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About Me, books, ditching my smartphone, reading, self care, social media, technology

Want to become an awesome reader? Do these 5 things

January 28, 2019

I received a flurry of comments, emails, and DMs after the year-end book list I published in late December. There were plenty of thanks for the recommendations, but there were even more incredulous queries along the lines of how do you read that much? and Do your kids bathe, feed, and clothe themselves? And I haven’t finished a book since college!

Which I totally and completely understand. Reading for pleasure can seem like a tough row to hoe some seasons, especially when career demands are intense and babies are small and plentiful.

I really subscribe to the idea that reading, like any other skill or hobby, is something that waxes and wanes during different seasons in life. I don’t swim much in the winter when it gets dark at 5 pm and my kids have schoolwork, whining, and endless snacking to accomplish before bedtime. When the summer sun rides high until 8pm I can easily slip out to the gym once Dave gets home. Winter nights though, I’m more likely to be dreaming about slipping into bed myself by that point in the evening.

When the kids were younger and my sleep was more disrupted, I definitely did not read as much as I do now. Nursing required at least one hand, sometimes two, and I didn’t have an e-reader yet. It was much easier to prop open a laptop and stream some mindless content or better yet, alternate between staring dreamily into my baby’s eyes or vacantly into space. During my later babies’ early days with smartphones on the scene, I had to make an intentional choice to leave that phone somewhere else sometimes.

Now that everybody is sleeping through the night and still young enough to be abed by 9pm  – ahem, most nights. To hell with this Oregon Trail winter we’re having; thank God nobody is dying in a covered wagon. Instead they’re sucking down steroids in a house with a roof – I usually have at least an hour or two of open time in the evenings. Provided I’ve prayed already, packed the lunches, sent the emails, etc., I almost always choose to spend this time reading. And 10-14 hours of reading a week can add up to some big numbers over the span of a year.

Here are a few things I do in order to maximize my consumption of the written word:

1. Make your smartphone smarter: I know, I know…but my ongoing effort to break up with my smartphone is mired in the annoying reality of life in 2019. Do I need a smartphone to survive? Of course not. But life without one – like the summer before last – is more difficult than it needs to be. Our school communicates via a private email system, my office communicates via a chat app, my sense of direction functions via Google maps…anyway, I still have a phone that is smart. So I’ve hacked it a bit to make it smarter for me. I’ve done this by: removing all social media from my phone, decluttering the front screen to the bare minimum, hiding all communication apps (Voxer, Whatsapp, GroupMe, etc) in a separate folder on the last page, no work email, and refusing to download an app for anything unless it can’t be done in a browser (looking at you Whole Foods/Amazon discount).

When my phone is less interesting and less capable of distracting me, I am more likely to pick up whatever I happen to be reading in those lulls of activity during the day, be it in car line or standing at the counter stirring dinner and sipping a glass of wine.

The one thing I’ll probably do again this summer when my kids are home is delete my internet browser which makes the phone even stupider (and harder to use for mindless scrolling) but which is too tough to manage during the school year. I’ve done this every year for 3 summers now and it’s been really great for keeping me more engaged with my family, at least once I get through the horrifying lack-of-immediate-Google-ability detox of the first week. Shudder. My brain is melting.

Without the tempting glow of a tiny screen beckoning you to disappear for a little scrolling, you are now ready to:

2. Get an e-reader. I’ve been a loyal Kindle reader for about 7 years now, I think. It was an actual lifeline when we lived in Rome in 2013, still tethered to my library in the States and able to provide me with instantaneous digital content in my native tongue. I like Kindle because we already use Amazon for so much (thus hastening the decline of civilization as we know it) and because almost every book is available in Kindle format. It also has cross pollination with other Kindles in your family and other devices, so you can share titles with your spouse or kids and if you do find yourself in a pinch when you’re out and about but left your Kindle at home, you can download the Kindle app to your phone and pick up wherever you left off in your book. But don’t do this unless it’s an emergency, because reading on a phone is terrible for you.

I like the Kindle Paperwhite because of its eyeball-friendly display and its husband-friendly backlighting which makes it perfect for snuggling with under the covers without disturbing your bed partner’s sleep. It vaguely thrills me in the same way hiding with a flashlight and a paperback used to do at age 10.

An e-reader is also the ultimate budget-friendly way to read; other than the original cost of purchase, you can basically read everything you could ever want for free, minus your annual Amazon membership. I’m not sure how other e-readers stack up price-wise, but like I said, Jeff Bezos helps the wheels of our domestic economy turn, so we’re already paying for it. Also, don’t pay a crazy amount for one! I think Dave and I got both ours on Prime day or black Friday a few years ago for less than $60 apiece.

But don’t you spend money on books, Jenny? 90-something titles is a lot!

Au contraire, my friends. I spent possibly $50 on books this past year. Possibly. If there is an obscure title that pops up for book club unavailable in digital format, a title I just have to have in hardcover the moment it comes out (cough cough Michael O’Brien), or a friend publishing a new title, I’ll buy it. Otherwise? I’ll…

3. Use the library like a boss. Our library system is amazing. We have convenient locations, attractive and updated (if not beautiful) new buildings, and massive collections of titles. But I almost never check out books irl. If we go to the library, it’s either 100 degrees outside and the kids are home or I’m meeting a girlfriend for a government-sponsored playdate. I don’t go there to check out books, period.

I mean fine, sometimes I let the kids each grab a stack. Which I then spend the next several weeks repenting, finding titles sodden in the backyard, shredded in the baby’s mouth, stuffed under car seats and behind couches, etc. That is when we find all the titles. Books, like puzzles, live at the library for our family. At least for now.

But digital books? Oh, my friends, digital books are what I use to placate myself if ever I think too long and about bloated, wasteful government expenditure of my tax dollars. Digital books are my smug little secret, new release titles by the dozens filling up my hold request que, recommendations from friends or some erie algorithm hastily copy and pasted, waiting their turn in a notes app I continually update. Some months I might be reading $150 worth of brand spanking new releases, all without opening my wallet.

Some library districts might not be so generous or so response to digital title recommendations – almost every book I’ve ever suggested my library acquire, they have, save for a handful of older or explicitly Catholic titles – but did you know there are some library districts that grant non-resident library cards? Mind blown.

