This week I took part in an annual social media challenge that I’ve participated in the past four years. The Instagram challenge called #onedayhh was started by writer and podcaster Laura Tremaine several years ago and challenges participants to share one normal day in their life, hour by hour.
Having participated the past few years, the return of this “day in the life” challenge presented an opportunity to reflect on the years past. As I scrolled down my Instagram profile to the first challenge I had participated in back in 2016, it was a perfectly captured record of normal life at that time.
I was working from home in a previous job, editing a podcast I used to host, taking my oldest child to preschool and visiting with my friends whose kids were at the same preschool as we picked them up at the end of their school day. My second child was an infant and the third child hadn’t even hit our radar yet. In four years, a great many things about my life have shifted and changed.
Gradually, over the next three years, I was able to see things shift and change, stepping from then to now. I was reminded of places I once frequented that have fallen off my radar and recipes I’d forgotten. Life can move really quickly and, while it’s easy and normal to let some of those simple things fade away, sometimes it’s nice to remember.
As I participated in this year’s challenge, I was struck by what I noticed that would typically pass me by on any other normal day. I paid more attention to the rhythm of my day and how it made me feel. What activities or people were energizing and what wore me down? What was similar to a year ago and what had changed? I noticed the way my children looked right in this moment, recognizing that they will look and be different in a year. I paused to be grateful for a spouse that is so giving, friends that make me laugh and a workplace that I enjoy.
Colleen Cook works full-time as the Director of Operations at Vinyl Marketing in Ashland, where she resides with her husband Mike and three young daughters. She’s an insatiable extrovert who enjoys finding reasons to gather people.
Throughout the day, I was enthralled with devouring the feed of other people posting their normal days all over the world. The rhythms of families getting ready in the morning, dealing with messy kitchens, running errands, workdays, makeup routines, bedtime and screens, all so similar to my own life.
We live in an age that cultivates beauty and puts our best face forward. We clear out the mess and stage the photo and filter the fine lines and portray our best selves for others, which is good and fine to do. But, there is something of value in, even for just one day, pulling back the curtain and showing that our normal is just like everyone else’s. That we’re all in this together.
There’s a camaraderie in it all, something unifying about all of us going about our normal lives in parallel motion. There’s a fascination in where the differences lie, an appreciation in what makes us unique or different, and an embrace in what makes us all the same regardless of wealth, race or family. When it’s all said and done, we all have far more in common than not.
