Follow-Through and Follow-Up

In the past few weeks, I have written two posts that have gotten a lot of feedback. I just wanted to address both those pasts with a little follow-up.

The first post that received a lot of traction was my post about how I am committing to Putting Down My Phone, and several ways that Theo and I have decided to do that.

Well, I’m here to tell you that I’m an epic failure and I hate that.

The first two weeks went really well, and I noticed such a huge difference in myself. The two biggest differences I noticed were in dealing with Tera’s tantrums and my afternoon slump. With Tera, I thought maybe her behavior would improve if I was more present and focused on her. Well, it didn’t….BUT I found myself more in control of my own emotions while dealing with her being difficult. I found that I had more patience and felt less like I was being interrupted, and therefore was able to handle the situation much better.

I also noticed a huge difference in my afternoon slump. Every afternoon around 4 I hit a wall. I’m a total morning person and by 4 all my energy has worn off and all I want to do is sit on my butt and scroll through my phone. However, when I was being more conscious to put my phone down and keep it down, I found myself not hitting that energy slump every day! It was really surprising to me! I was able to get more done in a day and be more present with my family.

It wasn’t easy, though, and I often felt like I was missing out on big things in the social media world. That’s so silly to say, but I felt like I lost followers and readers simply because I wasn’t as present as I had been in the past.

After we went on vacation, I started picking up my phone more and more and slowly the bad habits came back. I hate it, and I’m re-reading my original post and going back to my strict rules of keeping the phone down. I don’t care if I miss out on social media happenings or if I lose followers. It’s worth it to me to be present with my family and have more energy throughout the day instead of having it siphoned from me by my phone.

ALSO- I got a ton of comments on that post from people who said they would love to do the same, but ______. Most of the time it was, “but my job is online”. I just want to encourage you that even if your job is online, and in fact even more so, these boundaries are so necessary. Just like people clock out of their jobs that aren’t online, those of us who make money through an online method need to turn off the computer/phone/internet at set times. Boundaries. It’s totally necessary.

 

The other post that got so much feedback was my post on Breaking Up With Blogging. The funny thing about this post was that it gathered more page views and comments than any other post that I have ever published. Many of you said that you want me to stick around, and I fully intend to. I just don’t want to become someone whose entire life is build around this blog. Right now my entire life is built around what will glorify God the most: and that is raising my children and supporting my husband. I don’t want to promote any companies that I don’t fully back. I don’t want to have my blog cause so much stress and burnout just to keep up with all the other bloggers out there. I’ll still promote companies and work hard, but right now this blog is looking more like a hobby than a business, and I have made peace with that (although I still wrestle a lot with it). Thank you so much for ALL of you who read my blog and take the time to cheer me on. It means SO, SO much to me.

 

Anyways, sorry this is kind of a boring post with no pictures (totally broke the cardinal rule of blogging right there!!). I just wanted to take the time to publicly follow up and follow through on those two things.

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