Of course, you don’t have to be an e-book apologist like me to work the library system. Turning your to-be-read wishlist into a physical hold request is almost as easy, if a little less convenient. If you don’t mind picking up and returning books irl, this is the option for you. Bonus: less time wandering the stacks and rolling the dice on a title that ends up being a dud, or trashy. Downside: less time wandering the stacks. And less likelihood of you picking up a title you might otherwise never lay eyes on.

4. Be intentional with your leisure time. Don’t let downtime just “happen” to you. If you want to become an enthusiastic reader, you have to be at least a little bit intentional about it in 2019. There will always be something to stream, a newsfeed to scroll, screens to watch, and noise to attend to. Gone are the days where you might pick up a book out of boredom or lack of options. You have limitless options, and boredom can be banished with a simple keystroke. If you’re going to read, you have to make time to do it and resist the siren song of passive consumption of entertainment.

Getting your oil changed? There’ll be a show playing in the waiting room, and possibly music, too. And unless you brought your current read or your Kindle along for the ride, you’re going to find yourself spending 35 minutes of your life learning all about high stakes extreme crab fishing. Ask me how I know.

Similarly, at night, if you don’t set parameters around your screen time and your plan for how you’ll unwind once your duties for the day are done, it’s all too easy to find yourself hopping on instagram for “just a minute” only to look up an hour later, bleary eyed and hunchbacked at the kitchen counter. Don’t ask me how I know.

Decide you want to use your fringe hours to read, and then prepare to be shocked when you can easily cruise through a book a week. No, you’re not necessarily a genius, you just got 10 hours of your time back by refusing to cede the precious resource of your attention span to an algorithm designed to be irresistibly captivating. So actually, maybe you are a genius.

Try it even for a month and see what happens. Cal Newport (author of Deep Work) has a forthcoming title called Digital Minimalism that is all about having agency in this area of our lives, evaluating each new piece of technology and each practice and asking if it truly serves us, and if so, assigning it designated space in our lives. Down with passive consumption and automated upgrades. Up with the thoughtful, intentional application of new trends and technologies in our lives.

5. Find a reading buddy. It could be a whole book club full of many buddies. It could just be the other users on Goodreads whose titles and reviews you peruse when looking for new reads. It could be your long lost bff from college who you commit to rekindling the flame with. Try this: pick a title, both of you get the book, download Voxer or some other voice messaging app, and spend a month reading and virtually discussing your pick, no set meetings or irl encounters necessary.

Reading is really fun. And you can do it on a train, you do it in the rain…you get the idea. And unlike many other hobbies and pursuits that may find themselves sidelined during different seasons of life, it’s something you can pursue whether you’re 5 or 95, provided you have the right glasses, I guess. So while I may not be able to get out and run a 4 miler right now (I want to say because snow, but really it’s because mombod. #cantdoitall), once my kids are down for the count tonight, I’ll be happily indulging in the luxury of opening to the current location in a good book.

ditching my smartphone, mental health, mindfulness, self care, social media, technology

Body image, self acceptance, and the price of Instagram

January 10, 2019

I’ve come to realize something about myself this year, and it might sound a little ridiculous, or it might sound just right to you. It’s this: the more time I spend away from social media, the better I feel. The better my prayer life is. The more I appreciate my own body, my children’s bodies, my husband’s body.

It’s not just bodies, either; the fewer pictures I see of other people’s houses – not shiny design pictures, because somehow I know those aren’t the stuff of comparisons, but real pictures of real people’s homes, styled or not – the better I seem feel in my own space.

Here’s the difference for me, I think. I love reading and admiring content that is designed in a way that is obviously design-y. When a piece is written for House, Beautiful or as a featured home tour or a DIY project on a design blog, my brain automatically categorizes that as “professionally cleaned, styled and shot, obviously a curated product, and DON’T FEEL BAD ABOUT THIS. This has nothing to do with your lived reality.” When I spend time pouring over real life images though? Something happens in my head that tends to trip my discontentment wire.

Does that make even a morsel of sense?

All I know is the way I feel after 40 minutes on Instagram is … not great. “But I’m just catching up with my friends!” I can rationalize to myself, “I know this is just a snapshot of their lives, a sliver of their reality, a scroll of mostly silver linings.”

But my brain does something else with all those images. My brain misses the “curated reality, do not apply to real life” memo for whatever reason, and refuses to behave as if THIS IS NOT REAL LIFE, DON’T JUDGE YOURSELF/HER/HIM BY WHAT YOU SEE HERE. And my stubborn brain can get pretty down after ingesting a couple hundred beautiful images of how everyone else is killing it/slaying their dreams/nailing their goals and I’m over here just trying to get another iteration of chili on the table for dinner and spraying dry shampoo on 6-day old hair.

And honestly? I like using dry shampoo. My shower in a can, I call it. I’ve always resented the imposition showers make on my busy life, and having a can of degreasing spray powder is actually just what the doctor ordered. Plus it makes my fine, limp, slippery soft hair infinitely more amenable to styling.

Also, my family loves chili.

So my baseline level of happiness, even in this busy, demanding, frequently exhausting season of early parenthood is basically set at “contentment.” Maybe not breathless joy, but still, a pretty great life.

But I find that when I take my eyes off my own paper, peering over someone’s shoulder into their selfie game, more often than not, that calm contentment is rocked. Maybe I should get a blunt chin-length bob, I muse almost unconsciously, clicking on a stream of dreamy images of a lovely woman with 6-month old twins who looks like a Russian supermodel. And just like that, at a single tap, I find myself immersed in the curated world of someone else’s life. But I don’t just “find myself” there…I put myself there. I go there, willingly, to sneak a peek into a another person’s existence through the lens of their camera phone, looking for, what, exactly? Inspiration? Leisure? A moment’s rest while I sit and scroll?

Never happens. It’s never restful. Or hardly ever, at least.

For every single arresting and transcendent image I encounter on Instagram, there are probably thousands I’ve scrolled through to get to it that have had a net negative effect on my mental and spiritual health.

