Be Here Now

Back many moons ago, I had a boss with “BHereNow” as her vanity license plate. Being young, dumb and right out of high school, I did not understand the meaning of that until more recently. Now I wish I would have had the chance to talk to her more about that, to really understand what that meant to her. But I think that was part of God’s plan. I was supposed to figure it out for myself. Someone else’s life experiences can help me along my path but ultimately I need to learn my own lessons and apply the truth to my walk.

All this to say that Lent 2025 is suddenly upon us. I cannot fathom how fast this year has gone already! I decided to join my bestie and give up social media for the month (also Diet Coke, but that’s a whole other blog post). It is so sad to see how many times I have picked up my phone just on the first day without and realized I had nothing to do. As a mom of littles it has become a distraction for when things get hard. I can just open Instagram, scroll and not have to deal with parenting when I really need to be. Opening that app has become a habit, a bad habit.

I’m already two days in (ha!) and I want this to be more of a permanent change. But that is such a struggle when you own a small fledgling business. Everybody and their brother tells you that social is the only way to advertise because it’s free and the only thing anyone pays attention to anymore. I have always struggled with taking this advice. We are so overly connected that we are actually the loneliest we have ever been as a society. There has been so much research done about how social media is affecting us and I haven’t seen one good outcome. It’s all fake. And I don’t want to have anything to do with fake.

Now that I have deleted Instagram off my phone, I plan to do some updates old school - on my desktop computer! I’m thinking that this will be a healthy boundary that I can set and stick with for the long term. I would also like to dedicate more time to my email list, which I apologize, has been mostly ignored up to this point. I only have so much time in a day and I think I need to switch up my priorities. Social media is all consumption driven, so let’s shake it up. I envision sending emails with specials, recipes, new blog posts and events that are happening in our local area.

I want Hickory Homestead to be a thriving community, but one that thrives in real life! I have a passion for local everything, which is hard for anyone to do these days. Not much is produced truly locally anymore, and life at break-neck speed makes it hard to support the local options we do have. But I would like to be able to offer a baby step in the right direction. And this baby step would be for me too! I am no where near the local consumer that I would dream of being.

So I plan to use the reduced time on social to send more emails out and create the kind of content that I think you would enjoy and expand the community building aspect of Hickory Homestead. Our tag line isn’t just fluff, we really want to build a community around the table. The table is where family comes together to share life; the ups, the downs and the in between. We need a real life community for that.

To “Be Here Now” requires a rebel spirit. Let’s build this rebel spirit and see where it takes us together as a community!