WHY THE HELL DID I DO THIS TO MYSELF??!??!?!?!?!
OK, so that’s not really how I’m feeling right now, although I’m sure people would not be surprised if it was. It’s been almost a week since I made the ultimate sacrifice. The responses I’ve received have all been pretty similar. “Wow” or “good luck” or “Oh no, why????” and (pretty much from every single person) “that’s nice, I could NEVER do that”. All totally expected. I won’t lie, it’s been difficult. I have to figure out what to do with myself while driving now that I don’t have a newsfeed to read (information that should make you feel very comfortable if you’re ever traveling i95 at rush hour), and I’ve had no fewer than 5 different opportunities pop up where I needed an email, address, picture, etc and had to determine how to find those the old-fashioned way instead. It’s like living in 2003 all over again…you know, if I had Twitter, bbm, foursquare, Google+ and Gchat in 2003. Clearly it’s a rough life I’m living. Here, a few rambling thoughts and reflections on the first week of Facebook freedom:
- I’m starting to develop this complex – now that I’m not reading what everyone’s saying, everything that’s being said is somehow a negative comment directed toward me: “The bitch isn’t here to see what we REALLY have to say about her – let’s make it a free for all!” I am fully aware that paranoid doesn’t even begin to describe this feeling, and I am giving myself WAY too much credit by assuming that even when I’m not talking to people about not being on Facebook they’re spending their precious time thinking about the fact that I’m not on Facebook….but I can’t help it. I’ve cut off a direct line to a majority of the communications taking place between everyone I know, and in my mind anything I’m not privy to is something I should probably be concerned about. This is probably indicative of a much larger issue. We should move on immediately
- On a similar note, it dawned on me that some people might be just as annoyed with my comments, statues and pictures as I am with other people’s comments, statuses and pictures. This realization alone probably added another week – minimum – to this project
- I quickly learned that I’ve eliminated myself from serious amounts of contest winning possibilities. Thank you Home Goods. I didn’t want a house makeover anyway. I don’t even have a house. I just wanted to win $5,000 to put toward sparkly bowls and champagne glasses. (I’m going to have to make sure I return before that contest is over….)
- It figures. Last Tuesday (the same day as I decided to deactivate, mind you) I found out I’d be traveling to the Final Four in New Orleans for work. Extremely exciting and SO freaking Facebook worthy, if for no other reason than to make my brothers and guy friends jealous. Part of me is bummed I couldn’t share this fun news with the world and another part of me is wondering if the two are connected and I’d be twice as far in my career if I had done this two years ago…
- I sat in traffic in the rain while heading home the other day, thinking: “normally, I’d be sitting here reading statuses on my blackberry and I’d be annoyed because as I’m sitting in the rain 70% of the statuses would be about the fact that it’s raining.” And really, that’s just a waste of brain cells. Still a teeny tiny part of me was sad that I couldn’t read my friends’ pointless rain comments. (I’m sure that in the very likely situation that 70% of my friends’ statuses were about rain, this post comes off highly accurate but really bitchy. I should probably also mention that my examples in these posts, such as my Disney World photos reference the other day, are hypothetical situations that just coincidentally apply to a large amount of people I’m friends with. Felt like a necessary disclaimer. Carry on)
- I’m getting nervous that I’m never going to remember anyone’s birthday. Not my closest people – I know most of those by heart and even when I don’t always remember the exact date, they’re all in five different calendars already anyway. No, I’m more worried about the outer circle – the people I’d write birthday messages to that would be slightly more meaningful than a “Happy bday!” from my phone (don’t fool yourselves, people definitely put WAY less importance on a message with a little phone symbol after it) but who I might not mail a card to. You know, the people I probably would talk to once every two years if Facebook didn’t exist to begin with. The ones who might make note if you DID send a birthday message but wouldn’t even realize if you didn’t. And yes, I am fully aware that this final bullet point if fully indicative of the extreme amount of over-analyzing that I am putting into…um, everything. In life. At every moment….
It should be noted that I will obviously be reactivating for my birthday regardless of how successful this “experiment” is (if I haven’t already, and since that’s still a good 7 months away I don’t have high hopes). My self-esteem is not nearly high enough to skip out on hundreds of forced, meaningless birthday messages. Plus I highly doubt I’ll have anything left to write about at that point anyway.
***Editor’s note: the Facebook experiment lasted just shy of 3 weeks. This information most likely negates 2/3 of the information in these entries, but hey, I proved that I could do it, at least for a little while. That’s got to count for something…
