I think with the baby coming, I want to be a little more offline while somehow posting more.
I know that sounds contradictory, but hear me out.
I want to share my journey into motherhood because I’m sure I’m not going to do everything “right.” I’m going to make mistakes. I’m going to learn as I go, and I think there’s value in being honest about that. At the same time, I don’t really want my daughter growing up online. I want to protect her privacy for as long as I can.
I’ve realized I really admire content creators who make family or parenting content without making their children the content. The parents are the personalities, not the kids. Their children aren’t expected to perform for the camera or grow up with strangers watching every milestone.
My goal is to be more like that.
If, one day when she’s older, she tells me she wants to be in a video or be part of a post, that’s a conversation we can have when she’s actually old enough to understand what that means. But until then, I want that choice to be hers.
And I don’t mean the trend of filming your kid anyway and just covering their face with an emoji. If I don’t want her online, then I don’t want her online. My content can be me sitting down at the end of the week talking about what motherhood has been like, sharing what I’ve learned, telling funny stories, or doing dramatically over-the-top reenactments of whatever chaos happened that day. Honestly, those reenactments might end up being funnier than the actual footage ever would have been.
That creates a weird balancing act.
I’ve been thinking about switching back to using my actual cameras instead of my phone for photos and videos. Part of it is privacy. Between Meta, Google, and just about every app asking for access to your camera roll, it makes me uncomfortable. I know there are settings and ways to limit that, but if I’m trying to create content while also keeping my daughter’s photos private, I’d constantly be sorting through what stays personal and what gets apps have access to.
Unless I bought a second phone just for content—which feels incredibly excessive.
Instead, I already own two cameras that deserve a lot more love than they’ve gotten: my Canon Rebel T5 and my Canon PowerShot G7 X Mark II. I bought the G7 X back in 2014 when I decided I was going to become a YouTuber. Life happened, I never fully committed, and both cameras are still in nearly perfect condition.
Maybe this is finally their time.
There’s another reason I want to do this, though.
I want physical memories.
My mom made photo albums for me. My grandpa had albums full of pictures of my mom. My stepdad has boxes of old digital camera photos and enough camcorder footage to embarrass all of us for years to come.
And I love that.
He wasn’t the type to take 200 pictures trying to find the perfect one. He’d snap a photo, maybe two, and move on. The memories mattered more than perfect lighting or editing.
For a long time, I was like that too.
I’d take goofy pictures. Blurry pictures. Random videos that nobody else would understand but that made me smile every time I watched them.
Then an ex told me that I never let myself “live in the moment” because I always had a camera in my hand.
And I believed him.
Without realizing it, I stopped documenting my life.
That insecurity followed me into my relationship with Hector. In the beginning, he wasn’t the biggest fan of having his picture taken, so I figured maybe I should just stop asking.
Eventually… I stopped bringing my camera altogether.
It wasn’t something I consciously decided. It just happened.
One year, I talked nonstop about wanting one of those little Polaroid printers that connects to your phone. Hector surprised me with one for Christmas because he knew how excited I’d been about it.
Then he noticed something.
I wasn’t printing photos.
I wasn’t really taking photos at all.
Sure, I’d occasionally pull out my phone, but I wasn’t documenting our dates or our little adventures the way I used to.
I don’t think I realized how much that one comment from years ago had changed me until then.
It’s something I’m still trying to unlearn.
That feeling hit me again earlier this month when my niece turned three.
I didn’t take a single picture at her birthday party.
Normally, I’m the unofficial family photographer. Nobody asks me to do it—I just always have. I capture everyone else enjoying the day while I quietly document it all.
But this time…
I just didn’t.
I wasn’t feeling up to it, and afterward I felt awful.
It made me stop and think: if I’m already letting moments like this slip away, what happens when my own child gets here?
I don’t want to look back and realize I have more screenshots than family photos.
I don’t want to have thousands of pictures sitting in a cloud somewhere that I never print.
I want albums.
I want videos she can laugh at when she’s twenty-five.
I want blurry pictures from trips to the zoo, sticky fingers covered in ice cream, first-day-of-school photos, Halloween costumes, and random Tuesday afternoons.
I don’t need every moment to become content.
Some moments deserve to stay ours.
So I think I’m going back to carrying a camera everywhere.
Not because I want perfect photos.
Because I want a life that’s remembered.
