Birthday Musings

“Mummy, when will it be my birthday?”

This is a popular question my four-year-old daughter keeps asking almost every time she hears the word ‘birthday’ and I believe it comes with being born in November and seeing almost everyone celebrate theirs before yours.

When I was much younger, I anticipated my birthdays too and that got me giddy whenever it was approaching. Birthdays then, were more of a time to eat special meals and get extra money from my guardians. Years later, birthdays meant receiving and responding to wishes over the phone and on social media. Some of the messages on social media did make me feel exceptionally special and I never wanted the day to end.

About seven years ago, I deleted my birth date from Facebook, LinkedIn and all other social media platforms and I was stunned at how quiet my birthday was. I received birthday messages from two very close friends and my family. The two friends wrote messages on the Whatsapp group pages that we belonged to and that generated more wishes and that was it. I enjoyed the peace that came with that birthday and I left the settings on the social media pages as such. That gave birth to my new way of celebrating my birthdays.

My preference for quiet birthdays has even heightened the more as I grow and a cousin who also celebrates his birthday in June (a few days before mine) always comments,

“Birthdays are indications that you are drawing closer to the grave.” This sounds funny by when you think about it, it is true. My preference for quiet birthdays in recent times do not imply I sit the whole days and reflect on my death. Mostly on my birthdays, I eat cake, go to dinner or make dinner myself and eat with the family and the newest activity is to generally spend time reflecting and praying.

In these quiet moments, I begin to appreciate what God has done for me in the past year and I start to look forward to the new year (age). One of the areas that I cannot thank God enough is how much I have grown – not in physical terms – but in maturity and within my spirit. I have learned to be appreciative of who I am as an individual, what I stand for and where God wants me to be. I have learned to be comfortable in my skin and to enjoy my own company. I am more forgiving. I can withstand very challenging situations without giving up on my faith (which wasn’t so in the past) and I love myself more.

On this day as I celebrate a little over three decades of life on earth, it is my prayer that God continues to preserve my life as He takes me through another 365 days of getting to know Him some more.

How do you normally celebrate your birthdays? Has it changed over time? Do share.

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#WinterABC – Social Media, 4 Lessons

The day I started assessing profiles before accepting friend requests on Facebook was when I knew I had been liberated.

No mutual friends meant I wouldn’t accept your request. The numbers no longer mattered. I started using security features, approving posts before they appeared on my timeline.

Social media is whole world out there, it dawned on me and more lessons were picked afterwards.

Social Media, a ‘pressure’ tool

Before I had my wedding, I made a request to the photographer not to share any of my photos online. I didn’t share any of them on my page either. My wedding was not the most luxurious but I felt it had the potential of putting pressure on the unmarried, those seeking relationships etc. I thought of that follower and currently, I ask myself several questions before I share posts.

Social Media, the big brother

The fact that people are watching your every move without speaking to you is one thing that scares me about social media. I liken Facebook (and other platforms) to that compound house with a lot of tenants shouting. Some followers may never comment/like your posts and they see you offline and say,

“Are you going to post that as well?”

🤷🏿‍♀️ I didn’t know we were friends on social media. I make the mental note to be more cautious about what I post.

Social Media, a tool that distracts

Looking for a way to be unproductive, watch that video on YouTube or Tik Tok or Facebook and similar videos start appearing in your feed. Keep clicking on them and that is how you waste your day. It is good to use apps to monitor how you spend your time on social media. Take a break if you need to.

Social Media, an avenue for inspiration

It’s not all gloomy on these platforms but social media provide creatives with inspiration at an affordable cost. Through blogs, Facebook and YouTube videos, one can feed on ideas of others.

What lessons have you picked from social media? Do share.

***This is 6/22 of the #WinterABC2020. The prompt is 4 things I’ve learned from social media.***

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3 Ways to Show Love on Social Media 

Deception, pseudonyms, trolling, employing tricks to increase followerships – all of these strategies have gradually seeped into our lifestyles and gained grounds in this era of tech and social media. If you missed the previous post on how social media have complicated our lives and relationships, hence, making it impossible to identify true and genuine love, read this.

