Tag Archives: Life

Life without social media: Week 1

It’s the start of day three in my month without social media, but it was the morning of day one that I realized just how much I’ve come to depend on my connections with Internet friends for daily life.

I expected to experience withdrawal from the connection that social media provides, and I definitely did. I can’t prove that it’s related, but I was feeling on edge and extra crabby all day on the first day. Whether it was caused by social media withdrawal or just a bad day, I can definitely say I missed being able to log into Facebook, fire off a status update venting my frustrations, and wait for the commiseration to pour in. It’s not that I don’t have friends to vent to in real life, but when your network is over 200 people, you’re more likely to find someone who can relate to what you’re feeling at any given moment than you are if you just text, email, or call a friend.

It’s not just the connections that I missed, though. I sat down to plan our menu for the week on Tuesday, and I realized I don’t even remember how I came up with meal ideas without Pinterest. It’s only been a year since I started using Pinterest. It’s amazing to me how quickly we adapt to technology and begin to depend on it.

The unfortunate realization? I’m not less distracted without Facebook. I’ve just replaced Facebook with other distractions. I’ve been texting and emailing more with friends (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing — reconnecting with real world friends is one of the reasons I wanted to step away from social media). The bad news is that I’m using texting and emailing to distract me from work and household chores and going outside the same way I used social media.

I thought I would be less attached to my phone and the Internet, but I’m just finding new things to distract myself. I’m not brave enough or strong enough for a month without Internet (though after typing it, I am intrigued at the thought), but I wonder if that would be the only way to get the “break” that I set out to take.

Another unexpected problem? Without Facebook and Twitter, all that inspiration that I hoped to channel into the blog has nowhere to go. All day little thoughts and quips about parenting and life pop into my head. I used to post them immediately, and I often turned those thoughts into whole blog posts eventually. Now? The thoughts pop into my head, and without a place to put them, poof. They’re gone. I decided to start carrying a notebook with me and get into the habit of writing things down instead of posting them online. Hopefully I’ll be able to do something with those thoughts instead of just forgetting them.

I guess my point is that so far the benefits of social media seem to outweigh its pitfalls. Granted, it’s only day 3, but so far I’m not getting more done or feeling less stressed or feeling much of a difference at all aside from the fact that I’m missing a lot of conveniences and feeling a little more lonely.

What do you guys think? Have you ever taken a break from social media? What did you miss most?

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Incommunicado

For the past few weeks, I’ve had an idea floating around in my head. After much deliberation, I’ve decided to act on it. For the entire month of May, I will be logging off all social media accounts.

I will continue to check my email and post on this blog (hopefully more frequently that I have been posting for the past few months). Rest assured, I am not one of those Facebook/Twitter haters. It’s quite the contrary actually. I love social media a little too much.

I fully intend to come back at the end of the month, but I hope to come back refreshed and better able to strike a balance between the real world and the Internet world. Here are just a few reasons I’ve decided to try the experiment:

  • Since beginning my teaching job, I feel like my screen time has grown exponentially. Now in addition to social media, I’m staring at my computer writing lectures, researching, grading, and communicating with students. This summer I’ll be teaching an online class, which will increase my screen time even more. I feel like my eyes need a break, and my baby needs to look at my face a little more instead of the tiny Apple icon.
  • Screen time encourages me to sit on my butt more than I should. The weather is warming up. It’s time to get outside and get active.
  • Sometimes I feel like social media — Facebook especially — allows me to be creatively lazy. What I mean by that is that it’s too easy for me to fire up my iPhone and post a status message every time a thought I want to share or a question I want answered pops into my head. I’ve been struggling with blog inspiration for several months now, and my hope is that taking a step back from other outlets will inspire me to share more thoughts and ideas here in this space.
  • I value the connections that I’ve developed and maintained through social media, but sometimes I feel like the hundreds of people I communicate with online take away a portion of the time and energy that rightfully belongs to my family and real-world friends.
  • My husband and I are both on vacation for most of the month of May. This year we will celebrate four years of marriage and a whole year in a home of our own. We have lots of family activities, visitors, and travel planned as well as home improvement tasks to tackle. I need to avoid the distraction of frequent Facebook updates.
  • My to-read list is a mile long, and I spend too many nights “checking one more thing” on the Internet without picking up my Kindle or cracking a book.
  • I still owe my parents a quilt that I promised them for Christmas, and I also want to learn to crochet and knit.

In short, I’m hoping the month of May will be busy enough that I won’t miss social media.

