Finding a happy medium

I spent the better part of the week with my husband and kids at the beach. I’d decided before we left that I would “unplug” for the duration of our trip.
The 3+ hour drive was easy because I was driving and it’s easy for me to sing along and enjoy the ride. Of course, there was the constant impatience from my 15-year-old that can play fornite for an infinite number of hours yet is worse than a toddler on a long car ride. My daughter loves to flick the songs to get to something she wants to hear, drives me crazy though I do the same thing.
All of us set up camp with no real plan except to enjoy the last bit of summer and have a fire on the beach. This happens to be one of the things on my daughter’s bucket list and I made sure to select a campground where this was possible. As her mother I make it my duty to help her achieve her dreams, this just happened to be easier than some of the others. I’m pretty sure all parents can relate to this.
We walked the path to the beach, which happened to be a mix of dilapidated stairs and sandy footing on a semi steep hill. It was workout both downhill and up. It was overcast and at least 25 degrees cooler than home. We finished the night with a BBQ dinner at a little hole in the wall place and an evening of playing UNO. The games lasted forever because we are all very competitive. That night as we were all on our air mattresses in the tent, I had no desire to pick up my phone and see what I’d missed during the day. I didn’t want to tweet or look at Instagram, check my emails or my messages.
There was a day we spent lying on the beach relaxing and to reserve one of the firepits. I’m sure this wasn’t necessary as the beach was pretty empty being the middle of the week. The kids collected shells and roasted hotdogs and marshmallows over the beach fire. I enjoyed watching the waves hit the beach and doing nothing. It’s rare that I do nothing. I took pictures and didn’t instantly post them anywhere. I didn’t feel the need to tell everyone on the internet what I was doing at that exact moment in time. I wanted to be selfish and keep those moments to myself.
The duration of our trip was spend driving through the small towns that surrounded the campgrounds and going to the Boardwalk. This was a much different trip than we usually take as a family. Disneyland has been a constant since before the kids were born and that is where we always seem to land. And although we do camp occasionally, not like this.
When we left I thought I would have a difficult time being “unplugged”. I wasn’t worried about missing anything, it’s just natural for me to grab my phone multiple times a day and scroll through. At night when the rest of the family was winding down playing their phones, I would read. It would have been easy then, everyone else was doing it. No one knew my decision except me. Still, I didn’t want to. I had no desire.
Now that I’m home it’s business as usual, grabbing my phone to check my messages, scroll Facebook, watch Instagram videos, and send an occasional tweet. I don’t think it’s about giving it up entirely. I think it’s about finding a happy medium. I know now that in a world of social media, I’m ok with being “unplugged”.