(That’s right, that was Boyz II Men sung by yours truly.)
This has been a difficult decision but one I know in the end I will not regret.
Of course I will explain with a preface of this ONLY pertains to me and how I operate, we are not all the same in how we process things. I am more of a feeling person with at touch of tears and big time worrier with a touch of paranoia. If that’s you then you will totally understand my post.
Since I joined the mass population of facebook users, about two years ago, I realized just how involved I was in peoples lives whether I wanted to be or not. I would love reading the triumphs and celebrations in my friends and families lives, but I couldn’t deflect the posts that made you feel less than awesome or upset or sad or even at times judgmental or critical. I know it’s a lot of blame on facebook but hear me out.
One day I had a mass deletion of friends and really focused on my family and my “real” friends. I was satisfied. For a while. I then began to see posts that would concern me, when they shouldn’t have. I think I just worried more because the people who made my facebook cut I really truly did love and care about and those posts were all I saw. I would find myself talking with John about things he could care less about but I would be sad or anxious or even up in arms about. John would tell me time and time and time again, “Please delete facebook. It is just not meant for you.” I would be upset like he didn’t think I could handle the things I read, like I was too emotionally involved, like it was ultra sensitive or something. Men!
Well, he was right. My husband is always right. And he’s incredibly handsome! And he has the perfect bum for the pinching (don’t even think about trying it out)!
I was talking to my mom and she gave me some great insight into who I am and to the affects things have on me. She is so wise and dead on! Sorry mom if it sounds like I am ratting you out I promise I am not.
When my mom was a youngin’ with little ones running around, she found herself totally into a show on TV. It was something she watched everyday. My mom also, in her awesome wisdom, realized it was affecting her mood everyday she watched it. If her show ended on a good note, all was good. If it ended on a bad note, all was bad. She then stopped watching it and over time she realized that it was in fact affecting her moods.
When my mom shared that with me I remembered an EFY where they talked about the effects of media. They showed half the room words like orange, banana, grapes, lemons. They showed the other half of the room words like murder, guns, stealing, lying. They asked us at the same time to blurt out the missing letter in the next word they would show us. It was R_PE. Half of us yelled out “i” for ripe and the other half yelled out “a” for rape. That lesson had an impact on me and I always think of it when it comes to media. Facebook is one of those things that affect me, and I knew it!
Through facebook, I have come to realize that my concern and love for others has been intensified and has caused me a lot of stress and/or heartache, yet sometimes super-duper excited or happy for another. I would read things like “I am going to take a test, I hope it all goes well.” I would check back time and time again hoping it went well. It was the same for things that weren’t so happy and sometimes depressing. I would check back time and time again to make sure a happier post would come. I struggled the most with opinionated posts, I would stress about whether or not that might offend someone. I would check back time and time again to see what people would say. I would then become critical of the person who was opinionated, especially if it caused people to voice opposing views and contention to form. I would even send out private emails to people trying to offer a voice of comfort or of love when I thought they might have been offended. It was consuming! It would branch out from facebook into my personal interactions with people. Ultimately, I was trying to protect everyone’s feelings and abandoning my own which would stress me out and overwhelm me.
So then I would stop getting on facebook and I would be SO incredibly happy. I would feel happy enough that I felt like I had overcome my stresses of facebook. I would go weeks without getting on it. The whole time feeling so much better and that would be fine until someone would say, “Hey, I sent you a message on facebook. Did you get it?” or “The information was on the ward facebook.” or “So and so had their baby did you see the picture on facebook?” I felt forced back into looking at facebook to be sure I wasn’t left out of the loop or ignoring people.
This last month has brought me a lot of reasons why facebook is not for me. I started to resent my sensitivity and concern for others. I started to feel frustrated about my inability to weed out things I needed to weed out. I found myself feeling guilty about things I had read or felt about that person. I found myself taking on more emotions then I knew what to do with. I started to get totally down on myself and feeling like I must not be spiritually grounded to resist the temptation to be emotionally involved about something so silly as a facebook posts. And John was tired of the massive amount of pregnancy tests I was taking because I was positive these emotions had to be coming from a pregnancy. They weren’t! I am extremely grateful for the gift of sensitivity and concern for others and I want to keep it that way, so I had to make a change.
So here it goes, this Saturday evening I will be officially off the facebook frenzy. I just need to give some of my overseas friends time to see I’m not de-friending them just making changes to my communication. I’m kind of excited!
One thing I will miss the most about facebook is being able to remember everyone’s birthday!! I guess I will invest in belated happy birthday cards again.
Goodbye Facebook!!
