#fedupwithhashtags

Before I get up on my soapbox, I will note here that I've been told before that I have an old soul. That fact is increasingly apparent. While I'm still a 30-something, I sometimes feel like a dinosaur. "Back in the ole days...", I remember when cell phones came in a rather large bag of their own or had an antennae so large you had to unscrew it in order to fit it in a large purse. I could giggle as I'm writing these very words. No, we did not have cell phones as teenagers-not most of us anyways. While I was guilty of hogging our home phone for hours to chat with an admirer or giggling with a friend--I still didn't have a phone attached to my person at all times. I might be outside and busy. We could drive to a store or restaurant and be unavailable until we returned home and checked for any messages. That's a common example of how we got on with life. We weren't always reachable and that was acceptable. I don't enjoy the expectation that we should have a phone on our hip 24/7. Sometimes I enjoy just living life and not checking for missed calls and voicemails. I was also one of the late bloomers when it came to texting. I hate all that clicking. I don't mind a convenient question here or there (or a lovely photo), but I despise having to type an entire conversation. It seems like you have to text and "check-in" to make sure that it is a convenient time to place a phone call. While most people have a phone within 2 feet of them at all times we don't want to use it to talk anymore.

 

The hard thing for a detail-oriented individual like myself is...words of a text or e-mail lack emotion. Without hearing the tone of a person's voice, some things can sound sarcastic or just different from how they were intended. We miss a true connection. Of course FaceTime and Skype are options, but most people I know rarely use them. Maybe we meant to, but we'd have to first schedule it or send a text to make sure it's okay.

I try to keep up. I did the Myspace thing until everyone left and went to Facebook. I was like, "It took me hours to set all that up and now I've gotta do a whole new site, username, and password?!! Am I gonna have to check-in to multiple sites like this now?!!" But alas, I followed the crowd. I do enjoy connecting with friends as far away as Alaska, seeing a photo of a cousin I wouldn't normally see, and laughing at silly e-cards and cartoons. I am a social gal and I like to be in the know. Which is also why I long ago caved in after at least 2 years of refusing to text. I don't enjoy it as much as actually talking, but it's that or nothing most days. I do crave making the connections although I find it increasingly difficult. As I became a Mom, so did a lot of other people I know. We all protect our family time with a wall of unavailability. I am guilty of neglecting return calls, but not out of spite. I seem to lack the discipline of time management and remembering what time is best for others. It feels so less invasive to send a Facebook message or text-that this is the proper etiquette now.

Now it's also become a thing to use hashtags, which by the way was created for use on Twitter. They serve no real purpose on Facebook (in my opinion) other than a way to look trendy and use more internet slang. I noticed this past week about 5 people used #TBT in a status update. By the 5th time I was so annoyingly curious about what it meant that I googled it on my handy dandy smartphone-which of course was in my pocket at all times in the event of such a need. Apparently it can be used to mean ThrowBack Thursday along with some old photo, or less commonly can mean "Truth Be Told". Okay, well that's fun. I admit it. But why are we too lazy to use the whole phrase? Are we so busy that we can't type 3 words? LOL, ROFL, DD, DS...why don't I just type random letters and see if you can read my mind? HTAA! It's so silly there was a skit about what we would sound like if we talked like this in person. ((WARNING: includes an edited profanity at the end))

 

While I probably sound like Andy Rooney (google it) to some of you right about now, I will say that I recognize the importance in joining the crowd to some extent. It's keep up or be left behind and I certainly don't want that. I don't miss the days of looking up things in our red encyclopedia set. I use my smartphone and love it. I Facebook and enjoy it. I text these days. If you want to see pictures or know about a person it is your responsibility to be the one to make the effort. So instead of waiting around I plug in, log-in, and so on. I just wonder if all our smart technology has hurt us in other ways. I've lost touch with some friends altogether because they were worried they might wake the baby if they tried to call. Eventually, we just lost touch. I moved out of state and lack a friend that I can drive and go see. Most of my immediate family is in another time zone. So, communication is more important than ever.

