A Realization

I'm glad Christmas is fast approaching. I'm honestly going through a pretty difficult, anxiety-inducing time right now. I'm happy that I've chosen this time to avoid social media. It's been about 36 hours since I deleted the apps from my phone and my ipad, and it's already making me rethink my choices. It didn't take very long before I found myself idly scrolling to the Facebook app on my phone looking for the little red bubble that indicated I have notifications. I did this a number of times the first day. And I kept finding little blocks of time where I couldn't think of anything to do - time where I would have been reading Tumblr or Facebook. I kept reaching for my phone when I was with my kids, and I thought to myself "why don't I reach for my kids instead"? How many hours have I spent with my face in a screen while my kids played and watched TV without me?

So I'm pretty happy about this change right now. I'm not saying that I'll never be on social media again, but I wasted way too much time immersing myself in the lives of other people - often people I didn't even know - when I could have immersed myself in my own life. So that's what I want to do. I want to read books, exercise, explore, and show my kids everything.

And this? This is the season for it. Saturday we're putting up the Christmas tree and organizing the house. I'm wrapping gifts and I'm going to talk to my kids about santa and Jesus and all of that stuff. We have so many traditions and I'm happy to be sharing them with my family.