(I’m being awfully hard on Instagram here, but that’s because it’s the worst offender for me. Maybe Twitter is your Kryptonite. Facebook is good for almost nothing save for livestreaming far-off events and private groups.)

I’m becoming more convicted by the year that social media has a net negative effect on the human person.

But Jenny, you’re a blogger!

I know! Cue the identity crisis! But blogging has always been different for me. Less like consumable, scrollable, forgettable (I hope!) social media, and more like an ongoing conversation. And hey, maybe some people can Instagram that way – I believe it’s entirely possible. But I can’t.

A historically difficult relationship with my body and with food is kind of a recipe for Insta angst. I find myself moving almost unconsciously into comparison mode when presented with beautiful pictures. My mind races, unbidden, to do the math when I see a trim, smiling woman holding a newborn, calculating the baby’s age and delivering the result to me like a verdict: 5 weeks. She looks like that with a 5-week-old baby in her arms, what is wrong with you that you don’t look half that good a year out?!

Even if I never let myself voice that thought, don’t entertain it aloud, I’ve still thought it. I’ve still introduced yet another piece of evidence into the neverending and unwinnable trial of “Why Jenny Will Never Be Good Enough: the Defendant vs. Herself.”

Saddest part of this all being, honestly, the fact that I don’t know that mom’s story. Maybe her baby is adopted. Maybe she’s thin because she just beat cancer and although the doctors told her she’d never carry a healthy pregnancy to term, here’s her miracle baby. Maybe this is her first baby after a string of devastating miscarriages. Maybe she’s just skinny.

My personal baggage blurs her humanity though, objectifying her through the lens of my discontentment, filtering her appearance through my own wounds.

This is getting awfully self disclosing, even for a blogger, but I feel really convicted to share it with you because I have a sneaking suspicion I’m not alone in these struggles. Amidst a sea of content about New Year’s Resolutions and goals and ways of eating and changes for the better, I want to make a small and sort of ridiculous suggestion that has changed my life during the course of the past few years: look away more.

Maybe you can handle Instagram in smaller chunks and it doesn’t shake you. Maybe you never had an eating disorder and your self-doubt centers on your personality, your intelligence, your sense of competence, your sense of worthiness of God’s love. Maybe there are no doubts and you’re higher up in the mansion of perfection, and I mean this wholeheartedly when I say good for you. (And also, I’d wager you probably don’t spend all that much time on social media to begin with. Please pray for me.)

But if this resonates with you at all, I want to encourage you to sit with it for a bit. Ask God to weigh in on it. Ask Him if there is something you’re doing to feed the vicious cycle of self doubt and self judgement and, frankly, self centeredness.

I haven’t lost all the baby weight yet, not even close. I’m still eating relatively keto because it makes me feel good, but I’ve stopped posting “progress” pictures and following #results hashtags because it’s just too easy for me to get into a bad place with those images. Even with my own images.

I look at photos of third-time postpartum Jenny and hold fifth-time postpartum Jenny up to her in my mind’s eye, critically evaluating where I’m at now, and where I was then. I’m sure it’s no surprise that I wasn’t satisfied with myself back then, either! I didn’t realize how great I looked, how shiny my hair was or how luminous and unlined my skin. Or how little any of that mattered.

Ah, but youth is wasted on the young. Well, I don’t want to waste any more of it! As the past year unfolded I found myself making a surprising peace with the one enemy I never expected to bury the hatchet with: myself.

Not because I reached goal weight.

Not because I found the perfect workout.

Not because I bought beautiful new clothes or tried great new makeup.

Not because I landed the perfect job or grew my platform or won the lottery or slept through the night for a whole month straight.

I just got out of the habit of comparing. I stopped comparing myself to unrealistic images of friends, strangers, celebrities, and even the younger me.

I caught myself critically assessing some photos from a recent family wedding the other day. There were several lovely group shots of me with my four younger sisters, one of whom is a full decade my junior. I mentally shook myself by the shoulders when I realized what I was doing, and I gave myself permission to look like I was the oldest. Because I am the oldest.

It sounds ridiculous! But it’s something I’m having to retrain my brain do to, because for too long I’ve been caught in a negative feedback loop, cycling over and over again, lifting my head only slightly higher than my navel to gaze into the screen of my phone, and then lifting it a few inches higher to look into the mirror.

I got so, so sick of the view, bouncing between my own midsection, a screen, and a mirror. It’s like Narcissus on steroids, and I finally realized it.

I wish I could tell you how, or why. It’s prayer, medication, therapy, quiet time, self discipline, lack of free time, a good partner, good friends, kids who demand a lot of me, maturity, frequent confession, a good Father, grace…it’s all of these things. There is no magic bullet. I still mess up. I still have mornings where I’m less than thrilled with my own reflection. I got on Instagram for the first time in weeks last night, after having gone almost 2 months without it during November and December, and I spent a half hour scrolling, clicking, tapping, feeling more unsettled by the minute.

When I finally dropped my phone into my lap, I forced myself to sit with my feelings of discomfort, contorting almost painfully into a posture of reflection when my dopamine-heavy brain just wanted to rush ahead to the next thing. “This is important,” I told myself silently, “recognize how this made you feel. Feel these feelings.”

Dear readers, they weren’t good feelings. I did not enjoy peace, clarity, and freedom after my half hour of “leisure” on my phone.

Here’s the long-awaited conclusion. If you’ve stuck it out to this point, good on you, mate.

I think that self acceptance comes hand in glove with working to truly see other selves as human beings, not as competition. And I don’t think social media facilitates much of that. If it fosters a little bit, here and there, glory to God.

But if it mostly steals your peace, sucks your time, and keeps you from attending to your own first things? Maybe it’s too expensive.

One of the amazing pictures from my sister’s wedding which led me to ponder: “What a beautiful family we have! Praise God for all these wonderful new members and my dad being here and healthy and…wait, are those crow’s feet? Why are my arms so big…(<— my narcissistic process in a single paragraph)
advent, Catholic Spirituality, christmas, decluttering, ditching my smartphone, feast days, minimalism

A minimalist guide to the last week of Advent

December 17, 2018

Today marks the beginning of my absolute favorite period of time of the whole year: the O Antiphons. It’s the beginning of the end, the final countdown till Christmas. Advent’s last hurrah.

