Our family spent a few days on a ranch just after the New Year. My uncle organized the event, which included my parents, cousins, a couple of extra aunts and uncles and our Nana.

It was a blast. Well, that might be an overstatement – little sleep was had, kids were off schedule, we over ate sugar and sugary drinks, at least one argument happened, and perhaps compromises of parenting skills took place {I’ll meekly raise my hand to that}.

While we were there, I overheard someone mention coffee. Always one to jump at a cup of coffee, I asked if a pot was brewing. My cousins all laughed and one even joked “Every morning I get on facebook, I look to see how many miles Sarah has run and how much coffee she’s had. What’s that? She’s run 16 miles and had 4 cups of coffee.”

We all got a good laugh. And he’s right, if you looked at my facebook updates, they are almost always about running, coffee, or something mildly entertaining {actually, I really hope that people find my updates hilarious}.

Here’s the thing :

My facebook updates aren’t my real life. 

Sure, I ran 16 miles. Sure, I drank 4 cups of coffee. Sure, I might have said something witty.

But that’s the Best of Sarah. You don’t see the nitty gritty. You aren’t seeing the failures, the mess ups, the heartaches. After all, that doesn’t make for great social media {in my opinion}. What makes for great social media is triumph. Laughing in the face of obstacles. Victory.

As I’ve spent the last several months quietly sitting back, letting the blogging and social media world get a few steps ahead of me, I’ve realized something – I’m comparing my worse to everyone’s perfect.

I’ve heard people talk about this a lot. How you can’t compare your behind the scenes with other people’s highlight reels. It is so, so true. But I’ve been doing that a lot lately. And I’ve learned something from it.

1. I get really bitter over failing to meet “expectations”.

2. I will never meet “expectations”.

I’ve been threatening for some time to get rid of social media all together. To burn our computer to the ground and toss out my iPhone in an effort to get rid of those “expectations”. But those things aren’t my hang up. My hang up is that I forget the people behind the status updates are real. I forget that they, just like me, are showing their highlight reels. I forget that I’m comparing my worse to everyone’s perfect.

And when I remember that, that the people on my computer are real and fail just like me, I can sit back and enjoy the highlights.