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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)
Culture of Death, Family Life, guest post, Parenting, Pornography, reality check, social media, technology

Screens, tweens, and teens {guest post}

November 28, 2018

Last summer I reached out to my internet buddy and running-mom extraordinaire Colleen Martin and beseeched her to impart some of her wisdom as a seasoned boy mom in the tech era. She’s not super seasoned as in old, mind you, but she is super seasoned as in holy 6 boys, batman! And one sweet girl sandwiched in the middle.

I’m bookmarking my own blog here to reference in a few short years when my kids reach phone hankering age (let’s be honest though, despite attending a low tech classical Catholic school with zero screens permitted among the student body, our 8 year old is already badgering us for a phone. Oy.)

Colleen, thanks so much for sharing how your family handles screens:

Jenny asked me to write this post awhile ago, before summer had even started, but I think having waited this long and made it through another summer (aka screen season) has given me more food for thought to write this now. So I guess procrastination does pay off sometimes!

But not when it comes to family rules about screen times.

It’s never too early to discuss expectations, set rules, and enforce them even if it means being the mean parent. I recently came across this quote:

Scary, isn’t it? These times we live in are full of screens. (Screen time, just to clarify, for us, is tv, movies, video games, tablets, computers and phones…anything with a screen.) It’s called social media because it’s literally how kids (and adults) have social lives. Gone are the days of bike riding through the neighborhood and ending up sleeping over at some friend’s house. We may feel like we can’t let our kids be kids like we were because of all the terrible and disgusting stories of abuse we hear from the people we trust most, that we have to keep them safe and a lot of time that means indoors … and if your kids are anything like mine, indoors = boredom = asking for screens. That’s the hardest part about summer, I think, the perpetual boredom unless we take them somewhere to do something. So we are a little more lax on the amount of time our children can be on screens, as long as they have been active for most of the day. Phil and I like to relax at the end of a long, busy day by watching a little TV, and I’m fine with my kids doing the same. We all need some downtime, ya know?

We have some great (pretty strict) screen rules during the school year for our kids:

  1. Any school-aged kid gets ZERO screen time during the school week.
  2. On weekends, they can have individual screen time during the baby’s nap time and then at night, we will let them watch a movie/tv show together.
  3. The little preschool guys get a half hour show each evening, after dinner and bath time, and it’s something completely preschool appropriate.

The bigger kids can usually be found watching this with the little kids, but I’m cool with letting them all sit together if they want to see the same episode of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse for the 17th time. We always say it’s time for a “little kid show” and make sure it’s nothing any of the school-aged kids would ever choose for themselves, though I often hear them trying to convince the 2 year old to pick Spongebob or Power Rangers. Umm, no, but nice try! We are not monsters and do allow exceptions to every rule when it comes to things like important sports games on tv, etc. The kids know what the standard rule is and enjoy the occasional treat.

Little kids are easy to deal with when it comes to screens. Just don’t give them free access to it. Be in control and get them into a good routine. Decide what you want to do for your family and that becomes the norm. There are going to be seasons in family life when the kids have more screen time due to whatever else is going on at home (illness, sports schedules, travelling, new baby, etc.) and as much as I have wanted the ideal screen time rules, flexibility is key to not feeling discouraged. There’s not one right way for every family, and little kids = little problems so they are a good “trial run” for what comes ahead.

Tweens and Teens, that’s what comes ahead. (And they are awesome!)

The hard part of policing screens in our house comes when they are tweens and teens. Our kids all go to school and are involved in tons of sports and lessons (which is also helpful in keeping them active and off screens). Because of this busy family life we lead, once a child reaches the age of 13, they become a babysitter. Since we have no home phone, this also means the 13 year old gets their own cell phone. With this phone comes a whole new set of rules (I swear we are fun parents, we just are really trying to get these kids to heaven!) We buy them an inexpensive smartphone but then make it dumb. Ha! We want our kids to be able to call, text, and have some apps on their phone, but we don’t give them any data so that they can only have internet access while at home on Wifi and we don’t give them our Wifi password. We also make all phones “live” on the kitchen counter, and they are never allowed to bring their phones upstairs.