I have not strictly observed the Advent action items – or inaction items, as it were – which I laid out for myself back in November. I never did quite get up the self discipline to cut off the Christmas tunes in the car, so we’ve been thrilling in hope and wearily rejoicing all these past long weeks. I did limit our options to the Christian station and the 24 hour Christmas station, so we were at least constantly being filled up with positive noise, if indeed we had the radio on at all.

It has been glorious. No toggling between NPR and catchy-yet-slutty pop music that my kids probably don’t understand yet, but that I honestly shouldn’t even be listening to myself. No negativity streaming into my ears from another breaking news world report detailing some heinous atrocity half a world away.

I’ve also been steadfastly abstinent from social media, save for a brief click on Facebook to drop a link to a new piece of writing I’ve published, or to highlight some truly interesting and important bit of information.

I don’t flop down at the end of a long weekday of mothering and writing depleted beyond all recognition, capable only of streaming and scrolling. I’m still very tired, but it’s the normal kind of tired from caring for people and performing the day’s labors. I’m not overstimulated and hyperactive, looking to my teeny screen for my next dopamine hit.

So if I could make any sort of suggestion for you, gentle readers, as we cruise into this last week of Advent and preparation for Christmas day, it would mostly revolve around reducing your screen time.

Leave your phone plugged in on the counter at night. Crawl into bed with a book – electronic or otherwise – and leave the notifications and blue light downstairs/in the kitchen/far from your sleeping quarters.

Turn off the radio in the car, or, if you must drown out the ambient noise of screaming children (and I must) turn it to K-love or pop in a Christmas CD. Matt Maher’s new Advent album is phenomenal. These two tracks in particular.

Take a fast from social media from now until December 26th. Nothing bad will happen. You will not miss anything. Anyone who desperately needs to get ahold of you already knows how to do so, using the numbers connected to that tiny screen in your pocket that you’re going to plug in downstairs tonight.

I have missed literally zero important things in my month and some change fast from Instagram and Twitter. I’m more present to my family, have enjoyed connecting intentionally with friends and neighbors, and have been forced to confront some lazy habits which were preventing me from investing in relationships with people in my immediate physical proximity.

I’ll never abandon Voxer and the digital connection it allows me to enjoy with far flung friends and relatives, but social media is only a one-dimensional substitute for real connection. Anyone who has ever had a heartbreaking conversation with a friend and then experienced the cognitive dissonance of scrolling through their cheery Instagram feed later that day knows exactly what I mean here: social media only tells one side of the story, and a curated side at that.

Pull away from the 24 hour news cycle. If you absolutely must stay up to date for your job’s sake, then pick one or two trusted sources and go directly to their homepages to check the news, once a day. Declutter the dozens of apps and any and all push notifications. You do not need to know when a new related story pops up, or be alerted every time you receive a text message. If someone needs you badly enough, they will call you. Obviously work is work, but the average Joe or Jane probably doesn’t need to be 24/7 available and plugged in. Be honest with yourself in this regard.

Commit to a nightly family rosary/decade/reading of the scriptures associated with that day’s O Antiphon with your family or roommate(s). The Hallmark movies you haven’t watched yet will still be there when you’re finished. Dim the lights, light some candles, and make space for quiet reflection in defiance of our frenetic culture.

Stop buying stuff. Seriously. You probably have enough gifts for everyone in your life already. Your teachers/principals/service workers/coworkers/neighbors/distant acquaintances don’t need anything from you that you can find on Amazon. If gift giving is your love language and you are horrified by this suggestion, then go to Trader Joe’s and buy some nice dark chocolate and a few mid range bottles of wine and pass them out. Nobody needs another cheap (insert item here) in their home. They just don’t. Give a bottle of wine, a nice chocolate bar, some homemade cookies, a coffee gift card, or a great hug. Let each other off the hook to partake in the frantic consumption cycle. Make a donation to a morally sound and meaningful charity in someone’s honor. Pray a rosary for someone and present them with a beautiful hand-lettered card letting them know about it. It is so good for our hearts to stop shopping before Christmas. (And I’ve never met a teacher who didn’t want a bottle of wine or a gift card for coffee or burritos.)

If you’re still really itching to shop, try a decluttering spree instead. Grab a couple trash bags or discarded Amazon boxes and fill them with broken toys to recycle or toss and gently loved or new toys + clothes to donate. It never ceases to amaze me how similar the surge of happiness is between buying and giving away. It’s the novelty that fires the good feelings, I’m sure of it. Plus you’ll have a beautifully pared down playroom/basement/garage/living room come Christmas morning.

Give something up for this final week of Advent. Maybe it’s chocolate. Maybe it’s wine. Maybe it’s one of the above mentioned practices. Make a little space in the inn of your heart for the baby savior by pushing something aside, even – and maybe especially, a good something. The king is coming. He is coming to personally enter into each of our hearts, and He will come again in glory at the end of time, when we won’t have the luxury of a season of preparation to ready ourselves.

He is coming.

About Me, ditching my smartphone, motherhood, Parenting, social media, technology

Some thoughts on social media

April 5, 2018

We are in a semi-survival season here, with a newish-born babe and 4 other kiddos – first grade down to the 2-year-old who is crazy like a fox and did, in fact, climb on top of the fridge and rain down contraband Peeps on his brethren before 7 o’clock this fair morn.

But it’s not as intense of a survival season as, say, 2 months ago when the baby was still truly a newborn, and it was also bitterly cold, and nobody would ever just go to bed on the first or even second attempt.

So things have improved. My motherhood muscles have been broken down and pulled taut by a grueling new pace of life, and the routine is starting to feel, well, routine. But this week has been a little rougher.

Because, man, 4 days out from Easter and I am burnt from spending so many hours on Instagram. I actually had to make up some new ground rules for myself of only checking T/Th between 9-10 am (or something, still working on that) because after a Lent-long social media abstinence, I spent the first 48 hours of the Easter season in a blurry haze of scrolling and liking and storytelling. And I haven’t even logged back into Facebook or Twitter, yet.

I consider myself an addictive personality, whatever that means. For me, it means that abstinence is always far easier than moderation, and that when I do fall off the bandwagon, it’s with a flying leap that tends to do serious damage both to me and to the ground below.

