I've been feeling a bit BLAH lately--just about any old thing. Where I am right now, what I'm doing, have I accomplished my goals? These things have been buzzing around my head for quite awhile and, to be honest, Facebook browsing never helped.
Theodore Roosevelt once said "Comparison is the thief of joy." Boy, did you ever get that one right Teddy.
I mean, at this point in my life what is Facebook anyway? I'm 30 and tipping into the +30 range (I feel a physical quiver just typing that) and all anyone's posts are just wedding pictures, baby pictures, funny meme's, or bitch sessions about something that I'm not around to experience. When I joined in 2005 I was just out of college and it still felt relevant, like, "Hey do you want to meet up tomorrow night?" or, "Here's a picture of the family reunion in case you missed it!". It was the transition from instant messaging (God, how old am I?) to a broader base of people that you may have moved a few hours away from. You know, back when text messaging still cost you money per character.
Over the years I've moved to different states and now I'm entire plane rides away from people that I used to hang out and socialize with. I had been toying with getting rid of the addictive FB but I didn't want to risk saying goodbye to people I might not otherwise talk to.
I'm 100% that everyone else feels the same way because, like everyone else, you've probably kept your Facebook for the same reason. "But I want to see so-and-so's new baby!" and "That skank in college who my boyfriend cheated on me with got super fat!" Admit it, not outwardly of course, but admit it to yourself. That's the exact reason "Facebook stalker" has become a household name. I'm guilty as charged.
Did you wrong me back in 2000 and now you have 3 kids and live in a trailer? I found you on Facebook and smiled. Did you just meet your boyfriend yesterday, get married, and found out you were pregnant 15 minutes ago when I've been dealing with infertility? I found you and I will stare daggers at you now.
I've been a FB member since 2005 and I've never had one of those crazy, tell-all break downs that I so often hear about. The ones where you throw all your dirty laundry on the internet so that everyone knows but get pissed when someone judges you? Or passively-aggressively mention something that happened to you that only one person on your friends list knows because they are the one that did it to you and then the teeth and nails come out? Nope. Never happened.
Until 2 days ago.
Ok, in my defense, I'm medicated right now. I know. It's sad. But it's legit and I'm sticking to it. I called someone out-of-the-blue who I have never even spoken to over the phone EVER and the reaction was "Are you calling me to tell me your pregnant?!?!"
Ok. What-the-fuck-sauce.
The post that I later wrote wasn't aimed towards her, and I'm sure she knows that, but it was more of........errrrmmmm.....a notification that kids aren't happening so don't ask me so "I can avoid feeling like I've been hit in the chest by a train."
A wave of comments came. And I hardly ever get comments since most of my posts are meme-based. So I kiiiiiiiiiinda felt mortified. Also, I had been going through my browser history to find a specific website I had gone to that I needed to reuse again. TWO WEEKS worth of searching and all I saw were blue logos everywhere saying that I had been on Facebook this many times and I had searched 100 times the profiles of these people.
I sat at my computer, drugged up of course, confused and upset. So THIS is how I spend my time??? My precious, valuable time?! I could have been approved as an astronaut in flight hours with as many hours as I had spent on Facebook!
So I Google'd where to locate the deactivate button (since I never assumed that I would require that knowledge). And click it was gone.
In the few days since I left I haven't felt all that bad, really. I'm curious sometimes. Like someone who has a mild addiction to something stupid like a video game and you miss the memory of it. But overall, I've felt happier. I don't have baby pictures shoved in my face. I don't have bad tendencies to dig up old grudges and relish in their dismay or feel like crap if I find that they are more well-off than I am.
I'm ok with being a little more old-fashioned. If they've kept my number and really care about how I'm doing, they can feel free to give me a call. Send me picture messages. Meet up with me and let's go to the movies. Otherwise, I wasn't really friends enough with them in the first place to need to know how their life is going.
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