I am not naive, though. I am a full-on, hands-shaking, cold-sweating, fiending for a fix addict. The first few days of this experiment aren’t going to be pretty. In fact, I’m actually going as far as asking my husband to change all of my passwords so I can’t access the websites. I’m removing the apps from my phone, too. I know this may seem extreme, but there’s no telling what an addict will do when she needs a fix.

I’ve tried similar experiments in the past (never longer than a week, though), and even if I can make it that long without posting anything myself, I still obsessively check everyone else’s posts and often can’t help but respond to a few.

I’m hoping to keep you guys updated on the experience and share the good and the bad. I get so many positive things from social media and the Internet, but it’s like anything else — it’s possible to have too much of a good thing. My hypothesis is that absence from the Internet really will make my heart grow fonder, not just of the Internet, but the people I’ve gotten to know there. I guess we’ll see, though.

Have you ever taken a break from the Internet? What did you learn?

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How I fail every day

In the past few weeks, I’ve made a few new wonderful friends in my community. We met through a playgroup at the public library, and they’ve become a wonderful support network not to mention a fun social outlet for me. I’ve shared this blog with them, and last week a conversation with one of my new friends made me realize that I may be failing my readers. Big time.

“You can never see my house! I read your blog,” she told me. Her point was that she feels disorganized and messy compared to the posts I write about organization and simple living.

I should say here that I have seen her house since that conversation (she welcomed my family into her home to hide in her basement during last week’s storms), and it was nowhere near as bad as she made it seem. She’s become a dear friend to me, and I’m not writing this post to make her feel bad (if you’re reading this, do NOT feel bad). But she made me realize something: my readers only see part of the story. I’m not purposely deceiving you guys, but I think of you as guests in my life. Of course I shine everything up and make it look pretty before you come over.

When I write about organization, simplicity, parenting, and even money, I write about what I strive to be. I don’t think I make myself look perfect, but I definitely do make myself look better than I am. Don’t we all put our best feet forward in public? I’m nowhere near where I want to be, though. Not by a long shot.

Over the past four years, the readers of this blog have built me up, supported me, and helped me to become a better wife, a better mother, and a better person. The very last thing in the world that I want is to make any of you feel inadequate.

So I want to share with you some of the ways that I fail, and how I want to become better.

I’m not as organized as I seem.

Like I said, what I write here is what I strive to be. It’s true that I’m pretty tidy in general when it comes to our living space, but when I write about organization tips, I’m sharing the ideas I’ve had for how I can get better. In a perfect world, I would follow these tips to the tee. I don’t, though. My drawers are overstuffed with clothing. My closets are packed to the brim (and sometimes so stuffed that they’re hazardous to open). I’m trying to get better, and when I write here about organization, it motivates me to get it together.

I’m thankful that children are so forgiving of their mothers.

I love my son and I’m so thankful to have him in my life — that much is absolutely true. But when I write glowing posts about the joys of motherhood, I leave out a lot of the normal challenges. He is a toddler now, and he can be frustrating. Sometimes, he drives me absolutely bonkers. I feel terrible admitting it, but I have raised my voice at times when he’s repeatedly getting into things, even though I know he’s not able to understand why I’m angry and I know that kind of discipline doesn’t work. I try to interact with him and play with him as much as I can, but there are days when I’m exhausted, sick, or busy and he watches one too many episodes of Sesame Street. I learn from my mistakes, and I like to think I’m becoming a better mother every day. I certainly don’t think my failures are doing any permanent damage, but I do fail him daily. I wish I didn’t, but I do.

My financial choices aren’t always the “right” ones.

This is admittedly a particularly sensitive subject for me, because I have gotten comments from trolls in the past, and the last thing I want is to get so sensitive about it that I don’t want to write about my personal finances at all (on what is supposed to be a money blog). But here are a few choices I’ve made that I know aren’t considered “right” by most finance experts:

  • We’re not in a huge hurry to pay off our remaining student loan debt. In fact, we took a big vacation to Europe, had a baby, and bought a house while making minimum payments on that debt. I have no regrets, but I know I have readers who feel this choice is irresponsible.
  • We financed a used car last year instead of saving to pay with cash.
  • We bought a house before we had a full 20% down payment.
  • We purposely set our tax withholding too high, because we’d rather receive a refund than a tax bill every year.

