Becoming automated in our thinking is typically not a good thing. Life is dynamic and so should our thought life be.
Facebook requires some thought, but it also has created in me what I call the facebook flinch. It's that uncontrollable desire to check facebook. You hit buttons without even knowing you hit facebook. It's like a little addiction.
Facebook knows this. Now that I've been off facebook, the social media site wants me back. I just received an email from facebook trying to tell me what I am missing. It felt (because of this journey) like they were an after school special drug dealer saying, "Hey kid, you want to get high...all your friends are doing it...come on kid, just one hit!"
I had to resist the urge to hit their link so I could see what I am missing.
So, removing the facebook flinch is difficult, but it can be done. Try it today!
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Of Dodgeball and Spilling the Milk
Within the middle of a facebook hibernation, I've become painfully aware of a fear all children share: Not being picked for kickball!
Being off facebook kind of recreates those feelings of inadequacy. Now, I was never the last kid picked, no matter where you were in the picking order, you can always imagine. Picking teams is always telling and it was always scary.
In many ways I feel that by being off of facebook, I am being picked last. I get no little thumbs ups. I get no clever comments. I barely get personal emails anymore, so what do I have!?! I have texts.
I have never been a text message connoisseur, but now I love texts. They are like gold little nuggets on my phone. What's cool about this is that texts are from people who usually really know you. It's rare that I get random texts from people I barely talk to. Texts are from the peeps who you know deeper...so for me, that's cool.
But being without facebook also kind of makes you feel like you just spilled milk on your crouch at the cafeteria. You don't know what to do. Do you move? Do you stay? How do you survive your life when everyone is talking about you...or in this case, not talking about you or to you?
It's lonesome at times, but it is also healthy. It is healthy to leave the superficialness of dodgeball and spilled milk. It's healthy to see that you have worth way beyond an electronic thumbs up. It's healthy to lose yourself in worthwhile endeavors and not wonder what you are missing every second of the day.
Being off facebook kind of recreates those feelings of inadequacy. Now, I was never the last kid picked, no matter where you were in the picking order, you can always imagine. Picking teams is always telling and it was always scary.
In many ways I feel that by being off of facebook, I am being picked last. I get no little thumbs ups. I get no clever comments. I barely get personal emails anymore, so what do I have!?! I have texts.
I have never been a text message connoisseur, but now I love texts. They are like gold little nuggets on my phone. What's cool about this is that texts are from people who usually really know you. It's rare that I get random texts from people I barely talk to. Texts are from the peeps who you know deeper...so for me, that's cool.
But being without facebook also kind of makes you feel like you just spilled milk on your crouch at the cafeteria. You don't know what to do. Do you move? Do you stay? How do you survive your life when everyone is talking about you...or in this case, not talking about you or to you?
It's lonesome at times, but it is also healthy. It is healthy to leave the superficialness of dodgeball and spilled milk. It's healthy to see that you have worth way beyond an electronic thumbs up. It's healthy to lose yourself in worthwhile endeavors and not wonder what you are missing every second of the day.
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
7 days of utopia?
It's been seven days since starting my 30 day facebook hibernation. Am I still alive? Yes!
So, what has it been like? It's been fantastically awesome most of the time, but I have bumped into many challenges. I'll start by sharing some challenges in this post and save the positives for another post.
The hardest part of not being on facebook is that I don't have access to 1000 opinions when I want opinions. It may sound silly, but I've come to rely on listening to facebook friends on a myriad of topics. For example, I've been exploring grad school. I know people would have an opinion on that topic. I have some questions and would like a myriad of perspectives. On facebook I'd simply throw a question out there and then capture a ton of opinions and do my best to make a wise decision. With facebook that's easy. Without it...well, it's harder.
I've come to rely on mining for balance through the sometime extreme views of my friends on facebook.
What I've found is that if you have enough people weigh in on something, somewhere in the middle of the thought train a nugget of truth emerges. I'm not trying to say that everyone's extreme on facebook, but facebook lends itself to people being showing off their extreme side. Let's be honest, very few people are on facebook to be subtle.
My next challenge comes in that I have no idea what people are doing. This is a blessing in some ways, but I have felt a little bummed when someone says, "Oh, that's right...you didn't know...I posted that I inherited the lottery and gave $1000 to the first 100 people to give me a thumbs up...sorry you missed it man."
I've also learned that my brain is programed to click on the blue and white facebook app box on my phone and my facebook link in my browser. Boredom is my trigger , to click and check. This is a hard habit to break and to be honest, I have clicked by accident. In my near automatic state I've even seen the little red bubbles telling me that someone mentioned my name or wrote something to me...I can do nothing and I will do nothing. I stay legit and close the app or the page quickly and move on. In fact, I have not read a status update at all. Each day I am getting stronger at not having a blue button accident.
Ok, that's enough for today...7 days....
P.S.
