#35: Stay off Facebook for a week (part 2 of 2)

Here’s what happened: Nothing, really. After a few days, after the initial withdrawal, I mostly forgot about Facebook. This was only a week, of course, but after I logged back on, I found that I didn’t miss out on anything major. A few photos had been posted, and a bunch of status updates regarding Christmas had been kindly bundled together for me to review.

Perhaps I sent and received a few more texts and emails than normal this past week, but the fact is that Facebook is not where I go to truly stay connected. It’s where I go to waste time. To stalk, to reminisce, to share my witty reflections of the day. It’s wonderful, but being away from it confirmed that it need not be a permanent part of my daily existence. Maybe just every other day, or every couple.

My dad thinks of Facebook kind of like a community newspaper, where all the articles are written by and are about people you know. And of course, there are all the annoying ads and clutter that go along with all of that. I also think of it as a kind of museum that I curate, where I have control of what is contributed to my permanent collection (photos, status updates, links to things that are of interest to me) – and that my friends curate, too.  And to that end, I try to be a bit more selective and careful about what I post and how often I post. Sometimes, though, I just really want to post another cat video.

Regardless of how we use it or how we think about it, all of us on the other end can passively observe until the moment we run into each other and strangely know a whole lot about what’s going on in our lives. It’s sometimes helpful (in cutting the small talk), sometimes creepy (I didn’t realize you looked at my profile so much!). But now Facebook is so engrained into our vernacular, I guess it’s just not that novel to think so much about what it means for our society, or about all the questions I have about the permanence of our online existence – what happens to our Facebook pages after we die, e.g. That seems too heavy for this blog, anyway.

I did get a lot of work done in the last week. I also made cookies, read more of the news, and finished up some Christmas stuff. I also unsubscribed to every automated email that I knew I would never read, which was a lot. It all felt good. But I’m happy to return to that little universe that is filled with some of my favorite people and places, with a little more will power to resist the urge to check in so often.

Where I checked in on Saturday morning - instead of Facebook.