My kids are far from perfect (like their mother) and get their phones taken away for any violations. The removal of individual screen time is actually a go-to punishment in our house, that way the kids lose the choice of what to watch/play but the parents aren’t punished because we can still put on a family movie when everybody just needs some chill time and forced family bonding.

Once our kids go to the Catholic high school, they are required to have a laptop because most of their books are electronic now. So not only are they reading textbooks online, but they are also writing their papers online, using Google Classroom, taking notes in class on their laptops, and communicating with teachers via the internet. It’s a whole new world and a whole new set of worries for parents. I can’t say “You’ve been on your laptop for three hours, get off!” because he is just doing his homework and studying. (But also fooling around and watching a dumb youtube video here, googling a sports score there, you get it.) As it is with adults, it’s hard for teens to stay focused on the task at hand (homework) when you have the whole wide world at your fingertips. So how do we try to watch everything they’re doing online?

I’ve written about why we started using Covenant Eyes before, but it has been a real lifesaver for us. It’s a tool that allows parents oversee what their children (and each other if desired) are doing online without actually having to stand over their shoulders. t’s a tool that opens the door for communication and also blocks dangerous sites. Kids just log in to Covenant Eyes before they can get online, and it tracks their usage, and sends a weekly report to the account user (the parents). Sometimes I dread opening the report on Tuesday morning to find out my teen has been watching dumb YouTube videos at 9 pm when he said he was studying, but honestly I’d rather know about his mistakes then have no clue what he’s doing online. At least this way, he knows he’s being checked in on, and that alone is an easy way for him to avoid temptation.

I definitely dragged my feet on this for too long, not wanting yet another issue to have to think about, but when one of our tweenage kids googled an inappropriate word on the iPad, we knew it was time to take the plunge. The monthly subscription for a family is $15.99, and even less for an individual or couple. It’s so much easier to never get hooked on pornography than to try and break the habit, and we want to give them their best chance at fighting that battle. Covenant Eyes gives them the freedom to be online while also helping them make good choices, and that’s priceless once you have kids on screens so often. Perhaps I should work in their Sales Department because I love them so much!

I feel that just like every parent, we are constantly trying to evaluate the new social media tools and keep up with current internet trends while also helping our kids get to Heaven. We don’t allow a few things that we feel can easily cause trouble, like sleepovers, hanging out at people’s homes we don’t know, and being online without supervision. We’re just doing our best to keep them safe and happy and holy, and our screen rules are part of the process. Like I said before, starting with screen rules when they’re young is easy, but it’s important, because it sets ground rules for the rest of their lives. Will they binge on video games while at a cousin’s house? Yup. Will they find disturbing images online when they’re at college. Of course. I can’t worry about all the possible scenarios that might occur, I’d go crazy.

I know they are human and all I can do is try to make them the best humans I can while they are under my roof. Lots of love and fun and freedom comes alongside rules and chores and boundaries. Communication is key and the ability to have fun together is huge as well. We try to be Yes parents whenever we can, so that our Nos are serious enough to be understood.

You need to decide what is important in your home, and start setting the ground rules now.

Don’t be afraid to go against the culture if it means raising quality adults, that’s literally our job.

Screens aren’t evil, so find a system that works for you and hopefully I’ve been able to share some good tips and tricks. I don’t have all the answers (I haven’t even had a college kid yet!) and I don’t pretend to. I’m just over here trying to raise good kids to survive this present world and to one day make it to heaven in the next, same as you.

 

About Me, budgeting, self care, social media

Habits, virtue, and making it easy to be good

April 12, 2018

I almost worked “self discipline” into this title, but to be perfectly frank, habit is getting me much further than self discipline during this particular season of life.

I’m at the point in fluffy not-quite-middle-age where if something is going to happen that is good for me, be it spiritual or physical in nature, I nearly always have to trick myself into doing it.

I could fib and say this is only because my domestic obligations are at an all-time high or that I’m suffering from that familiar fourth-trimester sleep deprivation, but the more accurate explanation is that I’m lazy.

How can a mom with five kids and a job be lazy? Oh, it’s pretty easy, actually. It looks like sending my older kids to fetch diapers while I sit plopped on the couch scrolling through my phone. It looks like falling asleep in bed while reading because I am “too tired” to pray. It looks like making a bad food choice at lunch and then mentally shrugging at 4 p.m. when confronted with leftover chocolate chip granola bars from the carnage of after school snack time and telling myself “I’ll start over with good food choices tomorrow” before popping the detritus in my mouth.

