My Social Media-less Life

(I promise I’m not coloring these pictures specifically for these special blogs; they were colored and saved on my phone already and I’m just now finding a use for them)

Today’s Bloganuary writing prompt:
What is a treasure that has been lost?

Honestly I’ve struggled with how to answer this one most of the day. This question is so broad and vague, it could be talking about an ideal, a person, a thing, or a place. And then don’t get me started on if it’s an ideal, person, thing, or place in my own life or just something I’ve noticed as a whole.

But I was in the shower a little bit ago (it is the best place to do your thinking without being interrupted) and thought of the way that social media has affected our society and culture.

As someone who is no longer directly affected by what happens on social media, it’s a bit easier to think of this, but I know for an absolute fact I am still a part of the problem. I do have a blog that gets shared on social media from time to time. 😉

I think of the things all the time I learned and experienced because of social media, but the weight of the world is no longer on my shoulders. I’m not constantly thinking about what someone thinks or says (or screams) on the other side of the glass. I’m not constantly worried about if something I said yesterday is going to offend someone tomorrow.

That’s not to say I don’t still watch what I say or how I say it, but it’s not an everyday affair tied to my being on a social media site.

So although I had a lot of fun on social media and I know others do everyday… being present in the moment is a treasure that’s been lost in our society.

As for my own life, in some ways I still struggle with being present and I have far less to distract me than most since I no longer have social media.

(As an aside about social media not distracting me, I forgot my whole phone at a business we cleaned last night and almost had the cops called on me by the security company when I returned to get it because I wasn’t able to tell them I was on-site since… I didn’t have my phone.)

Even right now, I’m doing multiple things at once (typing this out, thinking about the music I’m listening to, and keeping an eye on the little dog because she’s being suspiciously restless).

Fun fact, that’s not being present.

The overachievers in my life (of which there are a fair few) would just call that multitasking and they’re not wrong… but I’ve had to dump out whole containers of tea at McDonald’s in a past life because people were “multitasking” and forgot to put tea bags in the brewer or forgot to stir the sugar while it was still hot.

Ultimately, multitasking is just the A.D.D. way of saying “I don’t want to be present in one thing so I’m going to start a bunch of projects at once and overwhelm myself so I can’t feel the feelings I’m having or deal with the problems that need to be dealt with.”

Dang, okay, Erica. Don’t be coming at us all sideways.
Well… be different then.

I’m working on it too. It’s hard when all my life I’ve been taught the best way to succeed is to learn to do multiple things at once, but is that really the way to work at something “as unto the Lord”?

I really think He’d want us to do our absolute best and doing multiple somethings at once in a mediocre way doesn’t really seem to be “doing my best” to me.

So just like it took me years to learn how to multitask, it’s taking me years to unlearn how to do that same thing.

Let’s learn how to be present and maybe we’ll get back a little semblance of humanity.