Life... Unedited

Have you heard the news????? People are more depressed after looking at social media sites. (fb, IG, tweet, tweet... you know what I'm talking about.) Do you know why? Because almost everything looks wonderful, beautiful or adorably cute in a photo. Statuses are typically either happy news we have to share, funny or witty. We don't usually air out our dirty laundry over social media. I have seen honest posts about the gigantic mess your toddler just made (still kind of cute though, right?), or tragic things that we want our friends present and past to know (illness, death in the family), but those aren't what fill most of our news feeds.

Hmmm... What to do? If you know me personally, you know my life isn't perfect. My kids don't do cute crafts all the time while smiling and singing cute little songs all the live long day. My house is generally a toy infested disaster area. I usually have to remove my pretty jewelry to do dishes or clean, or I've had so much sensory input for the day that I can't stand to wear a necklace any more. But if you looked at my social media profiles (just the photos), you'd think it's all peachy over here. Happy kids, picked up house and awesome accessories all collaged, filtered and sometimes with lovely text and doodles over them.

But that's not real life. That's edited life. And almost all of us have an edited life we put out there for the world to see. Don't get me wrong. I'm not shutting down my Facebook and Instagram accounts. I'm not going to start posting weird pictures and status updates just to prove I'm not perfect. I don't know that you should either. But, I do think we need to be real and we need to know that other people are real and actually struggle or live with monotony most of the time. So, (surprise, surprise) I've created this blog and hope to encourage you in your day-to-day of unphotoworthy and possibly difficult times. 

What this blog WON'T be:

1. I'm not going to whine about my life here. 

2. I'm not going to post everything I've done today that isn't exciting. I'm not going to post things with no meaning. Who would read that?! 

3. I'm not going to encourage you to be a loser. The last thing I want to do is make you to think that it's ok to whine, complain, and be a lazy, disorganized mess when you, in fact, could have your act together. 

What this blog WILL be: 

1. Honest. A place for you to come and read about something real and people who are real (the first post will be about the Christmas decor that is STILL up in my house... Tree and all!).

2. A place to feel encouraged that life gets messy sometimes and that's ok.

3. A way to connect with others that are going through similar situations. 

4. A way to know you are not alone.

5. This will be the blog connected to the Instagram profile @uneditedlifeproject (if you aren't on Instagram, you can still see the photos at www.instagram.com/uneditedlifeproject ) You can hashtag your Instagram photos #uneditedlifeproject (keep it rated G... I will sooooooo report your photo if you don't). I plan to feature a photo of someone else's a minimum of once a week just to show the world there are real people going through real (or boring) things. If you want to participate, know that your photo may be reposted and PLEASE include a story of what's going on as your caption. 

Disclaimers:

1. I'm not doing this to make money. Please. I chose a free blogging site and chose the most boring background for it!

2. My photos will be unedited. The grammar and spelling will be checked, but English was not my best subject, I was NOT an English or Journalism major in college, so if that bugs you, I'm sorry! I hope you can forgive me and maybe be my editor one day. :)

3. Not everything here will be a "Debbie Downer". If you know me, I'm kind of funny. (Just kind of, though.) I'll share good things, too. Mostly moments of triumph that involved some struggle, after all, I'm trying to keep it real.

3. I'm  doing this to encourage you wonderful people out there. Social media can subconsciously do number on us. But it's part of our culture and our world. Almost unavoidable. So, "be careful little eyes what you see"... And choose to have them see good, true things.

4. You can email me at uneditedlifeproject@gmail.com if you don't want to leave a comment.

Thanks for joining me in this project. Get ready to see life... unedited.