Since I lack sorely in self discipline and rightly-ordered passions, I’ve noticed that if I make the good things I’m trying to accomplish sort of idiot-proof, I’ve a much higher incidence of success.

So, for example, during Lent I got into the habit of putting a cute decorative tote basket in front of my place at the dining room table each night which contained my prayer materials: Bible, copy of the catechism, Blessed is She planner, and the Take Up and Read Lenten journal. Because it was there in my face as soon as I came downstairs to sit with my coffee, I dug in and had a little prayer time most mornings, however sparse it might end up being per my darlings’ demands. On the mornings when I’d forgotten to move the basket from it’s daytime perch in the bay window? Nada. I would sit 5 feet away sipping my morning cappuccino and stare at that sucker and prayer time would.not.happen.

Another example. I’m dehydrated more often than not from a strict regimen of breastfeeding, coffee guzzling, kid wrangling, and a strange aversion to filling simple glasses of water to drink from. Some days I would get to dinner time with a pounding headache and realize that I had maybe – maybe – consumed 12 ounces of water all day in the form of a single can of LaCroix. As POTUS would tweet, SAD! Very Disappointing!

I picked up a $4 glass water bottle with a sippy top at Marshall’s last month and started carrying it around the house with me and, what do you know, I’m drinking close to 100 ounces of H2O these days. Sad, right? But also really effective.

I’ve started to do the same thing with exercise. Feeling a little burnt out on my walking routine without Starbucks dangling at the end of the route like a luxurious carrot (more on that later) I was finding my strolls around the neighborhood a little less enticing. I did the math on what I was saving in burnt cups of coffee in a month and reckoned that I could probably afford a basic gym membership to the club down the street if I were completely coffee-shop abstinent. (My entire “fun” category every month is spent on takeout coffee. Speaking of sad…)

So I dug out an old black speedo from a few summers back, tossed a swim cap and a pair of goggles into my purse, and took the plunge, literally. I logged close to 200 laps last week, all because I’ve arranged the necessary materials and started forcing myself to leave the house precisely at 7 p.m. on the nights when it works for our schedule, promising Dave and myself to be back in 60 minutes. It gives me enough time to get the babies to bed and leaves him with some quality time with the older set at the end of the day.

Habit builds on habit. And I’d venture further, saying that virtue builds on habit. When I’m already being good, it’s easier to continue being good.

When I have that big glass of wine on a school night (biiiiig mistake at age 35) I know that the next morning it’s going to be harder to get up to pray. And that if I don’t get up to pray, I’ll probably yell at my kids at some point during the day. And that we’ll be so burnt out on each other’s company from all that yelling that by 4 p.m. that I’ll succumb to the Netflix sirens and surrender my laptop while I cook dinner, feeling hassled and defeated.

I remember hearing Fr. Michael Scanlan, the spiritual powerhouse behind the revitalization of Franciscan University, tell parents during an orientation video that Steubenville was intended to be a place where it was “easy to be good.” By that he meant not that we would be so constrained by rules and regulations that we would have no choice but to behave, but that there would be so many options for choosing the good – and so much positive peer pressure to do so – that it would become a real hotbed of virtue and excellence simply because the true, good, and beautiful was readily available. 24 hour adoration? Check. Three or four daily Mass options a day? Check. Intramural and community building activities through Households and dozens of ministry opportunities? Check.

So yeah, you could show up there a hardened party girl and stay that way, no problem, (Lee’s Place or Jaggin’ Around, anyone?) but you could also throw yourself headlong into the transformative atmosphere of excellence that permeated the campus, and ease into a routine of virtue that was considerably less challenging than the previous four years I’d spent stumbling drunkenly through the more typical college experience at a major public school.

So I’m trying to create a vice-proof, virtue and habit supportive environment in my own home where I am the boss, after all, making it more foolproof for me to misbehave, and less likely to fall headlong into a bag of Doritos* and a late-night Instagram binge session. (Note: Doritos are on the ever-expanding list of things I’ve come to realize that I just can’t have in the house.)

