April 5, 2020

So it seems that many people are being made to believe this most recent change in the way we live, and how it’s affecting our world, is keeping them from doing anything at all.

I would beg to differ….

Just this past week, my family has been enjoying biking, fishing, chalking, drawing, reading, scavenger and bear hunting, painting, and the latest form of communication through zooming.

And, yes, we’ve been doing the outdoor activities with more than the “social distance” requirement.

So why is it that people are bored, stir crazy, grumpy, and anything else negative during this time?!?! I am not writing this to say I haven’t felt at least one of these things during the past few weeks. I have.

Could it be that when life as we know it, throws us a curve ball, we don’t know what to do with ourselves when all our activities away from home get canceled?!

Could it be that families have been living together for so long under the same roof yet not doing life together?! This saddens me if this is the case.

Could it be that people think they are so bored that they have decided, like me, to explore things like Hulu, and have discovered a whole new world of entertainment that will actually fry your brain?!

Sound wonderful? NOT so much!

I use to have one specific show I would watch here and there, and in the past week, when my family goes to bed, I have spent HOURS watching “Love It OR List It”. The hosts of this show crack me up to the point of laughing out loud, and I love seeing what can be done to homes as well as trying to guess what the family is going to choose!

There is season after season, episode after episode!! Not just one or two shows! That would definitely make for binge watching…and it has!

When my youngest is done with her on-line schooling, (she hasn’t missed one day of school yet!), and if the weather isn’t great to go outside, she and I have watched 7th Heaven, Family Matters, I Love Lucy, Home Town, and The Beverly Hillbillies as well as cooking shows!

AGH! That is way too much screen time! And, I do not want us to become vegetables in front of a screen!

Did you know that the more screen time, the more hyper you become and therefore the more agitated you can become because your body is trying to tell you that you need to get off your butt and MOVE!?

Screen time can also cause you to have a shorter attention span. This says a lot about why people have lost their focus to accomplish tasks and the need to continuously look at their phone, sometimes scrolling aimlessly, just to do something. Our brains have becomes addicted to needing more!

These are all negative things brought on by the most popular thing people use in their day to day, sometimes moment by moment living.

Interestingly, it is also the tool, I believe, that has been used to cause a worldwide panic so that many people have lost not only their heads but unfortunately their jobs unnecessarily. It has totally flipped our way of living upside down.

This is my blog and my opinion, and for now, I still have that. 😉

Here’s the thing with my family over the years, and please don’t think I believe this is what you need to do. This is our experience….

We do not have cable nor do we have a “dish” for our home. We never have in 30 years! We don’t see the thrill to just sit there, flipping through channels, never fully watching a complete show, just to waste our time away.

And before you wonder if this is for “religious” reasons….

Years ago, a salesperson came to our door wanting to sell us a dish, or something similar, asked this question after telling him that we had never owned cable.

I laughed explaining we were Christians, but our choice not to have it had nothing to do with that but instead we didn’t have extra money to spend plus we’d rather be active instead of sitting on our butts.

This reminds me when we first took our older children to Disney World many years ago, they were more pumped about being able to watch the Disney channel in the hotel room than actually going to the theme parks!

We could’ve saved a lot of money and just gone to a hotel for the night just so they could watch shows they’d never watched before. 🤣

Our children didn’t have televisions in their rooms nor did they have their own computers or phones until we felt it was necessary, like when they were driving so they could tell us when they arrived where they were going.

I suppose you might feel sorry for them to have been deprived of these electronics but I am pretty sure if I had all that when growing up, I would’ve made some poor choices.

Well, no one had computers or cell phones growing up but if that had been a thing, I would’ve been in trouble, I am confident of that.

And, for the majority of my growing up, we had one channel….one very fuzzy channel….that we had tin foil on the bunny ears we had to adjust frequently….that we had to walk up to it to turn it on and off! Shocking, I know!

Growing up we had to use our imaginations, play outside till dark, and actually communicated face to face with people.

We also had way more chores than most children do these days. We learned to play hard and work hard! We learned to think for ourselves!

This is how we raised our children. I remember one neighbor said he loved watching us interact together as a family in our backyard as he saw his grandchildren, all playing separately, entertaining themselves with electronics.

He said we were parenting right and to keep it up! Everything he said to me about how we spent time with our children made a huge impact on me, and I will never forget that.

This is so funny to me now but I actually found it FUN to simply go to the grocery store, walking up and down the isles with my mom, because we only went once a month! It was our monthly field trip!

Simple living needs to make a come back, and to find contentment in that is key!

I believe the ripple affect of this most recent virus has been a good thing in many ways. Taking more time to be together as a family and pulling out the board and card games is so much fun. You can’t be bored doing that!

Laughter has been so good for us, especially now when things seem so uncertain at times. Don’t be a “Debbie Downer”. If you are, don’t be surprised when your family follows your lead.

And if you are freaking out, STOP IT! You are not being a good example to your children! Turn off the news and stop reading it if you have to. I had to because for a week there I had become too focused on “the map”.

In fact, turn off your phone or at least turn it on “do not disturb”. I have had my phone on “do not disturb” since last fall, and I don’t miss hearing it ringing or dinging at me!

Spend time really talking together. We are a family that talks a lot together anyhow, but we can make even more opportunity to PUT DOWN THE PHONE and enjoy each other.

Last night, our youngest asked if we had radios growing up so that we could listen to “Little Orphan Annie”. Say what?!?! We told her we were not THAT old!

Then she asked if we had television growing up. Huh?!?! We had a lot of laughs just from this particular subject.

I am actually rethinking on how our activities throughout the week can be cutback when society decides to get to the way it was.

I honestly hope that from this experience, as a nation, we all learn what really matters in life and how much we’ve taken it for granted.

Now that we are experiencing real freedom in staying home, it has shown me that I wouldn’t mind having much less running around activities!

Overall, we are really enjoying this newfound freedom!

For such a time as this, how are we going to choose to spend it? There are endless possibilities!

SO are you going to make the most of this virus OR are you going to waste it?

Blessings,
Jennifer