Hello! I’m back!! Right after William’s birthday in the end of April I decided I wanted to take a few days off of social media & it felt SO good that it actually evolved into me taking the entire month of May off. For the past three years I’ve shown up nearly day, so it felt incredible to unplug and allow myself the freedom of leaving my phone in a completely different room, and just being. So for my May round up I thought I’d share what we got into this past month, what helped me take a huge step back from social media, where I plan to go from here!
- This month we crossed the 300 hour mark on our goal of 1000 hours outside for the year! We’re definitely behind pace but I’m having fun tracking and it’s a great motivation to get outside even when the weather has been less than ideal! The boys are itching for real summer heat to hit and want to play on the splash pad anytime it’s 70 degrees or higher!
- We redid our garden beds and finally planted our spring garden! Chris did an amazing job building them, the kids loved playing and moving all the dirt & I’m thrilled to have a garden again! This year I’m doing a combination of growing foods we love to eat (tomatoes, cucumbers, snap peas) and a mix of flowers! I also love the new layout! The old set up from the previous owners was cramped and hard to move around & this area now feels so nice!
- Halfway through the month the boys got the dreaded hand foot mouth virus. They bounced back quickly but I got it and it actually turned into a bit of a health scare for me. While I was on the mend with the sorest throat I’ve ever experienced I had to make a trip to the ER. Which as an ER nurse is literally my last resort… The virus irritated my heart sending me into a fast abnormal heart rhythm. I ended up getting a cardiologist, wearing a cardiac monitor for two weeks (i’m still wearing it as I write this post). We’re still in the process of doing some due diligence to make sure this is truly virus related and not something more nefarious but phew I didn’t see that coming for this month. Also, J came to the ER with me and every time anyone entered the room he would proudly announce “not for me today!” – tell me you’ve been in and out of ER’s constantly for asthma without telling me.
- Will started going to jujitsu. The last time he was in a jujitsu gym he was barely 18 months old, the first photo! So this is so special for him! It’s cuteness overload watching him do all the little moves and rolls!
- I read four very different books this month. The Psychology of Money, Maybe You Should Talk To Someone and To Raise a Boy, and Night Wherever We Go. The Psychology of Money was not at all what I was expecting. I thought it would be more practical advice instead it ended up being very theoretical and far less useful than I hoped. Maybe You Should Talk to Someone was great! It’s about a therapist who is going through her own ish and decides to talk to someone! An easy read with some great insights! To Raise a Boy – a must read for boy moms. How to raise boys to be thoughtful, caring, kind, how to break stereotypes, how and why to have hard conversations. The author dives deep into sexual assault, talking to your boys about pornography, and how to raise a boy in a crazy world like today! This was a tough read but SO impactful. Finally, Night Wherever We Go was a gripping book about slaves in Texas. It is written from many different points of view. This was one I grabbed from the library and knew nothing about, but I really enjoyed it!
- I finally got around to hiking in Briones! I took my bestie & my junie girl and we did 4 miles. Juno was SO happy to be out on a trail and we caught the last of the wildflowers!
- In May I hit 600 days of meditation. My meditation journey started as a 30 day challenge but it’s something I’ve kept up. I’ve missed days here and there, but creating space between my thoughts, quieting my mind, slowing down and turning inward as been so impactful. It’s funny because I had plans to write a blog post about 500 days of mediation and insights that I have gained since starting this personal practice. But as anyone who meditates regularly knows, the more I practice the more I become aware that my journey at times feels like it’s only just beginning. So 500 days came and went without me feeling some deep transformation or inspiration to write, but this month celebrating nearly 2 years of meditation feels really good! And I did have an amazing moment this month where Will asked me if he could start meditating with me. He will sometimes see me in the mornings or afternoons, sitting still, breathing deep and he understands I’m meditating. So we’ve started incorporating some kids meditation into his daily quiet time. It’s been so special to lay in bed with him and do a meditation together. He loves going on my app and picking a kids one.
- Finally, the app I used to digital detox: ScreenZen! I seriously love this. You can set up what apps you want to limit, how many times you want to allow it to be opened per day. But what I love about it is when you go to open whatever app, it has you pause (you choose the number of seconds before the app opens) it asks you “is this important” and then has you wait… I’d say nine times out of ten I just click don’t open because it’s not important I’m not getting online to do anything, I’m just killing time or bored. If you’ve struggled to digital detox and maybe you’re not an all or nothing type of person and don’t want to just completely delete your apps this is a great option. This works much better for me than cutting it out completely, extreme restriction typically leads to the pendulum swinging the other direction and ends in these binging and restricting cycles.
May felt super long and mostly it felt so nice to just focus on the beautiful life right in front of me, instead of worrying about creating content. I do enjoy sharing on social & making connections. I have made some great internet friends so I don’t necessarily see myself completely deleting or removing myself from it entirely. I think this was a great break, and an opportunity to really be intentional about what I’m doing on my phone. One of my goals this year was to significantly cut down on my screen time and have better phone hygiene around my boys. The only way to teach them about technology and boundaries and realizing that life happens when you look up is to do that yourself. You can say it till you’re blue in the face, but if you’re constantly mhmming them that is what they will notice and remember more than any lecture. Also the older my guys get the less I feel compelled to share about them, as they enter into their own I want them to choose how and when they want their internet presence to be. Of course I’ll probably still share little things here and there like this blog for instance. I’ll be keeping screen zen on my phone for now. I love how it still makes me question why I’m really getting onto my phone and I think it’s great to break that habitual checking and refreshing.
I’m curious if you’ve done a digital detox and how it impacted your life!?
East Bay Mama 