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Wednesday, January 8, 2014

back to the digital realm



When I deactivated my Facebook account six months ago, I never thought I'd go through an actual withdrawal. Like a real, honest-to-goodness, what do I do, OMG I'm panicking withdrawal.

Anytime I had something to say, I'd automatically move my cursor to the blank space in my bookmarks bar where the Facebook shortcut used to live. If I found a spare 30 seconds, my automatic instinct was to navigate to the biggest time suck I've ever encountered.

And I KNOW time sucks. LiveJournal, Xanga, Friendster, MySpace, Bored.com... I've been intimately acquainted with the concept of the time suck since the age of 12. It doesn't matter if it was reading bad fan fiction, writing bad fan fiction, or creating fan pages using Geocities' WYSIWYG, I found that I could make the long, boring summer hours of my pre-teen (ok, admittedly and part of my teen) years move a little (read: a lot) faster than I intended. Really, I don't blame my dad for putting a hard time limit on my computer time. 

Someone asked me recently "what do you like to do that when you look up, you realize hours have passed?" It gave me pause. The only answer I could think of was sleep. Because I love sleep. And naps. If I could make it a hobby, if I could list "napper" as my occupation, I think I'd fare better -- but as it is... I don't know anymore.

These days, I struggle to find things that I enjoy AND that involve sucking up time. Knitting is interrupted by completed rows. Binge watching TV is only fun for so long when your attention span has been ruined by the Internet. The gym eats up an hour. Maybe another hour doing errands. But ultimately, when you've spent the last 5+ years of your life working on the Internet (and intensely career-focused), you tend to lose the bits and pieces of yourself that you used to enjoy.

I did reactivate my Facebook account last night on a whim, curious as to what six months away from the platform would show me. My time away showed me that any addiction, when removed wholly, can be overcome. (That is a total crock of shit, I don't know if crystal meth works the same way). But the Facebook-less time got easier and easier, and soon I reconnected with friends I cared about... offline, on the phone, in person, at cafes, over dinner, whatever. 

Unfortunately, old habits die hard, as they (who??) say. Within minutes of reactivating my Facebook, I was updating profile information, adding new friends, deleting old ones, browsing pictures and status updates, making faces at dumb cat pictures, and abusing the F5 key. What can I say? I'm a social media, Internet, web platform junkie. I can admit it. 

But I can also admit that it just may be time to join that knitting group down the street. Maybe I can finish a scarf one day. Who knows. I'll buckle down and see. I might just find some pearls.

Happy New Year everyone! Here's to an awesome 2014. 

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