So I didn’t have a smartphone for the better part of a year and it was magical and freeing and I was such a great mom! And then… I got another smartphone. Because all my research and attempts to find a texting-capable and still reliable dumb phone proved futile. So now I have this crummy, bottom-of-the-line prepaid Samsung situation with a screen so cracked that I have to squint to see my contacts, lest I errantly dial my boss’s phone number instead of my mom’s (tile floor, meet glass screen) and yet I’m still so lured by the siren song of digital dopamine that I will spend 4 (4! I know, because I have an app that tracks usage #irony) hours straining my eyes at, among other things, pictures of other people’s kids dressed in their Easter best and great vignettes composed of little else but fiddle leaf figs and white walls.

It’s a problem.

It’s a problem and I know it’s a problem.

It’s a bigger problem that although I recognize and acknowledge the problem, I come crawling back again and again “as a dog returns to its vomit” (Dave claims this is my favorite Scripture quote, but he is wrong) panting with desire for the thing that I have repeatedly identified as a problem: ‘social’ media.

‘Social’ media is distinct and separate from social media (texting, Voxer, Whatapp, etc) whereby I am communicating with people who are actually my friends and with the intention of sharing specific nuggets of information. And it’s not that I don’t have real friends on Instagram! I do! I love you, Instagram friends! But there is a marked difference, for me, in social media as the evolved flow of conversation and information between friends and family (letter meet telegraph meet telephone meet email) and the ‘social’ media that captivates our attention spans and fills our minds and hearts with unrest.

This is my litmus:

Social media: me reaching out to or being summoned by a specific person for the express purpose of communicating specific information “I was thinking of you/I have a question/Have you seen this article?”

‘Social’ media: essentially, it’s group-curated entertainment, heavily subsidized by advertisers and controlled by algorithms to maximize time and attention spent consuming and participating in an unending feedback loop marked less by communication and more by consumption of publically-directed content.

Social media is pleasant and useful and makes life more interesting.

‘Social’ media makes me a crappy wife and mother, and causes me to shriek in annoyance at my children when they trespass on my “me time,” in which I mindlessly consume content about other people’s beautiful lives while my own brood tries futility to get my attention from the swing set.

I’m impressing nobody with my grim self assessment of motherhood here, but truly, I spent much of Monday and Tuesday of this week in a bleary eyed haze of catch up after a six week hiatus from this stuff, and it was not pretty. I felt not unlike a Whole 30 finisher walking shakily out of Coldstone Creamery on day 31 with a sugar headache and a belly full of regrets.

I hate that this is such a struggle for me. I hate that I’m modeling poor boundaries for my kids, who aren’t even allowed to play video games or use screens without mommy or daddy present. It’s hypocritical as hell, and I know it, and yet I wave them off with a guilty internal resolve to do better “tomorrow,” because gosh darn it, today is hard and I need a little distraction fix.

And sometimes you do need a little distraction fix. But I think there are edifying distractions (articles on First Things or cat memes, for example) and then there are pure junk food distractions. The former leave you feeling mentally refreshed and lighter in spirit. The latter cause you to look up with a crick in your neck at 10:39 pm and realize with a wave of guilt that you just lost nearly forty minutes of your life to catching up on someone else’s life without actually spending time with them, and at the direct expense of your own, since 5 am will come swiftly and with the vengeance of a preschooler.

My quality of life is inversely proportional with my overindulgence in ‘social’ media, I’m convinced of it. And funnily enough, it’s those times where my life feels the most overwhelming/uninspiring/frustrating that I am most tempted to “get away from it all” and tap open a little app to escape for a quick hit.

But it’s never a quick hit, and it’s never enough. I don’t feel better afterwards. I don’t dust off my pants and smile cheerfully in the direction of my obligations and responsibilities when it’s over, refreshed by a new perspective or a little mental solitude. Quite the contrary, I am, generally, more ill at ease, less content, and much more snappish after I’ve been mindlessly observing other people’s’ lives to escape momentarily from my own.

It doesn’t help me escape. It makes me feel even more trapped.

And woe to the child who stops me in my scroll with a pressing irl “need” like a wiped butt or a filled cup or a question about something they saw in the backyard.

“mmmhmmm,” I’ll often mumble, not looking up. “That’s super interesting. Here, let me help you with that,” eyes still glued to screen, not even bothering to use two hands to gather someone’s tangled hair into the world’s most pathetic little ponytail.

My children should not have to compete with a screen.

And I should not prefer a screen to their little faces! So what is wrong with me? What is wrong with us, that this seems to be a struggle of such epidemic proportions? And what are the realistic solutions, given the profoundly ironic reality that I’m going to share this blog on Facebook after I finish writing it? The Internet and digital communication are here to stay, and so, like electricity and food and pinot noir, they are something we have to learn to enjoy in moderation.

What are your thoughts? How do you protect your kids from your own online consumption habits? Do you have rules and behaviors that help you draw the line? Do you struggle with feeling addicted to digital content/social media/connectivity? Do you have any lasting solutions for moderation you’d be willing to share in the combox?

I’d love to continue this as an ongoing conversation we can have about best practices and how to use social media rather than being used by the social media. I’m also eager for any book suggestions – two that I’ve read that have really helped shape my vision, idealistic though it may be, for my own use of social media are Cal Newport’s “Deep Work” and Sherry Turkle’s “Reclaiming Conversation in a Digital World.” A third title I haven’t read yet but plan to is Jean Twenge’s “IGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy — and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood — and What That Means for the Rest of Us.” (How’s that for a subtitle?)

coffee clicks, Culture of Death, ditching my smartphone, feast days, infertility, liturgical living, Pornography, social media, technology

Coffee Clicks {September 29th}

September 29, 2017

Hey it’s Michaelmas. Which means you can totally get away with ordering chicken wings for dinner and calling yourself a liturgical boss. (Just don’t skip on the diablo hot sauce.)