A couple other hacks I’m employing as training wheels right now as we transition from newborn survival mode to new normal:

  • No alcohol on weeknights (unless it’s a major feast day or a date night)
  • 3 non-negotiable exercise sessions a week. Doesn’t matter how long they take or what I do, just that I do them.
  • Instagram only on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday mornings. (I uninstall the app from my phone and reinstall it on those days. Sad? You betcha. Effective? Indeed.)
  • No Facebook or Twitter at all. Just posting content there as I create it and then walking away, so to speak.
  • No shopping at Target or Costco, for the moment. (Diapers and wipes from Amazon, because I am not tempted to overspend when I shop online, whereas walking into brick and mortar is like entering the lion’s den for my budget.)
  • Grocery shopping only on Fridays. Y’all, this one has been HARD. But it’s helping our budget so much. I think I probably saved almost $200 last month from cutting out all the “just one quick thing” trips that always, always result in at least $40 of “oh, yeahs!”

I feel like my thirties have seen me get super into self-knowledge and understanding temperament and personality type (INTJ and choleric/melancholic, for what it’s worth) in an attempt to reprogram the direction of my own life. I guess I’ve been waiting for years and years to just magically “change” or grow out of ___, when actually I’m pretty much the same person I was at 18. I haven’t become more naturally disciplined to go to bed earlier, or less interested in french fries, or more eager to make phone calls I’m dreading. So instead of waiting for me to change, I guess I’m focusing more on “acting as if,” hoping that my tired old self will come plodding along down the path of least resistance I’m working to create. Hey, it works with my kids and a 4 p.m. veggie platter deployed against the whining “I’m huuuuungries” that interrupt dinner prep!

What habit-building hacks have you employed that have made noticeable improvements in your life? Is there an area you thought you’d never see improvement where you’ve been surprised by growth – and grace?

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.

-1-

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).

-2-

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.”

-3-

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.

-4-

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.

-5-

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.

-6-

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, 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.)

About Me, mindfulness, reality check, self care, social media

Disconnect: ditching my smartphone in search of a better connection

April 4, 2017

I’ve been feeling a little tug on the old heartstrings these past 4 weeks of Lent. It began as a bit of a wild hair (hare? Rabbit or follicle growth?) the fleeting thought “you should get rid of your phone” which I promptly batted down with a vengeance. Because wuuuuut. Really, what? Who could live in such a way?

I’ve written before about my addictive smartphone habits (be careful the things you swear you’ll “never” do) and my kind of pitiful attempts at self regulation. So this has been no bolt from the blue. But still? To step away entirely? Seems a little dramatic. And why would I be dramatic? Nobody in my family is dramatic.

But the nudges kept coming. At different times, like stuck in traffic and finding myself frantically scrabbling a blind hand in the bottom of my purse, whereisitwhereisitwhereisitdidIleaveitohcrapwhereisit…there it is. And then feeling a subsiding tide of stress tamp down because I had found it, my precious.

And for what? So that I could flip frantically to the last page of my home screen – where I banished all my social apps and alerts – and see if any new dopamine hits had come in since 9 minutes ago when I’d last checked?

I am not painting a flattering self portrait. Intentionally so. I will be honest with you as I have been increasingly honest with myself this past month or so: I am addicted to my smartphone.

I am addicted to the internet in general, as I imagine many (most?) of us are these days, but it’s a whole lot more manageable, at least for me personally, when it isn’t living in my purse or pocket.

Several times during March I experimented with “blackout hours/days,” leaving the phone connected to the charger, going out for a run or a walk or even on an errand (gasp) without my phone, and I don’t think that I can adequately convey to you the level of anxiety that surged up within me walking out of the house without my trusty device in hand. But curiously – or perhaps it is no curiosity at all – after a few minutes adjustment, maybe 15 or 20, I was stilled. Settled. Resigned that I was going to get nothing in particular “done” in this little chunk of time aside from whatever it is that I’d set out to actually do, whether it was the library with the kids, a long walk through the neighborhood, or a trip to the store.

And it changed things. It has changed the way I react to the world. The way I smell things, (did you know things still have smells?) the people with whom I interact, (mostly my own people, because I almost always have tots in tow) and it changes the pace and rhythm of those specific moments in my day.

