Things I've savored without the presence of social media

Yesterday was the last day of my month-long social media fast. I downloaded the apps again on my phone and spent some time looking through the list of notifications. Honestly, it made me feel like I was having the beginning of an anxiety attack. I got sweaty, my breath shortened, and I felt a sense of panic. Facebook now notifies me when a "close friend" posts something?!? WTF is that?! I mean, I like to know what my friends are up to, but I want to do that on my own terms and in my own time. I don't need a little notification nagging at me to do it. I spent sometime updating my notification settings and removing myself from groups in hopes that I could limit the anxiety I feel at social media. If I didn't have to rely on it so much as a freelancer, I'd totally ditch it. The month away was, for the most part, refreshing. I wasn't as productive in my writing as I thought I would be, but I had more time to read and think and to just notice things like:

Fighting for chemistry in my marriage

This is not us. These people are much swankier. 

My husband and I married young. I was newly 20 and he was on the brink of 24--a fresh college graduate. We dated for six months before he proposed to me with a fortune cookie at a cute little park in our college town. There seemed to be an instant chemistry between the two of us. He made me laugh in an honest way, and he seemed to love me despite how different we were. It was an easy thing to fall in love with him (hopefully he can say the same thing). Now we are ten years into this marriage gig and are having to work hard each day to maintain the chemistry that once came so easy to us.

Social media fast: Update #2

Five years ago, a colleague explained that a week earlier she and her family were hiking in the Rocky Mountains;when they reached the top of the mountain, the first thing she did wasn't to take in the beauty of God's creation. Instead, she admitted to pulling out her phone and writing a Facebook status about the hike while her husband and daughters gazed at the scenery from the top of the trail without her. This was a defining moment for my colleague, and since then, she hasn't had a social media presence. It's a conversation that has stuck with me for five years.

With Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, I've documented many moments through pictures and brief bits of narrative, but I can't help but wonder how much I've actually missed in an attempt to document each moment. How many sunsets have I viewed through the lens of a crappy camera phone? How much time have I lost with my kids because I've been busy posting about them on Facebook? Social media has encouraged us to document lots but miss out on even more.