Leaving the beast.

Leaving Facebook has been an interesting experiment. I remember where I was when I signed up, early morning, summer of 2009 from the kitchen table at my little brothers house. My wife and I crashed at his place for whatever reason, and I had woken up before any one else. I was reading the news and came across an article about Facebook and the rest is history.

I know, I know... But this time I mean it.. REALLY!

I had a MySpace page but was never really 'into' it, and Geocities before that. But Facebook was different, something about it drew me in.  Although I wouldn't call it an obsession, I did spend a majority of my online time there. If I wasn't on Feedly, I was on Facebook. I have never taken it as seriously as some, I also had a few rules I tried to stick too. Never post about my employer unless it was completely positive, never air my dirty laundry, never post about politics and generally keep it light hearted. I've slipped a few times, posting about Sprint or Apple which seems to draw out the critics and fanboys.  Which is one of my reasons for leaving, I understand posting publicly is an invitation for discussion but Facebook seems to provide people something to hide behind, expressing opinions they would not generally state in person. Or worse yet, when you personally know a person, see their Facebook updates and realize they are completely fake and false. Yet they receive an outpouring of support or praise and you just want to say something, but you refrain. Over time, my usage increased I would checked it several times a day, it's installed on all of my devices and if my browser was opened, so was Facebook. I just felt like I have more important ways to spend my time, but it's been tougher to escape then I thought.

Around the time of Star Wars: The Force Awakens theatrical release I decided to deactivate my account until I saw the movie in an attempt to avoid spoilers. We ended up seeing SW the Saturday morning after it came out. I ended up leaving my account deactivated for a few more days. But for some reason I reactivated it. This week, after a discussion with someone where I was practically berated for not seeing a post I decided enough was enough. I locked down the security on my page and turned off messenger chat for all users. I've been trying to migrate any outside services to a Google sign on API instead of Facebook's, and have done that with most of my major services. I have yet to uninstall the app off my phone and tablet, but I haven't opened it in several days. I was out with the family last night, and found myself wanting to post something I thought was funny, but I didn't. I took the picture and laughed with my wife and kids instead. It was just as fulfilling if not more so. A few thoughts have crossed my mind this morning that would make a funny post, but again I refrained. I feel like each day will get easier, i'll factor in Facebook less and less in my daily activities to a point where it's no more than an afterthought.

I don't completely despise the site, honestly I've found much joy in it. Laughing at funny posts and seeing what my friends and family are up to. But when is it too much? I think the answer to that varies with everyone but for me the amount of time I spent personally felt like too much. And for some folks it's the only way they get any social interaction, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.

And I'll be honest, i'm not completely disconnected from that world. My wife still spends a lot of time on there, and keeps me updated on items that might interest me. And in a way, that was also part of my moving off of it. It does give my wife and I something to talk about, but many times in the past I'd already knew about a post before she did so the conversation didn't get any farther than "Yeah I saw it...". But now we can engage in those conversations for the first time. After almost 12 years of marriage you start to run out of things to talk about at times, so maybe this is for the best, for more reasons then I originally intended. Perhaps I give myself an hour or so to look at the site each week or maybe one day I'll wake up and its not something I feel like I need to do any longer.

Either way, I do feel somewhat liberated, as always, thanks for reading!

Until we meet again Zuck!