{"id":678,"date":"2010-02-16T23:11:52","date_gmt":"2010-02-17T03:11:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/washwords.com\/words\/?p=678"},"modified":"2010-02-16T23:14:11","modified_gmt":"2010-02-17T03:14:11","slug":"freedom-from-facebook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/washwords.com\/words\/2010\/freedom-from-facebook\/","title":{"rendered":"Freedom From Face(book)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Given the ennui I’d been feeling<\/a>, the cabin fever (I mean a week in the cabin, great,\u00a0 but that 9th or 10th day starts hurting….), I could see it starting.\u00a0 I was on a superslick luge track to gold medal snarkery.<\/p>\n

Sure, I was proud. I mean this is what I trained for, right? My years apprenticing at the snarktory, my nights by the fire practicing my craft. Don’t get me wrong. I was up for it. I know my abilities to sear veins with vitriol, microsurgery to the heart of the heart. (Oh, did I mention? Scorpio! In my soul.)<\/p>\n

And plus, I was Right. About every. single. thing. Every Facebook argument anyone implied (by breathing, coughing, not breathing, not coughing) they wanted to have.\u00a0 And I was ready to battle.\u00a0 Think\u00a0 Lost is the world’s best TV show;\u00a0 blue your favorite color, Beyonce, the world’s best singer??\u00a0 Uh, no. Incorrect. FAIL. You suck. Lemme tell you why. In 27 points.<\/p>\n

Think you know the most about snowflakes, government shut downs, politics, movies. You don’t.<\/p>\n

I do. And I can’t bear to let you think so for a minute. Why? Because you’re wrong. WRONG!!!<\/p>\n

But the thing was all this rightness wasn’t making me less blue, nor less tired, nor more proud. It was just making me mean. and tired. and empty.<\/p>\n

I sat watching the scrolling letters of facebook \/ twitter\/ blog feeds \/ email\/ texts… I felt my teeth clench, knuckles tighten into a ball, eyes strain and bluegray washing over all the very rightness and joy and success I thought I’d been wanting to celebrate.<\/p>\n

And suddenly, rising over the foggy, snarky, venomous place,I had a new thought: What if … it stopped? All of it, the feeds the one-upping , the posturing, the posing, the reading to react, the waiting to pounce?<\/p>\n

What if…<\/p>\n

What if\u00a0 *I* stopped?<\/p>\n

It’s not like this is an earth-shattering epiphany, I know. Any therapist or mom (hi mom!) or Michael Jackson ditty will tell you “If you wanna make the world a betta place\/ take a look at yourself and make that \/ CHANGE.”<\/p>\n

And I am, most of the time. I’m working on it anyway. I snarl at metro riders much less, now<\/a>. Instead of heaving huge sighs of disgust, now I politely ask “excuse me miss, I hate to bother you, but I wonder, would you mind just moving your loverly bag ever so slightly so its jagged edge doesn’t come quite so close to my head? I mean if you don’t mind. I hate to even ask. You COULD? REALLY?! Why, thanks ever so! ”\u00a0 Most of the time.<\/p>\n

Except when I can’t. or don’t. Which is usually when I need to the most.<\/p>\n

So like that dreaded trip to the gym you know you need, I imposed a ban.\u00a0 No facebook, no twitter (eh, i’m over that anyway, no loss), no texting, just writing (blogging was okay), working, focusing on the things I can change or work on or invest in, not the ones that don’t matter.<\/p>\n

I made it 12 hours. That’s a lot!<\/p>\n

I’d love to tell you that with my freedom\u00a0 I finished my novel, the thank-you notes, the house decorating and then did oragami and yoga with my free time after that. Not quite.<\/p>\n

But I blogged a short piece for the first time in months, I took a long walk (over snow mountains), I made a big dinner, I got a massage,\u00a0 I read A BOOK.<\/p>\n

And something else happened. I wasn’t angry. Or tired, or sad.<\/p>\n

Yah, today, first day back at work and back to gym and back to metro, I’m tired again. But I’m here.<\/p>\n

And no, I don’t think this is Facebook’s fault. It was mine. Nor will I be staying away forever. But I did do some pruning, mostly of time I just didn’t need to be investing. And I did some not caring. And it was good. Really good.<\/p>\n

“Little pebbles on the ground,” a good friend and I used to tell each other. That’s what toxic people and thoughts were. Specks of dust on specks of dust. Sometimes being right is one of those specks I realize slowly. But I’m getting it. Slowly, slowly… steadily, steadily…<\/p>\n

So I’m gonna try to care a little less for a while. Not about the people I love, not about joy, beauty, strength, talent, hard real work of improvement. Just about the rightness.<\/p>\n

Oh, except that snow means no global warming crap. You people are wrong about that … wrong, wrong… eh, whatever.\u00a0 \ud83d\ude09 Ohmmmm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Given the ennui I’d been feeling, the cabin fever (I mean a week in the cabin, great,\u00a0 but that 9th or 10th day starts hurting….), I could see it starting.\u00a0 I was on a superslick luge track to gold medal snarkery. Sure, I was proud. I mean this is what I trained for, right? My […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[622],"tags":[1237,926,1230,659,1243,1239,216,1236,23,25,1234,1242,1240,1244,535,1235,1238,539,1241],"class_list":["post-678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-words","tag-acting-out","tag-anger","tag-cabin-fever","tag-calm","tag-caring","tag-ennui","tag-facebook","tag-mean","tag-meditation","tag-mental-health","tag-overload","tag-pebbles","tag-practice","tag-self-help","tag-snark","tag-snarkery","tag-snowpocalypse","tag-social-media","tag-therapy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/washwords.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/washwords.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/washwords.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/washwords.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/washwords.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=678"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/washwords.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":684,"href":"https:\/\/washwords.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678\/revisions\/684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/washwords.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/washwords.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/washwords.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}