Jason McFadden

A few months ago, I summarized my summer as one that was very anxious. Now I’m wondering how to best summarize my entire year. If I had to describe it in a single word, I’m not sure what it would be.

For me, although there are many positive highlights and things to be grateful for, 2017 has been one of my most difficult and stressful years ever.

This year brought a lot of potential changes for the better, but they were very stressful transitions and situations. And they all happened about the same time, which compounded their effect:

Recently I was bit by the shutterbug again! Being outside and collecting pecans, the vivid fall colors of the leaves caught my eyes. So I tried taking some photos to capture their beauty. I’m not saying I succeeded, but I enjoyed it none the less.

When I thought about sharing my pictures of late, I wondered if Flickr was still a good site to use. Short answer: I think it is!

I downloaded the Flickr app to my iPhone and iPad and visited the website, started a new account, and uploaded a sunset I happened to catch on my way home from work the other day.

After all these years and changes, Flickr is still a great place to enjoy photography with others. There’s still no other site quite like it. And I hope it stays that way.

One thing I’ve always enjoyed about Flickr is using its camera finder to see which cameras are the most popular. And a big trend was just re-confirmed. Flickr announced their 2017 year in review, and smartphones (shouldn’t we just call them smartcams now?) are the dominant camera type used by millions to capture and share their pictures online.

As much as I like the picture quality you get from DSLR cameras, the good-enough quality combined with the always-with-you convenience of a smartcam works best for me.

My iPhone 6 is my trusty camera with a built-in phone for calling a friend. Try holding up a Canon 5D Mark III to your ear and phoning someone. OK never-mind. Kidding.

If you enjoy photography but haven’t tried Flickr, give it a shot (pun not intended)! And maybe connect with me there too.

A notion struck me about a year ago. I don’t know if it could be called an epiphany or not. But it was like the movie Inception; an idea seemed to be deeply planted into the core of my being. It moved me to make some changes in my life, including one of the biggest: moving to a new home. The idea was: “enough.”

Before the idea of enough took hold of me, I thought that moving to less of something meant…settling for less, sacrificing my current level of comfort. And who wants to lower their standard of living when you could have more!?

I thought the idea of less would mean giving up things I was holding onto. I had an aversion to loss; I just couldn’t let go of some things I had or even things I wanted to attain. The idea of owning less seemed inconvenient and impractical; it made me feel uncomfortable.

Instead of having less, I thought the opposite – I would need more!

But in the end, thinking about the idea of enough caused me to see things differently. I began to realize that fewer things, possessing older or simpler things, could still meet all my needs…sufficiently.

Fewer things and older things are not lesser things; they are enough!

What I thought was less was actually enough. Knowing that, I became able to freely let go of the many better things I was holding onto without feeling loss or fear.

With that big turn-around, I felt a calming freedom, a kind of contentment, which allowed me to make a bold move to a new home. Only it was really an old home! It wasn’t necessarily a lesser home, just an older home. Not only that, it was a smaller home, but still, not a lesser home. In fact, it was enough home for us.

My wife and I with our 5 sons moved from our 1,500 sq ft home into a 1,200 sq ft home. We went from having two bathrooms to sharing only one – without even a bathtub for our 2-year old! Scary…but it works. Although difficult sometimes, it’s enough!

Don’t let what you want get in the way of what you need.

There are other big examples too. We need mobile transportation from point A to point B. We want the newest nicest car. Because for some reason a 5 year old used car isn’t quite as shiny even though it runs great. We need mobile communication to and from others. We want the latest fanciest iPhone. Because somehow anything less just isn’t enough to make phone calls and texts.

And because the fancy car and amazing phone cost too much, suddenly we don’t have enough money! Really? So then we finance or subsidize, hoping that we somehow will have enough money in the future, month after month, year after year of payments.

If you can sort out your needs from your wants, things start getting simpler. Not lesser. Simpler isn’t lesser. In fact, simpler is usually better.

What’s better really, to get more or be content with what you already have? We can look at what we have and be thankful and content. Or we can look at what we don’t have and think we don’t have enough, which means living in discontentment. This makes the things you already own (and could be enjoying) become disregarded and then discarded.

Just because you say, “No” to more doesn’t necessarily mean your saying “Yes” to less. Rather, you’re realizing that what you already possess is enough.

In a materialistic consumer culture, contentment is hard to come by. Like happiness, you can’t buy it in a store. If that were possible, I’d order it on Amazon with next-day shipping instead of 2-day shipping.

But haven’t we consumed enough?

Several weeks ago, I found myself once again mindlessly scrolling the Facebook Newsfeed with my thumb, glancing blankly at each passing post. I had opened the app for a specific reason but somehow got distracted, forgetting what I was there for. I’m sure you’ve heard of this habitual phenomenon before; it happens often.

I got frustrated by it, snapped out of my mindless scrolling, and decided to try and put an end to it once and for all – without deleting or deactivating my Facebook account.

So what did I do? I did what many people, myself included, have done before. I simply tailored my newsfeed by unfollowing (in other words, decluttering) people. But there was one big difference this time. I pushed it to the limits!

I decided to try and see what would happen if I unfollowed everybody – including my own wife! I wondered, would the algorithm show me anything? Would there still be ads?

I figured I’d give it a shot and then slowly re-follow some people one at a time. Basically, I would start my newsfeed over with a fresh clean slate and then build it back to a cleaner and leaner…source of distraction – I mean information, right?