I reach over and over and over again into a phantom pocket, hand drifting unconsciously to scour beneath the stroller hood, fingers itching to unlock and swipe and capture. (Admittedly, I have missed some cute pictures.) I may have to start carrying a real, live camera again. Or taking notes. So retro.

But in exchange, I think I stand a chance at getting part of my life back.

I don’t think everyone struggles in this way with technology. But I do think the unconscious, blanket adaptation of every new technology to come down the pike en masse is a real problem.

I don’t think every technology is good for every person.

And I will go so far as to say that on the whole, on a cultural level, connective technology is taking more from us than it is giving in return. We are not more connected, but less so. And at a dear price.

So that’s my piece of it, anyway. In search of a little more peace, I’m trading in a piece of hardware and a whole lot of convenience and connectivity for the ability to go … slower. To be in the dark sometimes. To be intentionally unavailable to most everyone so that I can be tightly focused and targeted on five somebodies who depend on me and deserve my undivided presence. (that’s one husband + four kids, not an announcement.)

I’ve spent a lot of time being loosely available and vaguely attentive to a lot of things over the past 6 years or so of smartphone ownership. I haven’t had a lot of good boundaries or hard stops in place, however, which could help me divide and truly be attentive to the various aspects of my vocation that demand not just physical but also emotional and intellectual presence.

I was trying to mentally tally the amount of time I probably spend on this little device throughout the day, whether for looking up a recipe, reading directions, taking photos, scrolling through apps, and leaving voxes and I flinched when I came up with a number. Tried to remember if I could find anything in my own childhood to compare it with, was there anything my mom spent 5 or more hours a day doing, extracurricular to her parenting? Was it possible she spent 5 hours a day watching television, or on the phone, or reading books?

Not likely. Not during the investment years where she was buried in babies and pouring the foundation for her family’s life. I’m sure she wished most days for a lifeline, an outlet, a support network and in so many instances, my phone has facilitated that for me. And I don’t want to dismiss that or cheapen the reality that in moments, the phone has been a life saver. But those real, important benefits do not, in my life, outweigh the steep cost of distraction. Of unease. Of missing moments and becoming more and more deaf to the movements of the Holy Spirit throughout the day, of the little nudges that God has something to say to me but I need to phone a friend and process it with her first.

So that’s a problem.

And this is my solution.

It won’t be everybody’s solution, and it’s no call for an analog revolution. But I hope if there is something that He is trying to say to you, you feel more free to hear him speaking than I have. I hope if it’s this very issue that He has been in your ear about, tugging on your sleeve, tapping on your shoulder…well, I hope this is a little jolt of solidarity from the ether, a confession that, yeah, me too. I’m also having a hard time with this.

In the meantime, I have no plans to abandon the blog. Or my laptop. The technological revolution is here to stay. And I’m going to pick and choose the winnings from the wreckage and say, yeah, this, this works for me. This fits in my life. And this doesn’t. And discard what isn’t helpful, and full steam ahead with what is.

So long little smartphone. We’ve had some good moments together, and you’ve captured some treasured memories. But I’d like to try my hand again at making some on my own. (Also, you make my ear really, really hot sometimes and I’m a little worried that might be a bad thing #samsungproblems.)

Peace out. 

 

Catholic Spirituality, prayer, social media, Suffering

Drowning in plain sight

March 30, 2017

I was texting with a friend yesterday and was honored to be trusted with a little piece of her story, a little glimpse of the heavy burden she is carrying right now. As our brief exchange came to a close, I told her something I want to tell you all, and it’s that I think a lot of people are drowning a little in plain sight right now.

After I’d moved on with my day, the exchange stuck in my head because from the outside, I’d had no real idea of the burden she was carrying. Social media contributes to that phenomenon, no doubt, but so does the typically frantic pace and kind of insular tendency of modern life, and maybe it’s always been that way and what do I know anyway, a barely-qualifies Millenial with a bunch of kids running around her house and too much time spent inside her own head.

But I do know this, and it’s that everyone I know – to a fault, every single person – is struggling with something, is fighting some great battle.