This past week felt so heavy in the news. I mentioned on Facebook on Tuesday that I’ve started taking Saturdays, Sundays, and Mondays completely off of all social media platforms, and it has been awesome. Super good for the head and the heart. And it has really catapulted my book-consumption rate through the roof. This past week I devoured one of my favorite blogger’s debut offerings, Anne Bogel’s “Reading People,” along with a book Dave passed on to me, “Beneath a Scarlet Sky” (depressing but well written with a shocker at the end; a rare glimpse of WWII told from an Italian perspective), two middling modern fiction/YA offerings “Holding up the universe” and “Forever, Interrupted,” and am halfway into both “Hidden Figures” and “Today Will Be Different.” (First one is good but very statistic-y. Second is meh. I liked “Where’d You Go, Bernadette” better, by the same author.

Suffice it to say, I get a lot of reading accomplished when I’m not numbing my brain with newsfeeds and the perpetual cycle of What Is Offensive This Week. Even if none of it was particularly deep or scholarly. It was all very Josef Pieper, truth be told.

I’m getting into that home stretch (that’s a stretch) of pregnancy where suddenly decaf isn’t cutting it in the morning, and an afternoon nap is looking more and more like a daily necessity. 27 weeks but who’s counting? If I hadn’t done this four times already, I’d swear there’s no way my belly could get any bigger. And the general public would tend to agree with that assessment. Just you wait till December, helpless passersby. Things are going to get real.

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While I spent a nice little chunk of time away from social media, I was still aware enough of the outside world to note the passing of cultural icon Hugh Hefner. Arguably the single greatest driving force behind the prolific spread of pornography, we should all take a moment to pray for the response of his soul. I said as much on Facebook and was a little shocked by some of the vitriolic responses from fellow Christians, who apparently missed the memo of Jesus praying to the Father “that none may be lost.” Also, color many people vv confused about Purgatory and the Spiritual Works of Mercy. I’ll have to write a whole piece on the big P one of these days. This examination of the legacy of Hefner is worth a read (and do offer a Hail Mary for his soul).

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Fr. James Martin. Sigh. So much ugly electronic ink spilled on both sides of the aisle lately. His prickly responses to perceived or actual criticism of his work make it hard to root for him, and, unlike other “controversial” churchmen like Chaput or Gomez, he seems particularly unwilling to dialogue with those who hold opposing viewpoints. This interview with a baptist theologian sums up the consequences of his theological understanding of homosexuality, according to his controversial book, “Building Bridges.”

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I actually burned out on HGTV after Luke’s pregnancy. By the end of my third trimester with him, I was spending hours each day, counting the gym + nightly soaks in the bathtub, consuming endless reruns of House Hunters (International and local, thankyouverymuch) and Fixer Upper, and it actually made real life house hunting really, really painful. Forget granite countertops and his and hers sinks; how about a foundation that isn’t failing, an intact roof, and a clean bill of mold free health? This piece hilariously (and a little bit disturbingly) sums up what is so addictive and so destructive about this particular genre of reality tv.

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My friend Emily Stimpson Chapman wrote a beautiful and hard and brutally-honest piece exploring her foray into the world of infertility. It’s actually the best thing I’ve ever read about the heartache of hearing “no” to the question of new life.

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Guys, I know it’s nearing the season of spookiness and all-things-creepy, but everyone knows that actually, um, dabbling in the demonic is utterly and irrevocably opposed to faith in Jesus Christ, right? Right? Okay, well just in case there is any residual confusion over the matter, give this a look, and remember that just because something seems innocuous or fun or even “worth it” in terms of risk taken, doesn’t make it so. Stay far, far away from the occult, from Satan, and from all his empty works and promises.

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This is what real power looks like. This woman’s story beggars belief and begs the question: “what grudges am I holding on to that I have been unwilling to release?” If she can forgive the infamous Dr. Mengele of Auschwitz, what in the (literal) hell is holding me back?

And on that mind blowing and uplifting note, I bid you the happiest weekend filled with restorative, leisurely activities and authentic worship. And many hours of consecutive, uninterrupted sleep.

About Me, ditching my smartphone, mindfulness, technology

Smartphone detox update: 5 months in

August 29, 2017

So, remember that impassioned resolution to ditch the tiny supercomputer in my pocket?

Surprisingly, so do I.

I am the queen of failed resolve and best intentions cast aside in a moment of stress or adversity, so I’m as surprised as anyone that this little self challenge has “stuck,” though perhaps not in the exact way I’d envisioned it initially.

If you’ve been reading along this year, you know that back in the spring, I grew dissatisfied with the way I’d been using the internet and social media (more to the point, the way I was allowing it to use me); particularly the endless vortex of time suck that was the smartphone in my hand at any given moment of the day.

No matter what I was supposed to be focusing on, whether it was the kids, bath time, a writing deadline, a walk, a simple trip to the park or library or 30 seconds stuck at a traffic light, my phone was in my hand, faithfully shielding me from the possibility of ever having to experience boredom or inefficiency.

Except you know the real story: that I was a distracted, disjointed and anxiety-ridden mess prone to losing 20 or 40 minutes of time slumped over the kitchen counter “just plugging my phone in for the night” only to look up, bleary eyed, and see that it was now 11 pm and that Instagram was pretty much exactly as I’d left it last.

Something had to give.

I made the semi dramatic move of downgrading my Samsung Galaxy something to an itty bitty Samsung something else (prepaid from Target, runs on the Verizon network) in exchange for a $35/month phone bill and the ability to still text and use GPS (< my biggest hang up to going back to true dumb phone. Directionally challenged R Us.)

So far? So good. I’ve had a couple dalliances with the devil, most notably when I misplaced my phone backstage at Red Rocks in July (hi Blythe!) and had to schlep down to Target for a replacement, which I was too lazy to immediately equip with the same self-sabbotagoing adjustments I’d made to the original. I told myself “I’m strong now, I can use this in moderation” and wouldn’t ya know it, before a day’s time had passed I was back to my old ways, sending memes to my siblings, checking non-work emails at stoplights, and reading blogs at the table during lunch time while the kids ran in circles around my chair.

