I only have a handful of pictures from our family vacation last week. We escaped the “Snowmageddon” that dumped more than seventeen inches on the Northeast for what is now our annual trek to Florida in February.
The weather was as close to perfect as we could have hoped for, the sunsets were spectacular, both of my children had a wonderful time, and my husband and I finally got a chance to reconnect away from the rushed and harried life we live at home.
And I have almost nothing to show for it.
It’s not that I was making a conscious choice not to take pictures, it was that I was making a conscious effort not to post them on Instagram, or put them up on Facebook, or tweet them. I was taking a much-needed break from social media – something that is neither original nor uncommon these days. Some people have “Digital Sabbaths” rules of no tech at the dinner table, or after a certain time of day – for me this felt right…and necessary.
The fact that by the third day of our trip, I turned to my husband and said “I haven’t made you pose for a single ‘selfie’ with me yet!” and was somewhat shocked by it, said a lot to me. It made me ponder the reason and the audience I take all of those pictures for.
I am somewhat ashamed to admit that I realised that the hundreds of photos I usually take, and make my children and husband and – well, chickens I roast and pies that I bake – pose for, are not for us. They are for them. Those people out there that are also spending a lot of their time looking down at the phones they have glued to their hands.
The time I spend with those hundreds of photos I cull through trying to find the one that looks the best, then searching for the perfect filter to further enhance it, writing the witty/sarcastic/touching caption that is most fitting – while I am going through all of those steps for these photos I have taken, I am looking down.
I am missing the rest of it. I am impatient and only half-listening to my children or my husband in the moments after the photos have been taken while I go through this process. That’s not even counting the embarrassingly high number of times that I repeatedly go back to check how many “likes” and comments the photos have garnered and by whom. It’s self-centred, and insecurity-based, and shameful to admit…but it’s true.
I not only suffer from the widely discussed FOMO (or Fear of Missing Out), but I apparently also suffer from the much lesser known conditions FOBI (Fear of Becoming Irrelevant) and FOBF (Fear of Being Forgotten). These conditions are not widely discussed, mostly because I just made them up (the latter of the two clearly needs some work based on the awkward pronunciation challenges it faces).
There were many things I missed while I was away – most notably a monthly Writers’ Salon at a friend’s home that I look forward to. Adding insult to injury, the writer that was featured this time was someone whose work I really respect and whom I have gotten to know personally. There were plenty of other writers and friends that I knew that would be there that I either hadn’t seen in a while, or had never had the opportunity to meet in person as of yet.
Top Comments
Enjoyed the article … I love taking pictures (on film long time ago and now, via my cell phone) mostly to preserve memories but also realized that I missing out on the here-and-now. After visiting my parents last year, I returned home with hundreds of photos on print (which brought back lots of memories) but will be scanning them to store it away. Here a link to my reflection about the topic > http://bit.ly/1fxjENF
I say: Take the photos, you'll love them later in life. But you don't have to do anything with it right away. Photograph the kids building sandcastles together, then get down in the sand with it. And later at night when the kids are asleep, or on another day when not much is happening, post it on FB if you like. FB has a place. Validation and interest and connection with people on FB has a place. But it doesn't have to be in real time!