Maybe it isn’t appropriate to share every detail with every person you bump into, whether virtually or in vivo, but maybe it is appropriate and necessary to share more than we do. We can’t all be “fine” all the time. I actually hate the social nicety more than I can adequately express in words.

Earlier this month my “grandfather” died. He was not my grandfather by blood or relation, but by relationship. And as I stood in line at a grocery store later that night I was crying, and I was mentally chastising myself for crying because it’s so embarrassing to cry in public, and get a grip and pay for this kombucha and get the hell out to your car. And also because grief is weird and it comes in waves, crashing down at inconvenient moments in the produce section and then ebbing back, leaving you red eyed and congested and inexplicably weird for the requisitely surface level social exchange you are summoned to have with this perfect stranger handing you a receipt.

“How is your night going?”

“Fine. Yours?”

Eyes red and nose visibly running. We both knew I was lying, but what was there to be done about it? I couldn’t ask this total stranger to carry my burden, besides, he could just as likely drop it as pick it up.

You’re not allowed to feel things very deeply or very authentically in this culture.

And if you do, you’re a little weird. A little inconvenient. Too intense. And sure, there are people who are safe and less safe to be vulnerable with, but I’ve always struggled with being vulnerable with even the safest people, and in even the most intimate relationships, because here’s the thing: when you express vulnerability, you are expressing a need that you have to someone, revealing an imperfection that is humiliating in some degree. And pride revolts, sickened by the thought of appearing needy or flawed or frail.

I have found, particularly in this past year as our family has walked through some major challenges, many of which revolve around me and my particular set of wounds in need of tending, that it is precisely in revealing the frailty and the neediness that the generous offers of strength, of prayers, and of support are offered in return.

When we let people see our grossness, our inconvenience, our mess, we invite them in to do something about it, whether through prayer, compassion and accompaniment, or material support. And those are all ways that we are called to live out our Christian identities, to be Christ to a hurting world awash in pain.

So whose idea is it then that we hide our scars from each other, putting on a brave, blank face and stuffing down the pain?

Probably not God’s.

I have seen firsthand this past year that in offering my friends, my siblings, and most especially my dear husband the opportunity to come into my pain and accompany me in bearing the crushing weight of my cross, they are manifesting Christ to me.

And all the times I’ve railed against Him in pain or in searing alone-ness, begging Him to reveal the path, alleviate the suffering…almost to a fault, those have been the moments when I am clutching my pain tightly to my chest, refusing to offer even a sliver of it to anyone else, to some member of His body who could very well be the incarnate answer to that desperate prayer I am flinging heavenward.

My pride and my preoccupation with not being “a burden” to anyone keeps me from hearing His answer, from feeling the merciful touch of His providence through the arms and words of other people. And apart from leaving me marooned in my pain and navel gazing into my seemingly intractable problems, it robs people of the chance to live out the Gospel.

Because if there are no beggars to shelter, no naked to clothe, no hungry to nourish, then this thing we call Christianity is all a rather dry academic exercise in theoretical virtue and tidy maxims for happy living.

Sometimes I am the beggar. Most of the time, it feels like, lately.

And I need to beg, to have my friends drop my mat in through the roof, carry me down to the pool, yell for Jesus to turn around and come back into town, to do something miraculous, to intervene.

And that miracle might well come through another person, who might be perfectly willing to take all your kids for the afternoon to give you break, who might spend hours and hundreds of dollars helping you stage your house to sell, who might spend 10 minutes during the insanity of the dinnertime crunch to hide in her bathroom with her phone and listen to you cry, who might book a flight to come see you, or send some love through amazon that is shaped like earrings, but you know it’s actually a hug.

I hope if you’re carrying something heavy today you have someone you can trust to put a shoulder under the load with you. Whether it’s an addiction to pornography, a spouse with a drug problem, an unplanned pregnancy, a mental health crisis, a job loss, a searing grief, some kind of spiritual bondage, or a hopeless medial diagnosis.

Everyone is struggling with something.

Let’s not struggle alone.

And let’s be bold in receiving one another’s burdens. Let’s be radically countercultural in our willingness to encounter, to lean in, to put down whatever it is that we are presently engrossed with and be eternally present, in that moment of neediness, to the beggar in the doorway.

We are all beggars. We are all broken. And you are not alone.

