Category Archives: first world problems

Apr12

Friday Fiction 2.0 — Beyond the Edge

Posted on April 12, 2013 by Grass Oil by Molly Field

The choice was simple. Stay or go. Put up and shut up or push out and change, evolve and grow.

“If you stay here, you see more of the same. You experience more of the blows and more of the highs and more of the lows. Maybe different depths and steeper heights, but essentially the same,” she thought to herself. “The same kinds of people, the same limited thoughts, the same pedantic ways,” she knew.

Outside her bedroom window, lay the lush and vibrant landscape she had frolicked on as a child and as her mother was a child and her mother before her. Generations of oaks, cascading wisteria blooms, putting greens, bowling greens, livery stables, pristine sculpture gardens and gleaming marble water fountains, the hypnotic gurgling and gentle splashing from the koi and frogs. It was a paradise to anyone else. But to Elise, it was a prison. Her years of privilege stymied her perceptions, her outlook and her understanding of what the real world was all about.

“Harvard or Oxford? Gucci or Prada? St. Tropéz or Athens? These are not the choices of a real human being,” she mocked herself, tossing the offer letters from her satin sheets and watching them land on the silk Persian carpet beneath her feet. Rising from her bed and running to her window she flew it open and shouted, “These are not the choices of a real humaaan beeeeing! These make a mockery of their lives and challenges! They must! Right?!”

Her mother rushed into Elise’s room, her sheer robe billowing behind her, lather on her face from her morning wash, her eyes were wide with concern and fear.

“Elise! Whatever is the matter? Oh my sweet! It’s so early yet. What troubles you so today?” she asked.

“This! All of this! Those letters! My closet! My great fortune! My life! I want to live with purpose; I want to have meaning. All of this is for nothing if people suffer and I turn my eye from it,” she said to her mother with tears welling, suspended and glistening on the lip of her chocolate eyes’ lower lids.

Her mother rushed to her side, “Now now… dear child! Here! Here’s a lollipop! Or your happy bear! La-la-lala… HO HO HO, I’m Chunky the happy bear, I’m coming to tickle yooooooou…” said her mother in an odd deep voice, intoning and bouncing the bear, a robust brown furry stuffed animal adorned with a rhinestone-studded dog collar Elise had bought for him as a gift when he turned five. Her mother was desperate at the moment to change the mood.

Elise was an ugly crier. It can be said of some people that they cry gracefully and so beautifully that their mere sensation of sadness is powerful enough to provoke a sniffle from even the most coarsened and granitic souls. For Elise, it was not this way. Her face contorted in a fashion not unlike the gargoyles atop Notre Dame, her voice became like that of a banshee harbored in Irish lowlands and the moaning, oh, the moaning it could truly break not only glass, but also porcelain vases from ancient Chinese dynasties. For Elise, crying was a weapon; but she would wail unaware of her effect, lest she would exploit it, the townspeople feared.

So when she was born, her parents made a pact with the villagers. Elise would cry only in her house and only with the windows closed; if she were outside and having fun and all of a sudden suffered a boo-boo or a moment of perceived unfairness during a game, she would be scooped up and whisked into the house to cry it out. But everyone knew, that eventually Elise would not be forever entertained by a lollipop or a dancing bear. In the meantime, alchemists tried to develop a glass that wouldn’t shatter when she cried. But how to test it? She’d have to cry and no one wanted that.

Since puberty, her crying became more desperate and unpredictable. Elise was not only unaware of her punitive sadness, but she was also connecting to the way it made her feel: worn down, exhausted and defensive, which only resulted in more frustration and ultimately more tears. Being a teen with the unbeknownst power to bring police squads to their knees and ducking for cover from the spraying shards which were as dangerous as random gunfire was confusing to her.

“I don’t WAAAANT the BEAAAAR!” she shrieked at her mother, turning her head out toward the gardens, deaf to the screams and mayhem from the house staff downstairs. Her own windows rattled; a single crack in a pane grew across the base of the glass along the frame, catching the light from the sun, and her attention for a brief second, long enough to make her catch her breath.

