I've Been Missing For Several Reasons

(Drawing by Miranda of Perry the Platypus and Dr. Doofenshmirtz from Phineas and Ferb. Drawn while we were in New Orleans.)

My life has been as hectic as it will ever be. There was New Orleans, there was my district convention, work, and life in general as we see it today. I was also finding myself too wrapped up in Facebook.

Yes, Facebook. The cat is out of the bag. Even though I was set up on super private and you probably couldn't even view me, I somehow ended up with 188 friends. I was inviting all the friends.

I realized that Facebook was consuming my life. I was spending way too much time on there reading updates, sending friends gifts, drinks and taking silly tests. I took a look at both my blogs and also saw that I wasn't even writing any more!

A few years ago a published writer told me that I shouldn't wast time blogging. I was kind of annoyed when he told me that, but then I reasoned that it was his opinion and he only meant well for me, offering advise from a writer. I wrote about it here on this blog and received a lot of comments from friends encouraging me to keep blogging. I see it as a writing exercise.

THEN came Facebook. It became too time consuming! It was way worse than blogging any day. So I decided to take a look at my friends list and limit it to mainly family and "family." I cut out all other friends, including high school friends and professional contacts.

I didn't think anything of it at first but apparently it is a big deal. It prompted me to send out an e-mail to all my friends explaining my decision. I've caused conversations, e-mails have been sent to me and one sister called the other and told her she couldn't believe that I had done such a thing. She considered it terribly rude. Another sister, who get this, wasn't even on Facebook and has no idea why I did what I did, didn't even talk to me about it, said of course I had done that because it was a good example of how selfish I am. Good grief!

It's really weird to me that Facebook is taken so very personally. I can't believe that someone would think that I am removing them from my LIFE just because I removed them from my Facebook. It prompted me to create a someecard especially for that topic and with that line. How did Facebook become a substitute for life? How did it become a substitute for networking?

I'm also going to write a better more thought out blog for skirt! about this topic. I find it so sad and hilarious all at the same time. So keep an eye out for it.

P.S. I sent a follow-up e-mail to friends that I removed and told them I'm on Twitter. (For some reason Twitter isn't as addictive as FB) No one has requested to follow me so I take that to mean that 1. they're not on Twitter or 2. They said, "Forget you, forgot you! Never thought about you."