My #30perfectdays experiment is over. I am sure many of my Facebook friends are happy (if they haven’t already blocked me) but I really miss it.

The experiment was to post some highlights from my life every single day for 30 days. To find something positive, something that made me smile, or something that I accomplished. This to try to move the focus away from what is hard right now and to remind myself that there are plenty of positive things in my life. We are going through a rough period because our little boy has reflux and is often in quite a lot of pain and struggles sleeping. As a result of that we are sleep deprived, stressed and at times exhausted.

I really didn’t think I would manage to post something every day when I started. To my big surprise there were days I had too many things to post and I found myself trying to just pick out few. There were other days where I didn’t have an awful lot to post but there was always something positive.

I am convinced that this little effort of mine really saved our vacation from being a disaster. We can now look back on lots of photos from what we did. We will remember the play and beauty and not the crying and the sleep deprivation. I must admit that the photos didn’t always help me on the days when there was crying and frustration but they always made me look back on the previous day in a much more positive light.

It is hard to evaluate how my photo stream looked to others. I am however pretty sure I would have gotten a bit jealous of myself had I been watching it as an observer. The lesson I am trying to teach myself is that happy photos don’t automatically equate to a perfect life. A kid might have gotten a tantrum right after the most idealistic photo. A nice island trip might have been a bit colder than planned because someone forgot to pack the warm water for the cocoa but instead remembered to pack themselves a beer… You get the picture 😉 .

Another observation from this experiment of mine is that my kids are an infinite source of joy for me despite them draining me at times. It is wonderful to observe my four-year-old imagination and to see how much joy they are already getting from each other. The glorious smiles I get from my little boy when he is not in pain (or overtired) are worth gold. The excessive posting of kids photos probably drove some of my Facebook friends insane but I will consider that I was doing them a favor by giving them something to bitch about. Lets just be honest about it, we all have couple of Facebook friend which annoy us beyond means with their posts yet we don’t remove them because we secretly like to bitch about them.

So if you are ever going through a rough patch of some sort and worry that your vacation might suffer, give this experiment a try. Post something positive and look back at it the day after and see if it made the previous day look better. If so continue! The only warning of advice is not to get to hung up on getting likes. It is easy to get addicted and put too much focus on that.

All my photos and some of the stories behind them are below but are better viewed on my Instagram feed. I even managed to post some selfies! I think I posted twice as many photos with myself in these 30 days as I have done in my entire Instagram lifetime. Scary stuff! Who knows maybe I will one day be posting selfies with pouty lips…