My Social Media-less Life

A few weeks ago, I told my two best friends that I wanted a certain type of planner called “The Happy Planner.” You may know about it, but if you don’t, I found it toward the end of 2020 when finding a reason to be happy was a bit difficult… even that late in the year.

When I bought the planner almost 3 years ago, I didn’t realize it came in multiple options for days. So I got a 3-month planner, when I would have preferred a 12-month, but I did it for most of that 3-month period and then I never got another one.

Since my birthday was coming up, I mentioned it to my friends and said I thought it would also be fun if we did it all together. Or at least tried. Not all planners are for all people, and I know that… having tried many planners in my life.

One of these two friends, did in fact, buy them for all three of us and “designed” them all specially for each of us and gave them to us on Sunday. I used mine on Monday morning and then forgot again until today.

Since it’s the end of the day, the actual “planning” part of the planner is pointless, but I filled out all the rest: the weather, my top 3 goals for the day, and my “happy” moment.

The Happy Moment is that one time of day where you felt the happiest, or sometimes for me even, the most at peace.

Some backstory…

Earlier today, I was relaying a message to this same best friend who bought me the book (Rachel) from my mom. She always has good advice and Rachel highly values it and had kind of asked for it. Maybe not from my mom specifically, but… she was there, and she did have good advice.

I did a bit of a misstep in relaying the information and Rachel immediately told me the way I relayed the information was hurtful and I should have done it differently.

As friends do, we talked about it, I asked for forgiveness, and we moved on. No worries.

Except the four or five times since then that my mind has tried to tell me Rachel has not, in fact, forgiven me and I’ll never learn how to be tactful, and I always lose friends because of the way I talk to them… those are issues I deal with when it comes to people I’m close to or people I really like and want them to like me back. I want to be friends or keep being friends with them and hate when I hurt them. So my brain takes advantage of the “oopsie” and makes it this terrible lesson in shame. I hate it and haven’t dealt with it a lot in the past year, but today was the worst I’ve had in a really long time.

Anyway…

There are a couple of reasons for this post, but we’ll finish the one story before we continue the other.

So when I wrote down my “Happy” Moment for today, it was “Rachel calling me out for my misspeak”. I’ve never had someone calling me out as a good thing, and certainly not a happy moment… but then I thought about it.

A year ago, I was still on social media. I felt as though every day I could say something or do something that would make me lose multiple friends and followers. Every day, I was concerned that just being myself would cause me to lose followers.

Sometimes it did.

But I wanted people to like me and keep seeing my stuff, so I would only post what I truly thought would get the highest amount of positive “reviews”.

In case you were wondering, that’s not a good way to live.

So today when Rachel called me out because I said something that hurt her, I was obviously disappointed and immediately apologized, but for me… it was the fact that she was completely willing to continue being my friend even though I upset her.

I’ve had a lot of friends in the past– people I thought I was close to– that didn’t take anything I said well and some of them wouldn’t talk to me for days or would cease to be my friend altogether.

Obviously, a lot of this just boils down to us all being in our 30s (or very nearly with my bestest friend and my roommate), but the rest of it comes down to finding and having good friends and willing to cultivate those relationships in a way that you can have mishaps, and the corrections can be some of the best parts of your day.

Also, all of us having a fairly solid relationship with Jesus helps too. 😉

What do you love most about your friends?