(A special shout out to my team of prayer warriors who have carried me so tirelessly this year, and who are just a text message away, always willing to take up arms when my pride gives way long enough to tap out a quick SOS. K, E, M, and S, you know who you are.)

 

About Me, blessed is she, Family Life, house reno, Lent, social media, Trim Healthy Mama

Lately, in random bullet points

March 15, 2017

It’s full-blown spring here today. Blossoms about to pop into bloom, temperatures creeping up past the mid 70s, and so much wind. A month from now we’ll be buried in 22 inches of snow, I predict, so I try to keep my expectations low this time of year, because for every margarita-on-the-patio kind of afternoon Denver hands out in March, she predictably levies a devastating penalty in the form of spring blizzards come April and May. And sometimes (gulp) June.

But, it’s lovely. It’s lovely to be able to kick the kids outside after school, and to run around with them barefoot with a soccer ball. And oh, speaking of backyards, here’s a little glimpse of our new one:

Let them dissect my broken blowdryer. Very STEM.

That’s right, we moved. #again. It’s a temporary stint in a town north of Denver, in the home of some friends who are living oversees right now, whilst our pristine, staged and mostly packed home sits on the market (hopefully not for much longer, c’mon St. Joseph!) and we search for a new one.

The short version of the “why in the name of all that is good and reasonable would you move twice in 7 months with 4 children” is that our house, a fixer upper if ever the term were applicable, has been fixed. To the level of our competence, and then some. About 2 months ago, after a major construction project in the basement necessitating lots of professionals and lot$$$s of drywall and electrical work, we kinda threw our hands up and were like, um, what are we doing?

We are not handy people. Painting, laying flooring, some light caulking? Sure. We can handle that. But when walls started having to come down, it turned out we’d gotten in over our heads. Happily for us, the market is white hot here in the Denver metro area, and so when we finished up the last bit of work in the basement in February, we made the call to list it, because hey, we don’t love it. And we didn’t relish the notion of spending the next 4 years of weekends at Home Depot. We have had so much peace (after the initial “wth are we actually thinking about doing this???), and it was very providential the way the dominos all fell, including having this amazing home to stay in while we sell it, thanks to the generous hospitality of friends.

So, this whole situation may seem a little crazy to some people, but we’re okay with that. We’ve done plenty of things in the short 7.5 years we’ve been married that have been conventionally crazy. We figured, why stay in a house that doesn’t work for our family while we’re in the business of raising that family? We’d rather get into something smaller, if necessary, if it means we can have our nights and weekends back and can actually spend time together when we’re home. The house was less than ideal before the cascade of interventions, and so this time, we’ll look smarter at things that really do matter with a larger family, like a sleepy street with less traffic, a more suburban location, and a better floorpan that allows for common areas where the 6 of us (plus our large extended families) can gather.

Come on, St. Joseph. You’ve got 5 more days.

Looks good without people living there, doesn’t it?

*

There are some bonuses about this extended staycation situation we’ve entered into, including living in a totally different part of our area that we’d never spend time in otherwise (new parks, friends we don’t usually see, a new parish) and it’s interesting and fun and inconvenient all rolled into one. It has been fun to see familiar faces we only get to see at holiday events or big parties, and it is interesting to see life in a different parish, and to feel both welcomed and totally, totally off our game because our kids are struggling with the layout/lack of grandparent support/different Mass times. It’s given me a deep appreciation for how wonderful our parish really is, and how much of it we take for granted. Also? The drive. OMG THE DRIVING. We didn’t pull the kids out of school because we knew the commute was possible (the family whose home we’re borrowing were also students in our school) but hot damn, going from a leisurely 7 am wakeup and out-the-door-with-daddy by 7:40 am to reveille at still-dark thirty and a frantic scrambling of eggs, cinching of belts, making of lunches and slurping of espressos – and all before 7 am – has been shocking. I know that most grown ups live this way. I just never wanted to be one of them.

“Let’s all go grocery shopping in the snow at 4 pm, it’ll be great!”

