Faith , Family, Friends & Fun

Hello Friends, 

It’s been a while since I’ve said hello and I apologize for that. Strike it up to the business of life and well, just flat out laziness when it comes to my blog but, I’m hoping to change that. Actually, I’m hoping to change a few things. I’ll tell you about that in a different post. In the past I have done YouTube videos sharing my weekends on a Sunday morning video but I’ve decided I like putting it on my blog So, I thought I would share this past weekend with you and what we did.. 

For once it was actually a nice quiet weekend which, for those of you who know me is a real rarity in our lives. But this weekend I truly enjoyed myself. The only thing that was missing was being able to attend Mass but my body seems to predict most of what I do and don’t do whether my mind agrees or not. 

Being I wasn’t feeling up to par to go out anywhere, on Saturday night we had our best friends Linda and Bill over for some coffee and fun. We played this card game called “bulls*it”. Yes you read that right. It was so much fun! We had a lot of laughs and played quite a few hands. 

On Sunday, it was just Lou and I and the four legged kiddos. We didn’t do much at all . I did my usual morning stuff like, feed the dogs, clean the kitchen, make the bed but other than that I pretty much lazed around the house for most of the day doing what I wanted.  We actually sat in quiet for a long time watching the kiddos play then Lou and I played some Gin Rummy. He always wins! but that’s okay, we haven’t done that together in a long, long time. It’s the little things people. 

I spent a lot of time in the morning catching up on my reading. I’ve started a five year spiritual reading journey and I needed to get caught up and I surely did! 

No, we didn’t watch the Super Bowl. My team wasn’t in it and I just well, couldn’t ‘get into it ‘ this year so instead, Sunday night I spent working on my crochet and catching up on the few TV shows I had on my DVR. It was a nice quiet weekend with no real cooking to do because I had so many left overs. Score!

Thank you for reading my post and please stay tuned to my blog as I will be adding more posts this week. 

I hope you all had an enjoyable peaceful weekend. 

 

 

 

Faith , Family, Friends & Fun

Hello Friends, 

It’s been a while since I’ve said hello and I apologize for that. Strike it up to the business of life and well, just flat out laziness when it comes to my blog but, I’m hoping to change that. Actually, I’m hoping to change a few things. I’ll tell you about that in a different post. In the past I have done YouTube videos sharing my weekends on a Sunday morning video but I’ve decided I like putting it on my blog So, I thought I would share this past weekend with you and what we did.. 

For once it was actually a nice quiet weekend which, for those of you who know me is a real rarity in our lives. But this weekend I truly enjoyed myself. The only thing that was missing was being able to attend Mass but my body seems to predict most of what I do and don’t do whether my mind agrees or not. 

Being I wasn’t feeling up to par to go out anywhere, on Saturday night we had our best friends Linda and Bill over for some coffee and fun. We played this card game called “bulls*it”. Yes you read that right. It was so much fun! We had a lot of laughs and played quite a few hands. 

On Sunday, it was just Lou and I and the four legged kiddos. We didn’t do much at all . I did my usual morning stuff like, feed the dogs, clean the kitchen, make the bed but other than that I pretty much lazed around the house for most of the day doing what I wanted.  We actually sat in quiet for a long time watching the kiddos play then Lou and I played some Gin Rummy. He always wins! but that’s okay, we haven’t done that together in a long, long time. It’s the little things people. 

I spent a lot of time in the morning catching up on my reading. I’ve started a five year spiritual reading journey and I needed to get caught up and I surely did! 

No, we didn’t watch the Super Bowl. My team wasn’t in it and I just well, couldn’t ‘get into it ‘ this year so instead, Sunday night I spent working on my crochet and catching up on the few TV shows I had on my DVR. It was a nice quiet weekend with no real cooking to do because I had so many left overs. Score!

Thank you for reading my post and please stay tuned to my blog as I will be adding more posts this week. 

I hope you all had an enjoyable peaceful weekend. 

 

 

 

Social Media Pitfalls

There are many social media platforms but the most popular is Facebook. Four years ago I was still against joining the connected millions but as fate would have it I eventually caved to the request of friends and family and joined. Looking back I think it may have been a huge mistake. No, I know it was.. Now, sadly, I can count myself among the facebook surfing addicted. An addiction by the way I am trying to break.