After about a week of these shenanigans and fed up with my technological backsliding, I went carefully through my settings deleting and disabling all the tempting internet connectivity, dumbing down my phone to the previous model’s level. The only real problem is that 5 months ago I didn’t really know how I’d “broken” the internet on my phone, and I’d believed it to be irreversible and therefore completely foolproof, even in moments of weakest willpower. Now I know exactly how I did, so in theory I can enable the little bugger to be connected again “in an emergency,” which I’m not thrilled about because I know myself, and myself is a weak willed wuss in emergenci-ahem, moments of ill-planned-for “crises” slash boredom.

Overall, the results of ditching the smartphone have been remarkably positive. I have averaged about a book every 4 days all summer, which works out to roughly 8 books a month. Now, I’m a fast reader, but that’s at least double – if not triple – the amount of reading I’ve been doing in my entire years of mothering. And it’s not just because the kids were needier at younger ages, but because all my “leisure” time and pockets of opportunity were being sucked into the phone.

Am I reading the Odyssey and great spiritual works every moment of the day? Nope. I spent all summer ripping through the collected works of Rosemund Pilcher, which is the literary equivalent of hostess cupcakes in terms of ease of digestion and nutritional content, but at least I was reading again. And it has really helped to rebuild my flagging millennial attention span. This week I’m halfway into Graham Greene’s “The end of the affair” and I am 100% sure I could not have handled his level of writing or his style just a few months ago, so prone to wander was my inattentive subconscious.

I’m even experiencing a resurgence in my ability to read the whole article when I click on something, rather than mentally crapping out at 1000 words and idly clicking away on some other shiny link. (Is that a problem for you? I’ve become like a 9th grade level reader on the internet, and it’s kind of depressing.)

Best of all though? The time with my kids I’ve regained. And the moments of boredom I’ve been “subjected” to which have come to fruition as opportunities to pray, to connect with fleeing moments with other irl people (particularly the short kind) and, honestly, earlier bedtimes.

I’m not doing it perfectly. The first couple months in particular I way overcompensated by spending more time on the laptop. But I’m coming to a better balance and finding my social media appetite decreasing and becoming, frankly, more rightly ordered. I don’t post on Instagram anymore (the most distracting of the big 3 for me) but I still log in once a week or so to peep at friends. I don’t use Twitter or Facebook at all on the weekends, except on rare occasions. And I just find myself generally living less of my life online than before (types the selfd-disclosing blogger.)

The apps I do still have on the moderately dumb phone: WhatsApp (for friends outside the US and an obnoxious group text with my siblings); Voxer (for bi-coastal friends in different time zones with many kids and zero time for phone calls) Gmail (but only for personal email, not for work) and Maps.

And that’s it. And it works for me. The first 3 months I was totally hardcore and deleted WhatsApp and Voxer, but I found myself unable to maintain the relationships that depended on being able to connect across timezones, and so I relented that these particular apps, rather than being a distraction to my “real life” were actually major enhancers, especially when I couldn’t call a friend in real time or visit in person.

Maps is self explanatory. And Gmail may or may not stay, but was desperately necessary when we were signing and updating a billion real estate contracts a week.

So that’s the state of the smartphone update. I would like to continue to pare down on usage by initiating “checking boundaries” whereby there are hard and fast limits to when I reach for the phone and check in, just to further detach from the stupid thing. Interestingly, when I lost my phone earlier this summer at the concert, I had exactly zero panics over it. My husband was honestly more worked up about it than I was, and couldn’t believe I wasn’t freaking out (not my first misplaced tech rodeo, people). But I just wasn’t. The phone wasn’t a big deal to me, and since it was a less than $50 expense, it wasn’t a financially ruinous dilemma, either. (Update: they found the phone and returned it to me, and I was able to swap the old for the new with Target.)

Anyone else out there taken the digital detox plunge? Care to share what has worked or what has been confounding in your own experience? I’m all ears (but don’t expect prompt replies to comments ;))

About Me, ditching my smartphone, mental health, mindfulness, reality check, social media, technology

Smartphone detox: the first fortnight

April 17, 2017

Today marks 2 weeks since my dramatic public breakup with my littlest mother’s helper and I wanted to do a little post op, as much for my future self as for any curious readers as to how it’s going.

So how’s it going?

In a word, swell. But it is incomplete yet. I haven’t bitten the bullet and grabbed the flip phone yet, because its actually costs money, as some of you intrepid souls pointed out, to reinvest in a new device and find a plan that isn’t crazy expensive. The problem I’m running up against is that the providers who do carry dumb phones (and I’m leaning towards Charity Mobile at this point) seem to assume that if you want one, you don’t also want a lot of minutes or texting data. However, in my case, I vv much do want those things. Especially now that Voxer is relegated to an awkward to use desktop app, I’m finding myself using more minutes than before, not fewer.

So, in the meantime, I’ve made do by stripping down my already basic Samsung Galaxy J7 (a cut-rate Galaxy iteration compatible with my current carrier, Boost Mobile, which runs on the Sprint network. Coverage is so-so, phone itself does get a bit hot (but not anymore as there are no apps running! The battery life isn’t great. Or, rather, wasn’t. Now that I’m not using it for anything but talking and texting, I’m only plugging it in every 3 days or so. What?! I used to struggle to make it to 8 pm without draining the battery to zero. Crazy, I tell you.) which was $80 at Best Buy during a Black Friday sale, and is $30/month with unlimited talk and text. Which is hard to beat.

So how do you make a smartphone dumb? Well, I’m not the most tech literate person, but I was able to delete or uninstall almost all of the factory-installed apps, plus those I’d added myself. Then I untethered my email and delated the gmail app, turned off location and wifi, and, voila, a fairly dumb phone.

Of course, the big caveat being that at any moment, I can undo all these things and endow myself once again with phenomenal cosmic powers, which, in a moment of poor planning and weakness last week en route to a doctor’s appointment in an unfamiliar town, I did, for the sake of using google maps to guide me in for a smooth landing.

I think that if I were a better moderator and not a dyed in the wool abstainer, this intentionally stripped down still secretly smart phone would actually be a decent long term solution for me, but I know me, and I know that 4 months or 4 weeks from now, whether checking in late for a flight and in search of a boarding pass or simply passing the time in car line, I may very well cave and go back to using the internet on it.

But, for you more more temperate folk out there, I think that stripping down your existing phone could be a valuable exercise in detachment and time-reclamation and a good half measure towards getting away from the addiction to the device. Plus, super cost effective.