I’m sure there are other choices I’ve made that personal finance experts don’t agree with me on, but I’ve always stressed on this blog — my financial choices are my own. They have worked for my family, and even if we’re not perfect, our goal is to strike a balance between smart financial choices and quality of life. Could we build wealth faster if we squirreled away every last penny into savings? Sure, but it’s not for us, not at this point in our lives. So we save some, spend some, and try to balance future security with present happiness.

I don’t always make healthy choices.

In the interest of full disclosure, I’ll tell you now: I don’t know exactly how much weight I gained during my pregnancy with Judah, but I stopped looking at the scale after I’d gained 60 pounds, and that was only 2/3rd of the way through my pregnancy. I’m still struggling to lose quite a bit of that weight. It’s true that I try to eat healthy and exercise, but there are days when I hit the snooze button instead of rolling out of bed at 5 a.m. to go to the gym. There are days when I eat one (or four) too many cookies. And yes, sometimes all I want in the world is a cheeseburger and french fries. If I didn’t make the wrong choices a lot of the time, I would have been back at my ideal weight months ago. But I really do just love a good cheeseburger.

As for Judah, I had all kinds of plans for his diet when I was pregnant. He was going to eat organic fruits and vegetables, no processed food, organic milk, yada yada yada. Then he started having weight gain issues. We offer him fruits and vegetables at every meal, but the truth is, he doesn’t eat them as well as I’d like. When he fell of the charts for weight, I was so desperate for him to eat anything that I became much more lax with his diet than I’d like. I let him eat chicken nuggets and other processed foods, because he would eat them, and all I wanted was for him to gain weight.

He’s been doing a lot better with his weight recently, so I’ve been encouraging him to eat more vegetables, but his diet isn’t perfect. I let him eat Teddy Grahams and Goldfish crackers and, yes, chicken nuggets (they’re not even homemade or organic!). It’s another area where we strive for balance. I don’t think any picky 15-month-old eats a perfectly balanced diet, but we’re trying. We do our best to set a good example, and that’s the most important thing, I think.

I struggle with chronic anxiety and depression.

I try to keep things positive around here. The last thing I want to do is complain because I know just how blessed I am. But the truth is, I do struggle with an anxiety disorder and at times in my life I’ve been clinically depressed. I don’t tell you this for sympathy, but I hope those of you who struggle with these disorders (they’re common, to be sure) can relate to me a little better. I am happy overall (at least I have no reason to be unhappy), healthy, and blessed, but there are days when I feel sorry for myself for no reason at all. Even if you don’t struggle with anxiety or depression, we all have bad days. I am no exception.

The point of this post isn’t to beat myself up by any means. I’m proud of a lot of things about my life, and I like to write about what makes me proud. I don’t focus on my failures on this blog, because I think we should all focus on what’s positive about ourselves and our lives even as we strive to be better. But I wanted to be honest and clear with you guys that even though I don’t write about it all the time, I fail daily. No one is perfect all the time, and my life isn’t always sunshine and daffodils.

We all have weaknesses, but we also have strengths. I choose to focus on my strengths on this blog, and I strive to focus on my strengths in life. I think if we can all succeed at that, we’ll be much happier and healthier.

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Too close to home

I live less than 10 miles from the deadly tornadoes that hit Indiana today. So far there have been eight confirmed deaths in Indiana, but that number could possibly increase as they search through leveled homes tonight and tomorrow.

It was a scary afternoon. We don’t have a basement, but thankfully we were able to wait out the storms in the basement at a friend’s house, and we are safe and sound tonight. We escaped the storms without any injuries or damage to our home. But we have neighbors not far away who have lost everything — some of them even their lives.

Please consider giving what you can to the Red Cross or another disaster relief organization to help those in Indiana, Alabama, and other states who faced deadly tornadoes today as they rebuild their lives. If you can’t afford to give money, consider donating items that may help families who are recovering from natural disasters, giving blood to help the injured, or giving your time to an area near you that may be in need.

My family was very lucky today. My thoughts and prayers are with other families who weren’t so lucky.

A few seemingly unrelated ideas

I’ve been feeling slightly uninspired lately. I’m working on coming up with some fabulous new content for you guys, but in the meantime, it’s Thursday, and I want to share a few random things that are on my mind.

I found out last week that I was quoted and my blog was mentioned in the January 2012 issue of Parents magazine, which explains a recent uptick in traffic. If you found my blog that way, welcome! I hope you’ll stick around, keep reading, and definitely chime in with your comments. I love to hear from people who are reading.