“Wha? What was that?” she asked, bewildered, an eyebrow raised.

Downstairs the human clamor was slowing but the vacuums started up to clean up whatever was left of the mess from her recent outburst.

“Waaaah!” she cried.

The window shook.

“Waaaah-ahh-aaaah! Noooooowaaaaah!” she wailed again, deliberately this time to study the effects, as though testing her shadow for its truth or an image in a false mirror. The crack spread across the entire window; all four corners were vulnerable to implosion and a single piece, the size of a bottle cap, popped out and dropped at her feet.

“Oh my…” she said, bending over to pick up the piece, gently examining it in the sunlight and taking great care to not cut herself.

“I’ll… I’ll uh, I’ll take that, honey. Give it. Give it here, Leesie,” begged her mother, with the bear in one hand, his eyes now cracked, one completely off his face. Her mother’s other palm was patiently outstretched, waiting for the piece. “I’m worried you’ll cut yourself on it…”

“No. No, I’ll be fine. In a second. If I cry again, mother, what will happen to this window?” she asked.

“If you cry again, dear, the glass with break completely and you and I could be injured. It’s something we’re trying to … to understand. We know that if you are simply angry, then the glass won’t break, but if you are truly sad or melancholy, then the glass will break and porcelain vases as will most lead crystal and fine china within a 5-mile radius,” she said, nervously nodding and pressing her lips together when she was finished.

“Oh,” said Elise. “That explains a lot. I am so sorry. I never meant ….” and her breathing deepened as her lower lip trembled.

Quickly, her mother rushed to her side and said, “I don’t know what to do. We’ve never let you just let it out. We’ve always stopped you. We don’t know what will happen if …”

“If I just let it out?” Elise asked, regaining her composure. “Is this why…? All this stuff? My bedroom is all puffy and fluffed with things that aren’t hard, nothing shiny? Why my mirrors are all plastic and warped? Why I ride a bicycle everywhere and I drink out of plastic or steel? Why all my stuffed animals have button eyes? Oh my goodness…” she blew a breath between her lips as though blowing on a coffee to cool it, she was working very hard to keep her emotions in check as her words were paced and thoughtful.

“Yes. That is why,” said her mother, as she pulled her daughter close to hold her near, her facial lather had dried to a flakey foam by now. “But I think you might be ready because now you know,” she added.

“Where? Where will I be safe, or where will I be able to cry so others can be safe?” she asked.

“UCLA,” her mother said. “You can cry at UCLA; it’s near where Lindsay Lohan is incarcerated, so they have a place that can handle it; it’s like a sound stage, but it’s all made out of Kevlar, Nomex, titanium and Lexan, it’s a sort of panic room for divas. But you’re not a diva, you’re just a homely and painful crier. Are you interested? I will go with you and if it works, you can go wherever you want after that.”

Elise sat on her bed, or more appropriately, flopped on it. Sighing, she flew her hands up and asked, “Why me? What is this? What if it doesn’t work? What will happen then?”

“I don’t know,” said her mother, “but I think we need to try, to take you to that edge or beyond it, to find out.”

=-=-=

Well, that was the most random thing I’ve ever written. Today is the Friday of a crazy week here; only to continue into next week. I started this post not know what I was going to write about. I had no clue and I was even mad at the prompt, but once I typed, “Elise was an ugly crier” I knew I was on to something. So I added the bit about the bear and her mom. It comes about as my husband remarked today that Claire Danes is an ugly crier and that sentence became this story.

Here is the prompt: Use the quote below to tell the story of how your primary character comes to the edge (a cliche). Note: Your character may/may not fly. However, he/she encourages others to start a new beginning – i.e. to “fly.” Spring offers new beginnings to grow and soar. Tell this story in no more than 1,500 words (no less than 800) with a balance of dialogue and imagery. Now let your story fly!

“Come to the edge, He said. They said: We are afraid. Come to the edge, He said. They came. He pushed them, And they flew . . .”
— Guillaume Apollinaire
French poet

Please check out these other participants in today’s Friday Fiction Friends challenge!

http://www.susannesworld.com
http://www.clearlykristal.com
http://www.worldsworstmoms.com
Val’s fiction

Thank you!

