I Have a Secret...

In my house when one child tells another child a secret, inevitably leaving out the third child, we say "Secrets don't make friends," hoping to deter the keeping of secrets among them. Telling secrets about or to others is generally something I teach to my children as being a bad thing.

But the other day, I had a secret.

In fact, I had an entirely secret day.

And it was amazing.

If you follow me on social media, you know I am pretty active online. And by active, I mean an open book.

On my private Facebook account, I try to limit my posts to three or less a day (yes I must actually limit myself) because I love sharing, with those who are interested, my life. I share the funny things my kids say and do, update my status every time I write a new story for my blog, or I post even just to share a video or news story that I feel passionate about. Now I realize that this can be controversial and I have many Facebook and real world friends that both agree and disagree with my amount of sharing of my personal life on social media. I've considered this and I am completely okay with the amount of information I share online. No two perspectives on this issue were created equal and I respect others decisions as I hope they can respect mine.

I do have a few limitations. For example on this blog, you won't read my kids names, but you will read stories about them in one way or another. I suppose this is my way of keeping some things private from the world outside of my world. But I know that if you dig a little, it isn't hard to find out what I try to keep off this website.

That being said, the other day I decided to have a secret day.

I won't tell you what I did with my kids, because that would defeat the purpose of keeping it secret, but we didn't do anything that we hadn't done before. We traveled around the city a little for a few activities and just had a wonderful time together. More wonderful of a time than we have ever had doing these familiar activities before.

And I think I know at least one reason why.

I kept my phone in backpack, and actually loved not using it. My kids noticed, probably because I didn't let them have their devices either, and they even asked me to take pictures of them doing various activities a couple of times.

I just smiled, declined, and said, "Nope, no pictures today."

On our secret day we took only mental pictures. 

Usually when we are doing, well, anything really, I am constantly trying to get my kids to pose for that perfect picture that I can post on Facebook. Or I am attempting to take the perfect candid that I can use on my blog or upload on Twitter. Or I am updating Instagram followers of my family or healthy living adventures.

It is actually very exhausting and from what I learned on my secret day, all this social media pressure causes some stress that I didn't even realize existed.

So, anyway, I had a secret day the other day. And my kids and I loved it.

I challenge you to try this out too, especially if you are like me and just can't stop posting about your life online. I was surprised by how much I loved keeping our day a secret.

I know that secrets don't make friends, but I hope that you can forgive me. I won't be telling you what we did.

I will be keeping this day a secret.