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I’ve got some big plans for the house this spring, and I can’t wait to share the results with you. We ordered our very first new furniture (like actual grownups! No one has ever even used it!) We sprung for the furniture of my dreams — a fancy Pottery Barn slip-covered sofa and armchair with ottoman — and I’m anxiously awaiting their arrival sometime in March. We ordered it at the end of January. You wouldn’t believe the long shipping time for this stuff. Sheesh.

Now that the furniture is on its way, I’m feeling the itch to paint. The house was freshly painted by the renovator when we moved in, and while it’s not what I would have picked (dark orange), it was fresh paint, and we had bigger fish to fry at the time. Now we’re finally feeling inspired to take the painting leap, so I’m sure I’ll have lots to share as we navigate our way through our first painting experience. I’m skurred, but I can’t wait to finally feel like this place is our own. We’ve been in this house for a year as of May, so it’s about time.

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I decided to stop doing monthly Judah updates after 12 months, but I’ll have another big one when he’s 18 months. For now, a small update: he’s growing like WHOA. He gained 2 pounds, 6 ounces between his 12-month appointment and a weight check at the beginning of this month. That is unreal for him. He’s still tiny (below the 5th percentile, I believe), but we’re all pleased to see him finally packing on some pounds.

He’s straight up running now, and he is into ev.er.y.thing. Our main living space looks like it could be housing squatters, because we’ve moved most of the furniture out of the living room and into the small den in the back of the house that stays blocked off with a baby gate. He alternates between melting my heart and driving me bonkers, which tells me I’ve entered the fabulous world of raising a toddler. One moment he’s giggling wildly and running around like he couldn’t be happier, and the next he’s throwing an temper tantrum because I won’t let him destroy the mini blinds. We’re working on obedience.

He’s stubborn and smart as a whip, and I can already tell we’re in big trouble for the next few years, but at least he’s snuggly. And he sleeps through the night these days, so I can’t complain too much.

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I’m back on the fitness wagon again, and I’ve lost 6 pounds so far! I’ve been loving the strength training class at my gym. We’ll see how long it lasts. It seems like since Judah was born I’ve been stuck on this merry-go-round — lose 5 pounds, gain 5 pounds, repeat. I’m feeling motivated now, though, so here’s hoping it sticks.

What’s new with you?

Simplify your work-at-home life

This post will speak to a limited part of my audience, I know. But when I began working from home almost two years ago (seriously? has it been that long?), I made a lot of mistakes. It would have been nice to have some tips and advice from someone who had worked through all the challenges.

I have it much easier than many work-at-home parents. I don’t earn a full-time income. I earn money through advertising on this blog, and beginning in March, I will earn money as an adjunct instructor at the local college. Only four hours a week will be spent in the classroom; all of my class prep, grading, and other duties will be performed from home. While I can’t speak to the challenges of working full-time from home, I can share what’s worked for me when it comes to keeping work and home life separate when your home is your office.

Set boundaries.

When your desk is just a room or two away from your bed, it can be difficult to set limits on your work schedule. It’s easy to feel like you should be working all the time, and feel guilty doing anything that won’t contribute to your income. However, when you work from home, it’s more important than ever to create a schedule and stick to it. Carve out times for work, family life, household chores, and downtime.

I’m serious about the downtime.

Several months into my work-at-home career, I started to feel seriously burned out. Part of it was that I was caring for a newborn, but a lot of it was that I felt like I had to be on-call 24/7. I was checking my email day and night. I was staying up until all hours working on projects, caring for my son whenever he was awake, taking care of things around the house when he napped, and not taking a single second to just be. That kind of breakneck work schedule just isn’t sustainable, but it’s easy to fall into that kind of schedule when you work from home. Because you don’t have set “office hours,” it’s easy to feel like you have to work all the time. Be sure to schedule time off for yourself. At least a few hours a week should be spent doing something for yourself. Watch a movie. Take a walk. Get a hobby (and no, work doesn’t count as a hobby). Don’t feel like you have to be tied to your email all the time. You’ll return to your work feeling refreshed and more productive after you take a break.

Put yourself in “work mode.”

Just as it can be difficult to remember to schedule downtime for yourself, it can also be difficult to focus with home distractions. Television, kids, spouses, chores, personal phone calls, that bottle of red wine you’re supposed to be saving for the weekend but you really want to drink right now — all of these things can create distractions that make working at home challenging. The best way to combat this is to separate work from home as much as possible.

