This time of year is my most favorite! There’s love and brotherly kindness abound and SO MUCH going on – am I right!? And so much of it we want to share with others usually through our social media accounts.
I’m going to start by saying: there is NOTHING wrong with sharing your fun times on social media. In fact that’s part of WHY it was invented right? To keep us connected and to share things more easily than with emails. I personally love seeing all the different things that occur around the world that I wouldn’t have necessarily seen otherwise, and as a bonus I’ve made more friends through social media than I can count. Personal friends that I meet with and socialize with also but never would have met if it hadn’t been for the Facebook groups or Instagram pods!
However, I think we sometimes fall into the “we need to do this and this so I can show how fun we are and all the great things we do!!” It’s a trap we all fall into! It’s perfectly ok to record those moments and share them with our loved ones and friends (and yes, even followers we don’t know) BUT if we’re focusing on posting those moments, are we really actually living in them? Our writer Cara described our challenges with social media and just the information download we’ve experienced as what comedienne Iliza Schlesinger refers to as “The Elderly Millennial”. We’ve been kinda programmed into thinking we HAVE to share it all because our generation is the one that created “it all”!
Christmastime is no exception. There’s SO MUCH HAPPENING! Tree decorating, gingerbread house making, light looking, visiting Santa, shopping, wrapping, cooking, baking, etc etc. All of these things are incredibly fun to do and completely “worthy of sharing”. However, if were stopping to get the perfect Instagram background/pose/what have you, we forget that we’re doing all of these things for our loved ones that are with us but we are in turn neglecting for social online growth. I’m just as guilty of taking my phone out and making my kids do something again just so I can record it for people; completely guilty right here, anyone else?? So here’s my suggestion to help us live in the moment:
Put your phones away.
Not at every function you’re going to, but pick only 3 or 4 things you want to post about while you’re doing it and then for the rest of the season, don’t even have your phones in your hands. For me I want to post about my kids decorating our tree, looking at Christmas lights, and having fun at our Christmas block neighborhood party. But for the most part, I’m going to try to unplug and be in the moment instead of just posting about it.
Now again, I love social media!! I love all its pros and I’ve had more positive experiences than negative, so I’m not going to be completely radio silent for a month or anything like that BUT I am going to take those moments that happen only during the holidays and NOT worry about making sure I post about it. I want to live in those precious moments and write them down in a journal (or post about them after the fact). Be in the moment this year. We deserve the memories and so do our loved ones that we cherish so much!
