Life After Facebook

Last Tuesday morning while I was at work, I decided that I needed to cancel my Facebook account. Many times, I would come home from work and head right for the computer chair, check my email, check other websites I frequent, then I would go on Facebook. And I would stay on Facebook, almost the whole afternoon, maybe stopping for a few minutes to take the dog out or scoop the cat boxes, or get a snack that I didn't need. I have a lot of time to think while I'm at work, and one of the things that I think about is what I want/need to do when I get home. Sometimes I make a list, sometimes I don't. But nothing ever got done, because I was constantly on Facebook. I know my tenses are all over the place, bear with me.

You might think I spent all of my time playing the games, but I didn't play any. It would have been a lot worse if I did. All I did was search for people, look at pictures (sometimes from people I didn't even know, who were linked to by friends), and constantly update the main page to see who was posting what (I hid all of the game-related postings). If I did actually do something productive away from the computer, I would take a lot of Facebook breaks.

What about moderation? I hear you cry. The first step in moderation was to take Facebook out of the Firefox bookmarks bar, so I didn't have a direct line to it. Pretty stupid, right? It's still right there in the most visited drop down menu, it just takes an extra step. Then I tried limiting my time on it, but there was no way in hell I could manage that. So on Tuesday, I decided that I had to go cold turkey, or I would never get off of it. And I decided that it had to be that day. So when I got home, I posted "bye bye" to my status and got every one's email address that I really wanted to keep in touch with. The only sticking point was that I created a group for my favorite podcast, Tank Riot, and I thought the group would shut down when I canceled my account. So I made my wife an admin of the group, thinking that I would ask the group members if someone could run the group while logged into her account. That was actually resolved pretty quickly, someone else is now running the group for me.

Facebook is definitely internet crack, because I'm having major withdrawal symptoms. One of my favorite things to do on Facebook was to try and find people that I met during my day, whether it be cashiers with a name tag at stores, or waiters or waitresses. This kind of borders on stalking, but many times I couldn't access their pages, and if I could, I gave it a perfunctory look and went on my way.

I miss interacting with family and true friends on Facebook. I don't like talking on the phone, so messaging on Facebook was great for me. I also was interacting with relatives I rarely see, which was really nice, especially when they posted pictures of their kids, some of whom I haven't met yet. My cousin Rob is fixing up his house and posting pictures of the progress, which I liked seeing. But I'm afraid if I go back just for this, that it will get out of control again.

Ultimately, I think Facebook is a great thing, as long as you don't abuse it like I did. One of the best things for me was when I found my friend Steve. He was my best friend in elementary school, and he moved far away right before junior high. We kept in touch for a year or so, but then we drifted apart. I haven't seen him or talked to him since those days. Last year he joined Facebook and we found each other, and we discovered that our lives took similar turns, which is cool and kind of sad at the same time, because maybe it would have been better to experience those things together. But what can you do? The next best thing: We are going to see Steve and hopefully his wife this summer, more than 29 years after the last time I saw him. So thank you Facebook, for improving my life in some areas, and ruining it in others.