A few months ago I watched an episode from The Black Mirror (Season 3, episode 1) and I found myself watching it and seeing a lot of myself. It’s a difficult thing to admit, that you are super saturated with social media, many will deny that they care when in fact, we are all human and we all care to some extent. If you haven’t seen this episode, I highly suggest you watch it, it’s very eye opening. 

“Life is what happens when you’re looking at your smart phone.”

I have a love/hate relationship with blogging and I have since I started in 2008. In one way, it’s such a beautiful way of connecting people from across the world and allowing them to find comfort in certain topics, such as motherhood. I, myself, have found comfort in others especially if I was experiencing something particularly difficult. All I have to do is hop on Instagram stories and talk about it and within minutes I have many saying they’ve experienced the same and what worked or didn’t work for them. This social media outlet has helped me in many ways both physically and mentally. I have met some of the most amazing humans on this earth through blogging, some of which I have YET to even meet in person. 

The flip side to all of this is that many bloggers, including myself, spend a lot of time behind the screen. We spend time editing all of our images, creating blog content, submitting blog content, uploading content to Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter and Instagram. We feel the need to constantly be staying “in tune” with others’ content and giving them the love that they also deserve. Opening the Instagram app several times a day to comment on all of our fellow bloggers’ images and making sure we don’t “miss” anything. 

“Technology can be our best friend, and technology can also be the biggest party pooper of our lives. It interrupts our own story, interrupts our ability to have a thought or a daydream, to imagine something wonderful because we’re too busy bridging the walk from the cafeteria back to the office on the cell phone.” – Steven Spielberg

If a day goes by that wasn’t spent looking at my phone, sometimes I think, “WOW. I missed out on so much yesterday, I need to catch up.” The harsh, true reality is, catch up on WHAT?! Catch up on how everyone else is living their lives while I scroll up and down my phone screen instead of living my own? I also found myself insensately checking my emails, looking for an “exciting” one to pop through. All the while not realizing that the most exciting part of my life is happening right before me, in my own home. Three beautiful children who experience life in the most organic way, without technology. Seeing life through their eyes is something we all need to concentrate on just a little bit more. Admiring things like the way caterpillars morph in to butterflies and the way the sky looks before and after a storm. These are the things that we all end up taking for granted and short of me sounding like a complete crazy person, these are the things I want to learn to appreciate again, in a new light.

“It’s not good enough for us to have generations of kids that… look forward to a better version of a cell phone with a video in it. They need to look forward to exploration.” – Burt Rutan

The importance of social media lies in finding the perfect balance for you. Now that we are a family of 5, I have little time for much social media and try to schedule it into my blogging work schedule rather than constantly checking it when I can throughout the day. I allot a time, let’s say 10 am – 11am to be spent catching up on social media, responding to messages and scheduling in my social media posts. This has been immensely helpful when it comes to keeping me on track with my to-do list and limiting screen time. 

“Look at the world and think about a catastrophic disaster where the cell phone towers went dead. How would you ever be able to ‘TEXT” your next door neighbor to see if they were okay” 
-Stanley Victor Paskavich

I honestly miss the days when you would see people at a coffee shop reading the newspaper, instead everyone is looking at their cell phones. I miss the days when people could walk (anywhere) without also looking down into their phone instead of saying hello to others. I miss the days when we would use our rotary phones (yes, I used to do this at my grandparents house) and call our friends to chat instead of talking through text. I miss those in depth conversations face to face with other people rather than through my cell phone. I guess what I am trying to say is that I wish I lived in the 1940’s when life seemed just a tiny bit “simpler”.

“You need to build an ability to just be yourself and not be doing something — that’s what the phones are taking away. It’s the ability to just sit here like this.” – Louis C.K.

As many of you may have seen or read on my Instagram, I plan to go a slightly different route in 2018. A route that will take me away from my cell phone and more into the life that gives me 100% fulfillment. Admiring things that I may have surpassed because I was too busy looking at my phone. My favorite days are the ones that I have spent disconnecting and though, I love so many of you and have found so much support through blogging – I also need to go back to what really matters – my family and friends. Starting in 2018, I will keep my topics the same, motherhood & style but will be showing a lot less of my family and only blogging a few times a week. I will chat more about it when the time comes but until then, I encourage you to venture outside on long walk, leave your cell phone at home and admire everything around you. I promise that you’ll come back home feeling like a new person <3