I experienced the same “honeymoon phase” most did when they first got a friend request from someone they hadn’t spoken to in years. Then another came and another and another…It was mind blowing for the first year or so. All these people I grew up with that I haven’t seen in decades, kids I spent hours with in Summertime as a child. Relatives I haven’t connected with in years and on and on…and then…………as with any relationship real life sets in and things don’t look so rosy. And lately they look downright bleak. 

I find Facebook these days as depressing and dividing as the nightly news which I also stopped watching about two years ago. Each time you log in your bombarded with the days most upsetting, angering and sometimes gruesome news out there. And yes, you can adjust your newsfeed settings to see only certain things but when ‘friends’ are posting what you don’t want to see it’s no longer hidden. 

I’ve also found that as a society in the quest to be more connected, social media has made us even more disconnected. For many, the days of the Saturday drop in on a friend for coffee are gone. The spontaneous “lets call so and so and have them over for dinner and a game or something” are gone. The porch sitting at the end of the day with neighbors are gone. Why? Because we’re all so virtually connected that we are physically disconnected. 

For myself, this addiction has taken away from things I used to like to do. Simple things in life such as , all of the above, reading, watching a good movie, crafting etc. Why? Because I’m addicted to social media and always have my eyes on the laptop screen or my phone. I have vowed to break this addiction. In reflecting on my time on social media I have come to some conclusions. 

• I don’t always need to be connected
• Being connected all the time makes the mind unable to relax
• I’ve wasted  a lot of time that could have been spent in better ways
• I’ve become lazy in my physical connections
• The majority of the people I haven’t spoken to in decades with the exception of a few hold no more importance in my life than before I knew “where they are now”
• Sometimes, the kids you were inseparable with as a child and this includes family as well, grew up to be people you couldn’t stand to sit in a room with for ten minutes. 
• The select few you have reconnected with surprised you because they turned out to be some of the nicest people you’ll ever know
• Those who you truly connect with and not in just a superficial virtual way will stick with you through email and phone calls even if you leave facebook.

The good things I’ve learned from being on social media?

• I’ve made a few old/new friendships that will last the rest of my life no matter where I am online or off
• Just how important being physically connected to those I care for is.

Having learned all this I will be trying very hard to get to the point of deleting my facebook account all together. Until then I will be choosing to spend my time more wisely.. How about you?

 

Life Interrupted.

Wow! It’s been a REALLY long time since I’ve put up a blog post.. Which, leads me to the subject I wanted to write about in this post..

I guess it was about a year ago I felt the need to make my life easier, much simpler. More peaceful.. I thought, it would be an easy task.. I mean c’mon.. How hard could that be right? It’s not like I’m trying to move a mountain or anything or… is it? I began the usual way most people do which is purging items we own.. in a word.. stuff!.. Just a side note, I am still doing that believe it or not and I’ve gotten rid of a lot of stuff already.. I digress..

In the last months or so I realized that I don’t do the things I used to like to do such as , reading, needle work, watching old movies, playing a game of cards with my husband, “put posts up on my blog”. Things like this.. Simple things.. I asked myself why that was.. Did I suddenly dislike these things? No.. Did I now find them boring? No..So just what was it that was preventing me from doing the things I’ve so enjoyed in the past. After some long thought , no I’m not a fast thinker most times, I came to the conclusion.

I need to “unplug”.. For those who don’t know what I mean by “unplug”. it means I need to step back and far away from all things social media. Facebook which is supposed to be “social” but really when you think about it is “anti-social”. I will explain more why I say that if you’d like. I need to back away from Twitter, and a newly acquired online addiction, YouTube. Now don’t misunderstand me, I am in no way “anti-social media” but for myself and I am sure for a lot of other people, social media has taken over my life..Where I used to take time to de-stress by knitting, reading, watching a movie, praying, etc. I have now taken all the time I spent on those things which helped me in more ways than one and replaced it all by staring at screens of some sort or another most of the night..

Because of this pattern I’ve gotten myself into, I can also say I’ve lost my inner peace. My mind is constantly running amok from one thought to another. I can’t seem to concentrate on anything for more than 5 minutes at a time. Im always checking “statuses” “Tweets” “Selfies” Videos”. And… it’s got to stop.  I have in the past been trying to pry myself away but it almost seems like an addiction. It works for maybe an hour at which time I am usually watching one of my favorite TV series on my DVR but once the show is over, I go right back to my laptop or phone.

So my questions to you are, Do you have this problem? How are you breaking the chain?