Why didn’t I start this blog sooner? I lived a lot of creative years as an adult WITHOUT a baby or toddler at home. As you can imagine, kids take time. Kids take so much time! I love the time my son takes, and wouldn’t trade it for the world. I’m also a realist when I say that I don’t have as much time for my fun, creative things as I used to. I choose to spend the majority of my free-time with my sweet babe, but he does go to bed before me… which leaves me with about 90 minutes to myself every night. In those 90 nightly minutes my dream of blogging was born. With that dream and the planning that goes with it, sadly some fears were born too.
Social media is so many things to us. It’s a way for family to easily keep in touch, it’s free advertising, it’s quick connectivity in an emergency, and even a way to bring people together to support a great cause. That’s awesome. Social media is also a heartbreaker, self-esteem crusher, negativity spreader, and flat-out bully. I was reading a post where a celebrity was mourning the loss of her pet, and the first comment I saw was someone implying she couldn’t feel sad because she wears fur. What?!? So, any of us that wear leather or fur can’t mourn the loss of our pets because we don’t deserve it? Sounds absurd, right? But because social media feels deceptively faceless, people think they can say what they want without having to answer to their hurtful words. What if I start a blog and people say I don’t know what I’m talking about? What if those same people make fun of the things I’m saying? Then I realized that all my worries revolve around people who probably never had my best interest in mind anyway. So why do I care what they say about me? If I can’t come up with a specific reason, I really don’t care (even though I have to remind myself of this fact). The truth is social media isn’t going away. And more importantly, how are we going to teach the next generation to handle the ups and downs of social media if we can’t handle it ourselves? That alone is enough reason for me to face my fear.
No matter what creates or drives our fears, we are always stronger. Believe that. Believe in yourself. Sometimes it takes having no other choice to realize how strong you really are. Sometimes it just takes seeing how your kids look up to you and realizing that you want to do more for them. Trying and failing is succeeding, even if in a small way. Never trying is always failing. As my two-year-old would say, “Do It!”.