My Lenten practice has been to get up early and pray before the kids, which means something starting with a 5. This is not a happy reality for me, but surprisingly, my internal clock has adjusted and I have been waking up on my own around 5:40 most mornings. I have to go to be no later than 10 now, but I should be doing that anyway because, adulthood. It’s been a good practice in self discipline, which I sorely lack. But boy, by 7pm every night, I am d.o.n.e. with parenting, dishes, mopping, answering emails, all of it. So the standards of cleanliness are relaxing, and my need to sit and chill with the kids at night is taking precedence over the need to shine that empty sink or get one more hour or writing squeezed in.

Probably it’s a better way to live. But it has been hard. It’s like I was still coasting on the fumes of survival mode mothering and now I’ve been thrust into the bigger-leagues of “you no longer have any free time during the day unless you guard that 45 minutes of quiet time like a prison sergeant,” because without predictable nap times (hello, crazy school pickup commute and car naps) and without my beloved mother’s helper who is now a good 45 minutes south of us, I’ve been boots on the ground in it in a way I have become unaccustomed to. In some ways it reminds me of our year in Rome, minus the good coffee, the beautiful churches, and the astonishing loneliness. I guess it just reminds me of having to be more self-sufficient and learning to navigate a strange new place (but still, Target. And a mini van.) and not being able to call a friend or sister 5 minutes down the road for some back up babysitting or a quick La Croix.

And, speaking of La Croix. I have a problem.

*

 

Next week I’ll be doing a live teaching event for Blessed is She and I’m kind of nervous. I’ve got plenty of speaking experience under my belt from various mom’s groups, conferences, and retreats I’ve participated in over the years, but for some reason doing it remotely behind a computer screen has me a little more jittery. I mean, I don’t love public speaking to begin with, but I can do it. And afterwards there’s inevitably the huge smile and endorphin rush “I can’t believe I did that!” Anyway, if you want to follow along, you can resister here (and with a Blessed is She membership you have access to all this content, which is so good. I’ve listened to a couple amazing talks this month while I’ve been preparing mine – this one is especially good) and tune in next Wednesday night, 3/22, at 9 pm EST for “Grocery Store Evangelization: engaging in the missionary apostolate of your ordinary life”

*

I’ve spent the past year and some change experimenting with various dietary restrictions, having blood work and hormone levels checked, and adding different combinations of supplements to the mix. It seems like I might have Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis (I have been hypothyroid since my teens, and on thyroid meds) which is an autoimmune thyroid disease, and is a little overwhelming in terms of the lifestyle changes it demands, but, happily, for lots of people, it can be treated really effectively that way.

I’ve been gluten free for about a year (minus the inevitable gluten exposure from restaurant eating) and it has helped a lot, and now it seems that cutting out dairy is the next step. Which is …. uggggggggh. Just ugh. I love cheese and ranch. But not so much that I want to keep feeling like crap.

So, gosh, that aspirational stuff about God choosing your Lent and all that. Yes. (Did I mention that wine seems to be a terrible culprit too. 5 months off the mommy juice now, and missing it still.) Tequila and vodka seem to be tolerable, in small and occasional amounts, but I’m getting to be a really, really lame happy hour buddy. I have some girlfriends who are also exploring health problems right now and the persistent joke among us has been “welcome to your 30s, when everything falls apart.”

 

I’ve also crashed and burned with THM and have been trying to reincorporate the most helpful pieces of it (namely, the stable blood sugar levels that it delivers) but haven’t been following it religiously by any means. And that’s starting to show up on the scale. Or it’s stress that is showing up. But regardless, trying to get back in the habit of balancing out my meals with protein and separating fats and carbs by several hours. It really does help prevent crashy afternoon syndrome, and I still have about 18 stubborn “baby” (read: cool ranch dorito) pounds to shed.

#paleo

Anything else missing from this novella? Oh, yes, I’m back on Instagram. It’s much more addictive than I remember, so I’m trying to only use it certain days of the week, and to resist the pull of the stoplight/carline scroll. It’s hard!

Finally, any good reading recommendations that don’t involve World War II? I’m a little burnt out on the genre after a slew of fantastic reads, and I’d like to get into some other fiction. Currently reading THM (again), this fantastic book Ignatius sent me to review, and something about some guy in Moscow that Kindle recommended to me that I do not love, at least not enough to recall the title.

Happy hump day, may yours be filled with daffodils and spicy water.