March Blogness // The Truth About Her Square Life

My name is Jessica and you might remember me from one the Jenn's earlier posts. I shared with you a little bit about my life as an etsy shop owner. Today, I am thrilled to take part in Jenn's wonderfully transparent The Truth About My Square Life series.

If I'm being honest, I am not very interested in Instagram/Twitter/Facebook. This has not always been true. This time last year I was a full on social media addict. I would wake up and scroll through Instagram, sit on Twitter in class, etc. I remember telling Jenn that I should give up social media for lent, but that I didn't want to...I was being a brat.

I was being lazy with my free time. I don't think social media is a bad thing; I think it can serve a wonderful purpose. But I was using it as a way to fill the empty spaces in my life. I finally got to a point where I wanted a radical change - I deleted all my social media apps.  I replaced the time that I had spent mindlessly scrolling through social media feeds with sermons.  I would listen to sermons on my Sermon Audio app instead. It made a huge difference in my personal growth as a Christian.

I've since been able to re-download all my social media apps and am back on social media, but no longer feel addicted to it.  I use it to keep up with the people I care about, read posts that inspire me, and share the authentic version of myself.

For me, Instagram was once a mindless waste of my time; hours that I could have spent learning and growing as a person were spent searching my newsfeed for beautiful photos.  The comparison game was stealing some of my joy, but the real issue, in my life, was the total waste of time. 

Several months ago I posted this to Instagram:

What it looks like is going on: Waking up to a snowy morning with my coffee! Loving life. Being cozy.

The truth about my square life: It took me like what felt like 234,324 tries to get the just right picture.  By the time I snapped the picture that I felt worked best, I realized how cliché the picture actually was, and I wished I had spent those moments just enjoying the early morning snow.

I've missed so many special moments because I was busy trying to take a trendy picture.  Pictures are great. Trendy, beautiful pictures are great. And Instragram really is great.  But, I still need to work on appreciating the moments that are given to me by God and not trying to filter them into something that I think will get a lot of likes.