just be you

“My wish for you is that you continue. Continue to be who and how you are, to astonish a mean world with your acts of kindness. Continue to allow humor to lighten the burden of your tender heart.”

Maya Angelou  

I am taking a bit of a break from social media.  I think we all need it every now and then.  Sometimes we just need a bit of time to focus again on who we are, instead of who we want to be or even who we want others to think we are.  

In yesterday's post I mentioned that my mom told me that I have to go back to my roots.  Remember the things that are important to me... 

I love reading and writing.  I used to spend about 50% of my day writing in my dairy and the other 50% with my nose in a book.  I feel like I have no time to do those things anymore, but yet I do always have some time to scroll through posts on Instagram and occasionally Facebook.  

A few years ago I went off Facebook completely for about a year and it felt so good.  I really love sharing pics on Instagram, knowing that family and friends from far away will get to see a bit of our lives.  I also just love sharing it as part of a visual dairy of my life.  I try to celebrate life by seeing the little things that is beautiful and the magical in the mundane.  But often that gets lost when I start scrolling through posts of other people and then start comparing my lives with theirs or reading memes that are funny (and basically how people deal with their emotions these days) and end up spending time on that instead of things that possibly could be better for my soul. 

So, I am giving up social media for 40 days and will try to rather write some blogposts.  The fact that no-one really reads my blog, is a good way for me to know that I am posting for the right reasons and just focusing a bit on doing things a different way.  And just saying a bit more than a picture with a caption.  We say less these days, we read less and we think less -  there is just way too much information out there and we get caught up in the way things are done in this virtual reality we confuse life with nowadays.  

So, I want to read more and write more and take photos with my camera instead of my phone and maybe post a few of those.  

Let's see how it goes :) 

Ps.  My mom-in-law send me the quote above, beautifully translated in Afrikaans.  Maybe with more time on my hands, I will get to focus more on that too.

"My wens vir jou is dat jy sal aanhou. Aanhou om te wees wie en hoe jy is om 'n gemene wêreld te verras met goeie dade.  Aanhou om toe te laat dat humor die las op jou hart verlig."