George Clooney\u2019s Rules For Living<\/a><\/p>\nI\u2019ve been putting together the pictures for our annual family calendar over the past week or so. I\u2019ve taken fewer pictures in the past 12 months than I had done in previous years. By a pretty significant margin. And I\u2019ve taken only a handful of videos with my iPhone and can\u2019t remember the last time I took out our actual video camera.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t think that\u2019s unusual. Most parents go overboard with kid #1 and slowly scale back the pictures and videos as they have more kids, the kids get older and add more activities to the family\u2019s schedule. It\u2019s one thing to sit around with one kid who is learning to roll over and snap a dozen pics. It\u2019s another to try to remember to take out your camera when one kid is doing something cute, another is screaming in her bedroom, and you have to get everyone out the door to pick up the third from a playdate.<\/p>\n
I feel a little guilty about that, but I was never a parent who wanted to document every second of my children\u2019s lives. There\u2019s a part of my brain that thinks it\u2019s a good thing to scale back how much imagery we take in of our kids.<\/p>\n
It seems like everyone has their phones or cameras out at any public event, doing their best to record the moment. And their eyes are pointed not at the field or the dais, but at their screens to make sure the image is framed properly. And, thus, we end up missing the actual moment while we\u2019re trying to preserve it.<\/p>\n
It feels like we should flip that equation. Pay more attention to what is happening so we have the memory burned in deep. Maybe hold up a camera or phone and point it in the general direction, but our eyes should be focused on our kid, the guy in the batter\u2019s box, or the candidate behind the podium.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m sure I\u2019ll regret not taking pictures of certain events down the road. But I\u2019m also not going to sweat it anymore. We have a ton of pics of our girls. I want those photos to jog my memory of those moments, not make me think of how hard I had to work to get the lighting just right that day. Or, as Clooney said, I want us to live those times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Forgive me as I link to one thing and then take it in a completely different direction. Esquire has a terrific profile of George Clooney in the December issue. I\u2019ve always been a big fan; he seems like the kind of guy you would almost be happy stole your girlfriend from you. \u201cSo what happened with you and Jane?\u201d \u201cOh, she\u2019s dating Clooney now. But I\u2019m totally cool with it. He\u2019s really much better for her. And he\u2019s been inviting me over to play hoops, so it all worked out for the best.\u201d Anyway, I found this quote rather interesting. At his villa on Lake Como, he has had, as his houseguests, everyone from Al Gore to Walter Cronkite to Kofi Annan, and still he insists that \u201cat dinner, everyone put the phones away. And so there are not a lot of photos of our times there. Because I want us to live them.\u201d George Clooney\u2019s Rules For Living I\u2019ve been putting together the pictures for our annual family calendar over the past week or so. I\u2019ve taken fewer pictures in the past 12 months than I had done in previous years. By a pretty significant margin. And I\u2019ve taken only a handful of videos with my iPhone and can\u2019t remember the last time I took out our actual video camera. I don\u2019t think that\u2019s unusual. Most parents go overboard with kid #1 and slowly scale back the pictures and videos as they have more kids, the kids get older and add more activities to the family\u2019s schedule. It\u2019s one thing to sit around with one kid who is learning to roll over and snap a dozen pics. It\u2019s another to try to remember to take out your camera when one kid is doing something cute, another is screaming in her bedroom, and you have to get everyone out the door to pick up the third from a playdate. I feel a little guilty about that, but I was never a parent who wanted to document every second of my children\u2019s lives. There\u2019s a part of my brain that thinks it\u2019s a good thing to scale back how much imagery we take in of our kids. It seems like everyone has their phones or cameras out at any public event, doing their best to record the moment. And their eyes are pointed not at the field or the dais, but at their screens to make sure the image is framed properly. And, thus, we end up missing the actual moment while we\u2019re trying to preserve it. It feels like we should flip that equation. Pay more attention to what is happening so we have the memory burned in deep. Maybe hold up a camera or phone and point it in the general direction, but our eyes should be focused on our kid, the guy in the batter\u2019s box, or the candidate behind the podium. I\u2019m sure I\u2019ll regret not taking pictures of certain events down the road. But I\u2019m also not going to sweat it anymore. We have a ton of pics of our girls. I want those photos to jog my memory of those moments, not make me think of how hard I had to work to get the lighting just right that day. Or, as Clooney said, I want us to live those times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[26,19,14],"class_list":["post-2966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-family","tag-links","tag-parenting"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2966"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2966\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14401,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2966\/revisions\/14401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}