Saturday, January 11, 2014

Cold Turkey

This month I quit (deactivated, not deleted) Facebook (FB) cold turkey.  I thought about all the pros and cons of keeping it, and really, as far as Facebook itself there are more pros than anything.  But that does not take into consideration my personality, my easily-addicted-to-technology personality, which is the biggest CON of all.  When I would get home from work, I would zone out with FB on my phone when I should have been paying attention to the little people--or feeding them, at the least.  Same with when Eli and I would be sitting in the same room, instead of engaging with each other, I would be passing time on FB.  This last fall, I developed the worst habit:  I would wake up at 2 a.m. (for whatever reason), and cruise FB on my phone for somewhere around an hour before I fell back to sleep.  I'm not going to use the clinical term "addicted", but I will tell you that we were approaching a certain level of manic FB-checking that may have eventually become something extremely serious.

Coming into the new year, I considered just cutting back to weekends only, or only after the kids were in bed, or something.  But I know myself better than that and knew that if I didn't just stop all together, it would slowly creep back up to the levels of insanity.  So, for now, we take a hiatus.

I've only been off for 11 days now, and I can't tell you how difficult it has been as I craft clever status updates in my head that have nowhere to go, no one to sympathize, no one to "like" them.  I hadn't thought about Candy Crush Saga until now, and now I'm sure I will dream about it.  I'm out of the loop as far as the hottest articles to be read and the latest deals to be found, but honestly I don't really miss it--it was just such an ingrained part of my daily routines that I'm noticing its absence.

Again, I know myself, so I know that I will be back, but only after I feel like I have some sort of control over it.  In the meantime, you know what I'm going to do?  Read a book. Or ten.  And get my life and environment ready for the arrival of 3.0.  And yes, I'll be blogging and reading blogs and watching hulu, etc., but my bedtime routine will not consist of staying up after bedtime or getting up in the middle of the night to check FB.

Cheers.

1 comment:

Craig-Jen said...

I have a love/hate relationship with Facebook. I love staying connected. I hate the time drain. I love the ability to share pics of the kids with family in Texas. I love the updates from the organizations that do the dirty work for me as far as food. I love the camaraderie of the groups I'm part of - I've learned more than you can ever imagine.

But again, the time suck, that in the end is wasted. I put my phone down. Leave it in the car, or upstairs.

But, I still check it. Often, probably too often.