t get me wrong, I am a huge proponent of social media and technology.  I think it is insanely beautiful that I can share my life with so many friends and family all over the world who I wouldn’t be able to otherwise.  I can keep in touch with friends from high school I haven’t seen in 10 years or friends from college.  I can reach out in a second to someone who is across the country and hear back from them right away.  AMAZING.  This technology that we so often take for granted is INCREDIBLE.  Being able to connect with people is a beautiful thing.  Unfortunately, there is a lot of other stuff that come with that.  If I am choosing to be intentional, I know that my phone has got to go.  Is it a necessary part of my life today?  Unfortunately, yes.  I need it to connect with coworkers, family, friends, parents of my students.  It is a necessity.  People rely on me and expect me to respond and respond quickly. 

I can’t even be mad at them.  I get it, because I have been made to feel the same way in this culture.  When I message someone, I often have the same expectations.  Guess what?  The responding and responding quickly?  Since having Millie, I have gotten worse and worse at it.  Here’s the secret though… I am okay with it.  Secretly I WANT to be bad at it.  I don’t want to be attached to this phone anymore.  Most days, the notifications actually make me want to get rid of it all together.  It has almost become an anxiety inducing thing.  So, I have been exploring that feeling.  Why?  Why does this phone make me so crazy?  I have found the answer, it’s just feeling overwhelmed.  Have you ever watched kids play?  If you have, you would know that a room full of toys (while this seems like a good idea) will have poor results.  Kids gravitate toward simple.  Millie, in particular, loves plastic water bottles, tissue boxes, and mega bloks to name a few.  If she pulls out all of her toys and gets everything out of their home, suddenly she will stop playing.  It’s an overwhelming what do I play with next type of thing.  The same thing happens to me when I open my phone.  I see the notification icons, I see the emails, I see the text messages, and instead of using it to be productive, I open something mindless because I don’t want to respond or be made to feel that urgency, the pressure, the someone is expecting me to be reachable at the drop of a hat type of feeling. 

What I have decided in exploring this feeling and thinking on it for awhile is that I want to be intentional and my choice for how Millie will look back on the people in her life and what were in their hands…. Yikes guys, I do NOT want it to be my cell phone.  Also, I don’t want Millie to have a cell phone until she actually needs one.  You know, like teenage years, hopefully 15/16 when she will be getting ready to drive (okay, I know that all the mommas in the room with kids who already have cell phones are thinking this is a pipe dream and are laughing to themselves).  I know that this might not be the way things go in the times we live in, but we are sure going to try.  Studies have shown that cell phones and social media in the hands of kids and teenagers does some SERIOUS damage.  If you don’t believe me, do a quick google search.  It is staggering, it is scary, and I do not want that for Millie.  This is sort of a separate topic, but I bring it up because we model for our children.  If Millie sees me constantly on my phone, guess what she will want? 

When she looks back on her childhood, I hope that if she thinks about things in her Mom’s hand, phone might be an afterthought, but won’t be one of the first things.  I hope she will think of books, of a kayak paddle, a golf club, of the outdoors.  I hope she will think of our summers together and the adventures we had.  I hope she will think of me, on the floor, playing with her, PRESENT.  Above all else, I want her to know that we were present, that we were there, right there, with her.  If that is my hope, it won’t happen by accident.  I need to choose to make it a priority, in those small moments, I have to make sure that that is where I am.  Otherwise, what will her memories be?  What will she remember from her childhood?  A mom on her phone while she begs for my attention?  A mom who was following someone on twitter while she figured out how to go up onto her tippy toes for the first time?  A mom who was so distracted by a piece of technology that at the end of the day does not matter, that she didn’t pay attention to the things that truly did matter?  If these things are hitting you hard right now, know you are not alone.  I have spent a lot of time thinking and reflecting about this and it has brought me to my knees on more than one occasion.  It is hard to be intentional.  It is much easier to sort of float.  I owe more to Millie and I intend to do whatever I can to give her that.  Will I fail?  Oh good grief, I am sure.  But each time I do, I will choose to keep going and I will do my best.  Because I hope that someday down the road, I can look back and know that I did my best, for worse or for better, and I will just pray that that is enough.

SO, to answer all those comments and messages, I am NOT deleting social media.  I love the opportunities for connection it gives.  I love that I can keep in touch with people I don’t see every day.  I will still be present on Instagram and Facebook.  However, I have given myself ground rules.  Tomorrow night (8/18), I am deleting the Facebook and Facebook messenger apps from my phone (along with many others).  I am getting rid of all the “fluff” on my phone.  I am purging myself of the addiction and distraction, in hopes that I can be more present with not just Millie, but everyone else around me.  The only things that will be on my phone are text messages, phone calls, Class Dojo and emails.  Everything else?  Bye Bye!  I intend to keep you posted on how this goes and will update you on how I feel around a month from now.  I will still check Facebook and messenger, but only after Millie has gone to bed as a quick daily or every other day check in.  So, if you need to reach me, know that I won’t be responding right away and although that is a hard pill to swallow in this age of connectivity, I am at peace with it and I hope you can understand and respect this decision. 

Did you relate to any of this?  Did you feel like you also get that overwhelming feeling from your phone, from the notifications, from the pressure?  What can you do right now to help you get rid of those feelings?  First look at your apps and decide what is something that you only need to check once a day?  Is there something you don’t need all the time (I bet this might be a few things)?  Start there.  Get rid of those apps and see how you feel.  Only check those websites from a web app like safari or from your laptop or computer instead.  Here is the great part in all of this, it doesn’t have to be permanent!  If you delete an app and decide that you actually needed that convenience, you can redownload it!  Are you a business owner who needs social media to help your platform and grow your business?  Check out scheduling posts so that you can do it in the early morning or night and then you don’t have to be tied to the phone all day.  There are so many options, but my best advice is to start small, work your way up, and decide what is really important to you and go from there.  What works for me, may not work for you, and that is okay.  Just know that you aren’t alone in the feeling of overwhelm.  So many people are right there with you and none of us have all the answers.  We are all just trying our best and that is the most we can hope for.

Here’s to pursuing a present, simple life by living intently and always remembering what matters and what doesn’t.  Remember to give yourself grace and permission to enjoy the journey.  I’m always in your corner, cheering you on, and pulling for you friend!

With love always, Madison