So, what has it been like? It's been fantastically awesome most of the time, but I have bumped into many challenges. I'll start by sharing some challenges in this post and save the positives for another post.
The hardest part of not being on facebook is that I don't have access to 1000 opinions when I want opinions. It may sound silly, but I've come to rely on listening to facebook friends on a myriad of topics. For example, I've been exploring grad school. I know people would have an opinion on that topic. I have some questions and would like a myriad of perspectives. On facebook I'd simply throw a question out there and then capture a ton of opinions and do my best to make a wise decision. With facebook that's easy. Without it...well, it's harder.
I've come to rely on mining for balance through the sometime extreme views of my friends on facebook.
What I've found is that if you have enough people weigh in on something, somewhere in the middle of the thought train a nugget of truth emerges. I'm not trying to say that everyone's extreme on facebook, but facebook lends itself to people being showing off their extreme side. Let's be honest, very few people are on facebook to be subtle.
My next challenge comes in that I have no idea what people are doing. This is a blessing in some ways, but I have felt a little bummed when someone says, "Oh, that's right...you didn't know...I posted that I inherited the lottery and gave $1000 to the first 100 people to give me a thumbs up...sorry you missed it man."
I've also learned that my brain is programed to click on the blue and white facebook app box on my phone and my facebook link in my browser. Boredom is my trigger , to click and check. This is a hard habit to break and to be honest, I have clicked by accident. In my near automatic state I've even seen the little red bubbles telling me that someone mentioned my name or wrote something to me...I can do nothing and I will do nothing. I stay legit and close the app or the page quickly and move on. In fact, I have not read a status update at all. Each day I am getting stronger at not having a blue button accident.
Ok, that's enough for today...7 days....
P.S.
Monday, January 2, 2012
Facebook Hibernation
Today is day one of my hibernation from facebook. It's been long overdue.
You see, I started facebook in 2007 and in many ways haven't looked back. Sure, I was skeptical at first. I was even a mocker of the concept. In fact, I saw the early adopters of facebook like those obsessed people who play wizardy role playing games online. You know the type. They spend nearly 6 months out of a full calendar year earning points so they can have a bigger sword to slay the ogre-dwarf. They have a community, oops, a guild, that they chat with on their fancy headphones deep into the early a.m. hours. You see, I saw facebook like that. It wasn't what everybody was doing. It was what sensitive people who needed validation were doing. But I was wrong!
In the blink of an eye, I turned around and soon facebook was the tickle-me-elmo of the internet world. Everyone had to have a facebook account. People were abandoning myspace by the droves. In fact, if you even had a myspace account people thought you were either A) out of it, or B) kind of creepy.
I never wanted to be labeled as either of those things, so I jumped off of myspace and explored the world of facebook.
I can't remember for sure, but I believe my first post was something sarcastic like, "I'm important. You should know what I'm doing, who I'm doing it with, and what I'm doing it for at all times." I thought my comment was kind of funny, but in a matter of seconds, I realized that what I said basically slammed everyone's posts! Nobody thought it was funny. I was making light of what other people had created as their whole world. This was their life. Facebook was their community. People actually cared what other people were doing at all times. In what felt like an instant, I could tell my comment made me a loser in the facebook world!
I had to change my tone fast! I started to be more serious with facebook. I started to post what I was doing...and what I wasn't doing. People seemed to care. I liked that people cared (still do). I would check my facebook like my 5 email accounts (we all have at least 5 don't we?). I would look once a day. This worked for my 150 friends. It was enough. But soon, I began adding more friends. Each day was like a class reunion. Nay, it was like a school reunion. Nay, it was like a life reunion. I was looking at people that I hadn't seen in years. And they were looking at me. They could see whatever I posted and I could see what they posted. It was like a glorious stream of randomness that in some strange way made sense...kind of. I at least tried to make it make sense because to everyone else it seemed to make perfect sense.
In 2009, my facebook world changed again. I got an iphone. Now facebook was in the palm of my hands all the time. It was so much easier than being at a computer. Now I could check facebook all the time! Yes! It was just what I always needed. Let's face it. Many apps on the iphone get boring (I-AM-T-Pain excluded), but facebook never gets old. Every day there's a fresh slice of randomness from people all over the place who I call my facebook friends (my guild).
So, all the above to simply say that here I am today, 4 years later, taking my first 30 day hibernation from facebook. Why do I call it a hibernation? Because it's not permanent. It's for a season.
Eventually, I'll wake up from my slumber from social media, but for now I want to be lost in a world where I am not looking at my phone 35 times a day. I want to focus on something without feeling I'm missing something. I want to see how I would invest the time I am given each day without the allure of facebook. I want to wake up and not feel like I need to see what everybody else did with their evening. I want to focus on stillness. I want to focus on simplicity. I want to write something substantial. Mostly, I want to cleanse the mind and see the world from another angle. It's funny, but by going facebookless, I feel like I am heading into the antique roadshow. It's as if I'm going to a place of old-timey, Norman-Rockwellesque, mystique. Who knows what I'll find? I have no clue. But I feel like it will be well worth the journey. Almost like finding that little old lamp that has been sitting in grandmas attic that someone was going to throw away only to find out that its worth $10,000 dollars.