Unfollowing everybody worked! It’s been over a month now and my newsfeed distraction problem is solved.

Much of the time, my newsfeed is literally blank! Sometimes, I will see only the last few of my own posts. And once in a while there is an ad. The only other posts I will see are the occasional ones Facebook promotes like Memories. There are usually 4 posts or less, so there’s nothing to scroll through on auto-pilot.

I figured I would re-follow some people, but because my newsfeed is so clutter free and since I have really enjoyed being released from the mindless scrolling distraction, I decided to not add anyone back to follow.

So if you’re tired of being distracted and want to escape some of the digital clutter of your social media, give it a try; unfollow everyone!

Here’s a few other points to consider: You will still be friends. You can still just look up your friends on their Timeline to see how they’re doing. You can still message them. You will still get notifications from friends if you want to. And no one will know that you unfollowed them; Facebook doesn’t notify others of unfollows.

After you unfollow everyone and see what it’s like, you can decide whether to add anyone back to follow and slowly rebuild your simplified newsfeed. Or you can just keep it as minimal as possible – keep everyone unfollowed.

After a long hiatus, I’m dusting off the Jason Journals site. Blogging is something you’re supposed to do consistently if you want regular readers. Well I might say I’m consistently inconsistent. But my absence from the blog over the summer has been due to more than my usual on-and-off interest in the blog-o-sphere.

I’ve had a lot of things going on this year – big changes – which brought a lot of stress! And then in May, I started having anxiety attacks. The short story is I’ve been wrestling with anxiety off and on for about the past 5 months.

Even though I’m not out of the woods yet, I seem to be better. So I’d like to get back to blogging since it’s something I enjoy. I might blog about my journey with anxiety, but I’m not sure I’m ready to do that.

Personally, I have found private journaling to be helpful in processing the challenges that I have faced. Stepping back and observing my anxieties objectively through the tool of writing seems kind of therapeutic.

Publicly, if I journal some of my thoughts concerning “excessive concern” here on Jason Journals, then maybe whoever reads my blog will be able to relate and be helped somehow.

I know there are many people who suffer from anxiety; I never thought I’d be one of them. But soon after my initial anxiety attacks, I found myself suddenly being very empathetic toward those who, like me, have wrestled with debilitating anxiety.

So I guess I’ll see how it goes for now. Thankfully, I do have other things on my mind besides anxious thoughts that I’d like to write about. I’ll try not to worry or stress over it.

Shutterbug – an amateur photographer, especially one who isgreatly devoted to the hobby; a photographer, esp. anenthusiastic amateur.

I think this definition from Dictionary.com is apt. I can’t call myself a photographer (sounds too much like a pro photog) without being more specific.

Amateur, devoted, hobbyist, enthusiast…I think they more or less have the right focal point. (Yep. I did that.)

A photo I took of a single Texas Bluebonnet with bugs on it is the picture that made me become a shutterbug.

To others, this image is nothing special. But to me, it was seminal; it had a big impact on my life. We all have these kinds of experiences in life: an event, a circumstance, a person…somehow they can be special turning points.

So how or why did this single photograph, Bluebonnet Bugs, cause me to focus on photography?

Twelve years ago today, I took this photo with my still new first digital camera (Canon PowerShot A400.) The simple key benefits of digital cameras with instant image feedback and capacity for thousands of photos on one reusable roll of film called an SD Card enabled this in the first place. This made photography accessible; it was easier to practice.

Yet what happened in this particular photo opened my eyes to see God’s creation more than before.

So, I took this photo because Bluebonnets are pretty and rare; they only stay in bloom a few weeks of the year. Plus, I noticed the bright red bug on the flower. Vivid red color juxtaposed on vivid blue color! It was simply eye-catching, worthy of snapping it with my then new digi-cam.

But what happened after I took the picture was what really gave me a vision for photography.

When I reviewed the picture on the back of the camera and zoomed in, to my great surprise and delight, I saw what I had totally missed before: a second cooler looking green bug!

This kind of shocked me because it seemed so obvious, yet I somehow overlooked this neat piece of creation that was right in front of me!

That is what made me appreciate and pursue photography. It taught me to slow down, look around, and see…to notice the wonder and beauty of God’s creation in a new and deeper way!

Many people enjoy landscapes, those breath-taking grand vistas, like sunsets, that hardly can go unnoticed. But there is a microcosm of God’s glory right under our noses full of interesting details to behold.

Yes, the heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork (Psalm 19:1).

But he also made miniature marvels, and he gave us macro lenses to capture and wonder at them and in turn know he is wonderful.

Rich Mullins said it best,

“You fill this world with wonders and I’m, filled with the wonder of your world.”

It may seem a bit counter-intuitive at first, that “more than enough” is not “enough.” How can that be? I mean, if you have more than enough, then you surely have enough, plus more! That makes sense.

My point is more…strict, for lack of a better word. In math terms, let’s say “enough” is equal to one. Then “more than enough” is equal to any number greater than one, two for example. And two is not one; it’s two!

Why strain at such a distinction? Well, hopefully to make a good point. I’m trying to distinctly ask the helpful question, “How much is enough?” The answer is classic: Enough Is Enough. So “more than enough” is not enough.

A dumb phone may be a smart idea. “Too smart for your own good.” Maybe that should apply to our current age of gadgets like smartphones and tablets. Just 10 years ago, before the iPhone, the flip phone or feature phone was the smartest phone on the block. Now we call them dumb phones.