Ideally, you have some sort of space that functions as your “office.” Even if it’s just a desk in the guest room, when you sit down in your office space, you know it’s work time. Set specific “office hours” when you plan to be productive in your office space. Turn your phone on silent just like you would at the office. Turn off the television. Plan to work during a time when your children are napping, playing, attending school, or when your spouse can manage their needs. The freedom of working from home makes it easier to plan for productivity, because you can plan around your own circadian rhythm. If you’re a night owl, work late. If you’re an early bird, get to work at dawn.

Get out of the house.

I am not ashamed to admit that between taking care of my son, working, and keeping house, sometimes (especially now that it’s cold) I easily go through an entire day without setting foot outside. This isn’t good for me or my son’s sanity. As a rule, I try to get dressed in the morning (even though it’s usually jeans and a t-shirt), and get out of the house at least once a day. When the weather is nice, we went to the park. Now we go to the gym or the library or run some errands. If home is particularly distracting one day, head to Panera or Starbucks for a few hours. Even if you’re just getting out of the house to get out of the house, it’s important to feel like you’re a member of society sometimes.

Take a day (or two) off.

Unfortunately, one of the things you give up when you’re self-employed is paid vacations. But the nice thing about working from home is that you can work from anywhere. In a perfect world, you can afford to take time off for a vacation at least once a year, even if it means you’re answering emails on the beach. Even if you have to work on your vacation, one thing you shouldn’t compromise is a weekend. Most people don’t work 7 days a week, and neither should you. Take a real day off at least once a week. You may not be able to escape your inbox entirely, but you can spend time with your family, tackle personal projects, and recharge without feeling shackled to your desk.

How do you balance work/home life as a work-at-home parent?

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Because I need one more place to post things on the Internets

Since I launched this blog in August 2008, my interests have changed and grown. Because I love this here blog, I’ve just kept expanding its content to fit whatever I’m interested in at the moment. What started as a money blog has now become a money blog, a lifestyle blog, and a mommy blog all smushed into one little website.

I have no plans to make any major changes to my content. My apologies if you miss the days of yore when all I wrote about was personal finance, but I’m happy with the way things are here. I like writing about my baby and my life and my money, because I think they’re all connected.

However. I also like other things. Artsy-fartsy, crafty, quilty things. One of my unpublished New Year’s resolutions (if I had shared them all, the post would go on for miles) is to start actually acting on those creative impulses more. I want to learn to sew things that are practical and pretty. I want to use my sewing machine for more than just making quilts. I want to learn to knit and crochet and do all sorts of other crafty things.

Rather than cramming one more topic into this already overloaded blog, I decided to launch yet another place where I can share things with the Internets. BEHOLD!

I can’t promise that it will be updated with any regularity in the beginning. But when I’m feeling inspired or I’ve actually finished a project, StitchWit.org is where I’ll share it. Since I know a lot of you are into this sort of thing, I’m hoping you’ll subscribe to the RSS or pop over every now and then to see what I’m up to over there.

I’m feeling pretty motivated right now, so hopefully I can make this one stick. Writing about personal finance helped me learn so much about money, and I’m hoping a craft blog will have the same effect on my creative skills. We’ll see!

Now I’m looking for crafting and sewing blogs that will inspire me. What are your favorites?

Resolutions for 2012

My standard resolution for, oh, 10 years or so has been “eat healthier and lose weight.” So far I’ve only stuck with that resolution for 1 out of 10 years. Pfft. I suck.

I’m not giving up on that resolution. Lord knows I have more weight than ever to lose this year. But starting last year, I decided to focus on other things, too. Things that are easier, more fun to accomplish, and will improve my life in other ways. Here’s what I want to accomplish in 2012.

Organize paper clutter.

I have complained about the mountains of paper that stack up around our house for years. I need to finally find a way to keep them organized, keep paper off the kitchen table, and keep it out of my way. I’m working on an organizing station, and I’ll let you know what we come up with.

Start crossing off to-dos around the house.

It’s been over 6 months since we moved into our house, and we haven’t really done anything meaningful to make it our own. We haven’t painted, we haven’t begun any of the projects we’ve talked about doing, and we haven’t even hung anything on the walls yet (I know, it’s terrible). I’m not a good decorator, but I love this house, and I want to make it even better.

Get strong.

I’ve been attending a strength-training class at my gym three times a week, and I have really enjoyed it so far. I’ve never done any strength training before, so I want to stick with it this year so I can get stronger, feel better, and change my body. We’ll see what happens!

What are your New Year’s resolutions for 2012?

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