Here's an revolutionary idea: scroll to one of your contacts and dial the number. Hear a person's voice. Re-connect. Hear their laughter or share their tears because you can't get typically get that on their Facebook page. Drive to see a loved one and share a cup of tea. You might make their day and yours. Also, you might refine a really important relationship.

Precious Memories

About 3 weeks ago it was my husband's birthday. Just like a lot of other years, we don't do much to celebrate. Once you pass 21, it seems that the important milestones have already been reached. While we acknowledge adult birthdays, we're lucky to receive a few cards and a little cake. We save our money for other more important things-like the computer that just crashed and needed replacing. So we were going about as usual checking off items on our To-Do list. I sent Brian to pick up our old computer from the Geek Squad. They were going to wipe it clean of viruses and transfer files to our shiny new computer that we are learning how to operate. We didn't have a lot on there, we just wanted "My Documents" and our pictures.

I went about cleaning and tidying laundry. I thought it was taking a while, but then again I did send him to an electronics store by himself. I imagined he was staring at all the big screens and other items we can't afford. He finally returned and I noticed he had bloodshot eyes and his lower lip was trembling. I instantly thought the worst. Had someone died? Had he totaled our only car? It's scary how many horrible things you can think up in a few seconds. He blubbered out, "Honey, we've lost all our pictures of our girl!!!".  I knew then why he was crying. Back when we left the NICU with Amelia, we were given a pretty grim diagnosis. We were given all these statistics about children with Alagille Syndrome. So-Yay a diagnosis, but-wait...you mean she might not live to reach the age of 2?!!! We make a big deal about savoring every precious moment. What Brian was really thinking about is that if we ever lose our girl (which we pray about often)-we wouldn't be able to look back upon her sweet little face.

Ohh-kay. I pulled up www.shutterfly.com, logged in, and showed off all the pictures we'd ever taken of our Amelia. (Big sigh of relief!) One trip of a lifetime to Greece and every picture of our lovely girl were all there online organized neatly into folders. Thank God for a little place where I had managed to save them all.  While I had lacked the discipline to upload all of our pictures, we had the most important ones. Brian had yelled his lungs out and had security called on him for nothing. I felt so bad that his birthday felt ruined and while the pictures were indeed safe, he was still shaken for the rest of the day.

After we had calmed down, I began to wonder which pictures we had lost. Our first 12 years of marriage??? I dreaded how many pictures of my nieces were gone, but beyond that had no idea what I was missing. I began the search and found a few SD chips that had all our daughter's precious milestones-the same ones I had uploaded. It was good to know I was so thorough. I do tend to obsess over pictures. It's my Mom's fault. She is like a Photo Encyclopedia. She takes pictures of every birthday cake, reunion, church event, newborn baby, and/or special outing. I've even known her to take pictures of different headstones at local cemeteries-for family history she says. We joke about it and even get a little frustrated sometimes at her demands for photo ops and printed copies. Of course we all know why it's important, even if she does enjoy her hobby a bit too much for our taste. Her sentiment is because all of her possessions including her baby pictures burned to the ground in a house fire when she was a child. The smell of smoke, even from a candle, scares her to this day. I've never experienced it firsthand but I have had nightmares of snatching up all my picture albums before running out of a housefire.

Anyways, turns out I was even more OCD than I remembered. We've now found an old external hard drive we both forgot about. Brian says I used to nag him about backups all the time. So tonight I was able to upload over 5,000 images to my new computer. Here in our home we consider it a miracle. What would I have lost? Vivid memories of:



My first nephew's baby shower,






Or this favorite Christmas photo where my Dad tried our tea,



From my first cake class...

to my best culinary creation (800 handmade violets),

 



the simple beauties found on an old family farm,



and several good reminders of what we looked like before we entered Parenthood.

Of course we also would have lost vivid memories of our nieces, nephew, many Christmases, Halloween costumes, weddings, dear friends and much more. Please find a promising way to store your precious memories, AKA family photos before it's too late.