Tuesday, April 29, 2014

My Relationship with Facebook

I don’t know about you, but I have a love/hate relationship with all things social media (except Pinterest, it’s all love there). It is a great tool to keep in touch, connect with people from your past, and see what’s going on in everyone’s lives….especially with pictures, I love pictures! However, I hate Facebook – I hate some of the stupid statuses I see (don’t worry it’s not yours), I hate seeing gorgeous beach photos when I’m stuck in wind-blown, dust-covered Kansas, and I hate to admit how much time I spend scrolling through my newsfeed just to make sure I don’t miss anything.

It was that reason right there that when Lent came around this year, I decided to give up Facebook for 40 days. I wanted to start conversations with something other than “Did you see this on Facebook”…I wanted to spend my evenings with my family or my nose in a book, instead of being in front of my laptop…I wanted to be more productive. I’m not going to lie – it was a great 40 days and only once did I get an itch to login. Is it funny to say that life was simpler for that timeframe because that’s exactly how I felt.

During the Lenten season, my cell phone shot craps and I had to get a new phone, so I splurged and got myself a fruit phone (much to my own chagrin, saying that I would never own an iPhone). Yep, that’s right, I was a hypocrite – but no longer, I am proud to say I love my iPhone, although I have no idea how to do even a fourth of what it is capable of doing. It took me almost a month to figure out how to make the fancy smiley faces and just 2 days ago, I downloaded the Facebook app.

Worst decision ever! The clarity I possessed after my Lenten Facebook hiatus is done and gone and I feel myself creeping back to needing to be “in the know” at all times. I literally checked my account twenty-some times yesterday. Just thinking about that makes me cringe!

The easy thing would be to just delete the app and go on with life, checking my account once a day, or even better, once a week on my trusty laptop…but I’m going to keep it on my little phone and use it as a reminder to work on my self-discipline. If I find myself clicking on the little blue icon more and more – it’s in the trash immediately, but until then, like on.