I'll post on this blog as I go along. I will not post this blog on facebook as it defeats the purpose of hibernation. I will write my thoughts on a world without facebook, what's good about facebook, what's not-so-good for me about facebook, and probably process things without really knowing what I'm trying to process. I am not trying to say that facebook is not a worthwhile endeavor and I am not critiquing folks who are on facebook 24/7. This is for me. Maybe you think a facebook hibernation is crazy - that's ok! Maybe you think it's what you need to experience too - that's ok! If it is the latter, join me. I'd love to hear how you come out on the other side of your hibernation.
With that, here I go - facebook-less for 30 days!
You see, I started facebook in 2007 and in many ways haven't looked back. Sure, I was skeptical at first. I was even a mocker of the concept. In fact, I saw the early adopters of facebook like those obsessed people who play wizardy role playing games online. You know the type. They spend nearly 6 months out of a full calendar year earning points so they can have a bigger sword to slay the ogre-dwarf. They have a community, oops, a guild, that they chat with on their fancy headphones deep into the early a.m. hours. You see, I saw facebook like that. It wasn't what everybody was doing. It was what sensitive people who needed validation were doing. But I was wrong!
In the blink of an eye, I turned around and soon facebook was the tickle-me-elmo of the internet world. Everyone had to have a facebook account. People were abandoning myspace by the droves. In fact, if you even had a myspace account people thought you were either A) out of it, or B) kind of creepy.
I never wanted to be labeled as either of those things, so I jumped off of myspace and explored the world of facebook.
I can't remember for sure, but I believe my first post was something sarcastic like, "I'm important. You should know what I'm doing, who I'm doing it with, and what I'm doing it for at all times." I thought my comment was kind of funny, but in a matter of seconds, I realized that what I said basically slammed everyone's posts! Nobody thought it was funny. I was making light of what other people had created as their whole world. This was their life. Facebook was their community. People actually cared what other people were doing at all times. In what felt like an instant, I could tell my comment made me a loser in the facebook world!
I had to change my tone fast! I started to be more serious with facebook. I started to post what I was doing...and what I wasn't doing. People seemed to care. I liked that people cared (still do). I would check my facebook like my 5 email accounts (we all have at least 5 don't we?). I would look once a day. This worked for my 150 friends. It was enough. But soon, I began adding more friends. Each day was like a class reunion. Nay, it was like a school reunion. Nay, it was like a life reunion. I was looking at people that I hadn't seen in years. And they were looking at me. They could see whatever I posted and I could see what they posted. It was like a glorious stream of randomness that in some strange way made sense...kind of. I at least tried to make it make sense because to everyone else it seemed to make perfect sense.
In 2009, my facebook world changed again. I got an iphone. Now facebook was in the palm of my hands all the time. It was so much easier than being at a computer. Now I could check facebook all the time! Yes! It was just what I always needed. Let's face it. Many apps on the iphone get boring (I-AM-T-Pain excluded), but facebook never gets old. Every day there's a fresh slice of randomness from people all over the place who I call my facebook friends (my guild).
So, all the above to simply say that here I am today, 4 years later, taking my first 30 day hibernation from facebook. Why do I call it a hibernation? Because it's not permanent. It's for a season.
Eventually, I'll wake up from my slumber from social media, but for now I want to be lost in a world where I am not looking at my phone 35 times a day. I want to focus on something without feeling I'm missing something. I want to see how I would invest the time I am given each day without the allure of facebook. I want to wake up and not feel like I need to see what everybody else did with their evening. I want to focus on stillness. I want to focus on simplicity. I want to write something substantial. Mostly, I want to cleanse the mind and see the world from another angle. It's funny, but by going facebookless, I feel like I am heading into the antique roadshow. It's as if I'm going to a place of old-timey, Norman-Rockwellesque, mystique. Who knows what I'll find? I have no clue. But I feel like it will be well worth the journey. Almost like finding that little old lamp that has been sitting in grandmas attic that someone was going to throw away only to find out that its worth $10,000 dollars.
I'll post on this blog as I go along. I will not post this blog on facebook as it defeats the purpose of hibernation. I will write my thoughts on a world without facebook, what's good about facebook, what's not-so-good for me about facebook, and probably process things without really knowing what I'm trying to process. I am not trying to say that facebook is not a worthwhile endeavor and I am not critiquing folks who are on facebook 24/7. This is for me. Maybe you think a facebook hibernation is crazy - that's ok! Maybe you think it's what you need to experience too - that's ok! If it is the latter, join me. I'd love to hear how you come out on the other side of your hibernation.
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