Using social media tools to spread the gospel creatively, like what the Christian Blog Ghana has been actively doing in the past seven months, have revealed the competitive nature, indifference of followers and the various tactics or tricks used in this world of social media. These attitudes, sometimes, kill the spirit of a brand and this post aims to suggest some of the ways that we can show love and encouragement to each other on social media:

Let’s focus on the Overall Goal

This suggestion goes to individuals and brands which share similar aims and goals – let’s focus on the overall goal. The Christian Blog Ghana. for example, aims at using creative means to propagate the gospel, therefore, when it finds brands in the same niche, it does not hesitate to share, like and follow them. However, that is not the case with all brands, for instance on Instagram, individuals and brands swarm onto a page when there is some new content. They follow, like your post and page and, astronomically increasing your number of followers within a few minutes and in a matter of seconds, the number of followers reduces drastically.

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What is this tactic called, if it cannot be equated to a trick? It is even more shocking to find brands in your niche (Christian, in our case) in this activity of ‘following and unfollowing.’ Why is the focus on using this means to make people believe we are following them while we unfollow them surreptitiously or when they are not looking? Why are we competing for numbers? Don’t we share the same goal of spreading the gospel (Matthew 28:19)? Are we not supposed to encourage each other and hold each other’s hand to do that? Will it be about the number of followers we had on our social media pages when Jesus Christ comes for the second time?

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Let’s Show some Kindness by Reading and Liking Content

It is quite challenging to promote Christian content on social media. For whatever reason, it is very difficult to get friends, family, and followers to like, comment and share your posts. This is not to say we thrive on your commendation but it shows us we do not have dormant pages. It gives us the ability to interact with you and it helps us understand how the Spirit is influencing you through us. Please interact with us, We would love to know if you are being blessed by our content or not. If there are changes you wish to see on our pages, do share them with us. Love is kind (1 Corinthians 13:4) – remember?

Let’s Support One Another

Let’s help each other to achieve our various goals. There may be individuals and brands who may not necessarily be in our niche but are using their platforms to push worthy causes – let’s give them the little push.

On WordPress, let’s follow other blogs, let’s read, like and comment on each other’s posts. On Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter – let’s support one another by liking, remaining loyal followers and commenting on each others’ posts. Let’s avoid seeing each other as competitors but rather one big community promoting different causes.

Today, we celebrate a huge milestone:

200 Followers!

We have 200 followers on Instagram. God knows it’s been tough out there. Instagram is that world, where people follow and unfollow your page constantly, so with 200 followers gained organically within seven months of actively posting, it calls for a celebration. Don’t you think :)?

In this Era of Social Media

In this era of sophisticated technological and social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the rest, where the world has been reduced in size and space, how can we understand the meaning of true love?

When we do not spend quality time to know each other but with the click of the button on any smart device, find the details of someone’s life – their thoughts, their likes, dislikes…

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When we are made to feel so special because a million and one friends are reminded it’s our birthday, hence, the need to wish us…

When we sometimes do not feel the urge to wish someone a happy birthday but are afraid when it gets to our turn, they’d also not send us wishes…

When we intentionally post certain content for those group of ‘friends’ to see…

When we tip vendors to post our wedding photos and ensure they go viral for our ‘friends’ to see…

When there is no clear difference between our personal lives and what we post online…

When we have specialised in ‘branding’ ourselves so well that when others get onto our social media pages, they feel their lives are too boring and must do something about it…

When we are forced to look and act in a certain way every time because that is what attracted our followers to us…

When we sometimes check out the pages of our friends and former colleagues and they make us wonder which route of life we took…

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When our lives have even been reduced much further through the creation of ‘closed’ groups where we seem to find solace in the arms of people we hardly know…

When we see people in trouble but are concerned about getting their information online than helping them…

When we allow the photos of dead bodies and the manner in which people lost their lives to go viral but, when it comes to a church programme, the last stop for that poster will be our devices…

When we do not care so much about verifying details and the consequences they might have on victims, so far as, we are the first to report that juicy piece of information…

When we do not really care about the emotions of other people but say it anyway, because it will attract a lot of comments and reactions from our friends and followers…

When we ask people to say ‘Amen’ and share posts by putting fear in them…

“Share this to all your contacts or lose that special person in your life.”  

“If you want 1 million dollars, type Amen and share with 5,000 people.” 

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When some of us are shy to declare our faith publicly because of what our friends and followers would say or do?

“Are you a Christian? No, I believe in God but not in organised religion… 

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In this era of social media, it’s really hard to tell who is that genuine friend or brother or sister. The next time we decide to post on social media, remember this:

…“You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of others, but God knows your hearts. What people value highly is detestable in God’s sight. – Luke 16:15