Make Up is the Original Photo Filter

Looking at your cell phone during every break in life has become a national past time. I’m not judging, I do it regularly. Commercial break, check twitter. Bored in a meeting, flash through Instagram. Sitting at a stoplight, check my texts. It’s a very easy way to fill the minute or two gaps in time and there is never a lack of something to look at.

I quit facebook almost two years ago now, and every day feel like I get a pang of desire to start cutting out the other #socmeds (social medias). My main reason was when I looked at facebook and asked myself, “What is this doing for me?”. Sure, it’s great to check in on old friends, remember birthdays, and check to make sure your ex found someone with a larger belt size than you. But in the end I found it making me feel divisiveness towards people who didn’t agree with my politics, habitually complained about this or that, or only posted about some Ponzi scheme makeup business they got into.

More importantly, all these platforms can leave you feeling inadequate…and I would venture to guess that incompetent feeling may be the reason you posted something once upon a time (again, guilty as charged). That perfect picture of you sipping drinks on the beach; the well-filtered photo of your kids and spouse next to the perfectly lit Christmas tree. You crop and filter and adjust to capture the best in the frame and you can block out all the disarray on the periphery. And when your followers or friends or online acquaintances scroll past your picture we all want them to think, “Wow, they’ve really got it made.”

With so much of the passing minutes and seconds taken up with the quick scroll through the well-curated social media feeds, it can all be a little overwhelming. The main point being is in a time when most of the information we absorb is from the Twitbooks and Instasnaps (#getoffmylawn!), it’s easy to get pulled from reality where things are chaotic and disorganized and unfiltered. We've made it a habit to view people through the lens of their social media persona. More and more I find myself having to make the conscious decision to step back and realize that everyone else’s offline life is likely much the same as mine: generally happy but not perfect.

I’m not one to make a lot of New Year’s resolutions, but if I can better separate myself from my phone and online connections in 2017, and make more time for my wife, dog, friends, mailman in those trivial minutes and seconds in life, I’ll consider it a success.

New in my life: my next house will have a carpenter’s workshop, real trees are the only trees, winter can end anytime now.

That's all from out west- TA

This rendition of NVCJ is brought to you by Travis Arp. Trav is a well-accomplished writer, dwelling from the greater Denver area. His interests include craft beer, hiking and appreciating a good cut of meat. (No joke, he has his doctorate in meat sciences.)