So, what have I learned in 2 weeks without tapping, scrolling, browsing? A couple things, the first of which has been most surprising.

And that is? I have a lot more time than I realized. I have enough time to make meals at home. I have enough time to keep mostly on top of my housework. I have enough time to write those articles, make those deadlines, pay those bills, and, yes, read you one more story.

I don’t work a 9-5 job outside the home, but I do work about 20 hours we week writing, reading, researching and planning for the blog and related content for CNA. Outside of that, I do a bit of freelance work, including regular gigs for Endow and Blessed is She. I also have 4 kids, only one of whom is in school full time, so they’re, you know, around a bit. And in need of cuddles, cut up avocados, bike-riding supervision and bathing. Add in a husband, a school commute that currently hovers around 2 hours roundtrip, and a house that we’ve spent the last 8 months fixing up and now selling, and there is a lot going on. But the past 2 weeks have felt like vacation.

Granted, a pretty unexciting and not terribly exotic vacation, but a vacation nonetheless. A break form the ordinary. A respite from the rat race. A change of pace that has me looking around the house and wondering, should I be doing something right now? 

Because there are suddenly these pockets of…I guess I’ll call them opportunity…in my days lately.

A half hour here or there where it’s too early to leave for school pickup but somebody is still napping, so I guess I can curl up on the couch and pray a rosary or read a little bit from whatever spiritual reading I’d been slogging through towards the end of Lent. So not exactly party party vacation-y, more like restful retreat vacation-y. Which is…not my favorite.

I like to be busy. I thrive on adrenaline and scooting in just under deadline and cramming it all in as efficiently as possible.

But I also struggle with anxiety and insomnia and a general sense of the world is on my shoulders…and I wonder now, could it all possibly be connected?

I don’t want to oversimplify this for the sake of painting a pretty clickbaity picture that “DITCHING YOUR SMARTPHONE WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE,” because there’s more to it than that, as there is in every case. I’ve been changing the way I’m eating, what and whether I’m drinking, habits of prayer and intentional cultivation of virtues that I am sorely lacking. And also, there have not been 14 perfect days of good behavior and effortless mothering on my part. I have yelled and lost my mind and then rediscovered it around 9:33 pm, a solid hour after everyone is in bed.

But overall, there has been a marked difference.

I am still grabbing for my phone like a phantom limb now and then, but even that behavior has yielded to a 90% reduction. I carry just my keys and wallet into the store. I don’t bring my phone when I leave the house half the time, because it’s just not that interesting without the dozens of little notifications going off throughout the day. When I do walk by the counter where it’s plugged in and look at it, it’s boring.

Stripped of all it’s attention-grabbing apps, it will show a handful of text messages and maybe a missed call, but nothing nearly as exciting an Instagram notification. (I do miss being able to post there though. But, it’s an acceptable price to pay, for me.)

I can attend to the messages every 4 or 6 or even 12 hours, and nothing bad happens. (Given, I am no emergency medicine doc. Nobody will die if I don’t check my phone. But I think a lot of us – looks meaningfully into mirror – live that level of availability out of a sense of obligation or FOMO or just plain force of habit, because this is what everyone does in 2017, and if I miss a call/email, all hell will break loose”

But most every piece of career advice I’ve read lately says otherwise, emphasizes the critical (and rapidly disappearing) skill of “deep work,” the necessity of attending to one’s own present and pressing tasks, ordained as such by self (and God, if you include Him in your calculations) because otherwise – otherwise – we risk living most of our lives responding to other people’s requests for and demands on our time. And we don’t get our own work done.

And that’s all well and good to read these things and skim those books and then roll your eyes and think, yeah, must be nice, to be able to go off and be a hermit or be single again with no relational responsibilities or to be independently wealthy and mobile and, and, and…but what I’m realizing is that I, a simple stay at home/work from home mom of 4 little kids, actually have a hell of a lot more free time than I know what to do with. And am going to have to render an account one day for how I’ve spent it.

(I think I can make a good case for 2-3 hours a week of Netflix. Anything more than that, I get a little nervous.)

So without the apps, without the notifications, without the constant influx of data and Very Important Beepings, it turns out I am neither that essential nor am I all that important to most anyone outside of the 5 people I do life with.

I do not mean to devalue my friendships or disrespect my coworkers or downplay the connections I’ve forged with internet peeps over the years. These are truly valuable relationships. But it is perhaps not ideal for me to be continuously attending to all of them at any given time, on any given day.

I realize this is not a perfectly-transferrable parable I’m spinning for you. Some people are more connected to their phones for work than I am, and I concede that this is a luxury which I possess. But. A big, big but: I think more of us have more flexibility than we realize, and we’re trading away a good deal of peace out of a need to look busy and seem available and feel important.

I am not actually that important. The people who need my attention are right here with me, occasionally barfing onto floor beside me and tugging on the hem of my shorts, asking for another popsicle. And it turns out that even when I’m running on all cylinders getting all their needs met, I still have a little margin left over at the edges and even in the very middle of my day for meditation, exercise, writing, reading, sitting vacantly on the front steps blinking in the sunlight…and also for being bored. I have been bored at least once a day since this little experiment began, and it has proven to be glorious and painful fodder for ideas. Books have been outlined and titled (at least, in my mind). Relationship difficulties have been identified and considered. Plot lines for bedtime stories have been refined. Elaborate backstories to the person driving beside me in traffic have been concocted. And, most essentially of all, conversations with God have ensued.

I have plenty of time for prayer, it turns out. And with fewer attractive options to distract, I’m finding myself resignedly surrendering to it more and more frequently.

So, those are my initial takeaways from this foray into what I believe will become a lifestyle for me. I miss my Instagram peeps. I miss being able to shoot a Vox to my best friend in another time zone. I miss being able to easily send or receive a link to something on my phone. But that all pales in comparison to the new spaces that have been opened up in my head and in my soul.

What do you think? Would you ever consider ditching your smartphone? Or, if you’re an adult who can actually moderate your behavior in a responsible fashion, would you consider putting firm boundaries around how and when and whether you use it?

It seems the conversation is becoming increasingly common. (<— language warning: all the f bombs.)