Apr9

Tuesday Morning Press 23 — Prophylactic Parenting

Posted on April 9, 2013 by Grass Oil by Molly Field

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It sucks in this day and age, when kids turn “pastries” (the last time I checked a pop-tart on its own was a weapon of mass construction) into guns, or West Virginia or New York State, that we have to be extra vigilant about items brought in for Sharing Day.

But in an obvious effort to cover my ass, I am sharing my letter to the teacher (while ccing the administration and my husband that I sent at 9:04 this morning) to let both of you know that while I agree with all policies to protect the children, sometimes a kid’s imagination needs its assurances as well.

Good morning Mr. Schautzenklampfer,

I just left the school after writing you a note to apprise of the fact that Thing 3 brought in what he calls the “staff” of whom I believe is the wizard Gandalf from Tolkien’s “The Hobbit.”

Essentially, it is just a piece of falling limb (about 4.5′ long) from a tree in our backyard with a blue Lego ball placed between the fork of the limbs by packing tape.

I left the note affixed to the packing tape and placed the staff behind your desk, to inform you that I wanted to make sure that I was doing my best to perform within any school policy regarding any “weapons” on campus even though it’s not a weapon, it’s a piece of wood with a Lego ball “suspended” from the fork of the limb. I also left commentary that if you need to have me come up and get the staff to please do call me. Again the staff is behind your chair at your desk, it is not available to Thing 3 or openly available to any of his classmates. The front office staff (Yanosh Greenblexter) and the temporary substitute teacher is aware of the situation and that I was leaving you a note.

Upon my leaving the classroom, Thing 3 realized that today is not his “sharing day.” But after I left the note and staff behind your desk I just figured that if you needed me to come get it you would let me know.

Thanks,

Molly

So what to do now? Do I sit by the phone and wait for the call that my kid has been suspended? Do I rail against the tide and fight for change of insanely fearful adults who’ve forgotten that childhood imaginations are places of wonder and security and safety?

My kid’s about as apple pie as you can get. Here’s a pic of him yesterday feeding grass to our dog. That’s right, he fed our dog grass. … Well, see for yourself:

So now I wait.

Thank you.

UPDATE 9:43am from Mr. Schautzenklampfer:

Hi Molly,Thing 3 can share today instead of on the 16th. No problem! Thanks for taking the time to explain and keeping us informed.

-Heinrich Schautzenklampfer

Phew! Now I can go to yoga with my cell phone off. 🙂

Mar11

What I’ve Gained from Quitting 5 — Reconciling with the Quest for Relevance

Posted on March 11, 2013 by Grass Oil by Molly Field

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note: my capitalization is all over the place; i’m using a new app on my iPad, “iWriter” and it’s cool, but it allows me to be ee cummings withoutcorrectingitunlessyouseeit so, while i’ve cleaned up a lot of errors, i’m not going to bother with the caps.

this is my fifth post about taking a break from Facebook for Lent and how i’m processing my own assertion that i was likely addicted to it.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

when you give up a daily habit you started almost 4 and a half years ago with the intention of self-improvement, no matter what it is, you get twitchy at first. in the newness, the mandate is quite clear: don’t do that thing you’re giving up. (here is the first post about this.)

then after some time, you get a little comfortable, a little cocky and then if you’re like me, you slip a smidge and the doubt comes back: “can i do this? when will it truly end? will it work? how will i know? what is the benefit?” that ‘doubt’ is called life and life is what happens when you’re making other plans.

the good news is that you don’t have to beat yourself up over it. while we all have deficits and overages which deserve our examination and self-awareness, beware: the habit wants us to lose.

it’s the gloaming, the moments between the give-up and the self-awareness that can become the LMNOP, the distracting drama of life.

if we are mindful about what behavior we’re examining, we can stand vigilant against the LMNOP pitted against our success.

my experience as a publications manager, and public relations manager, as a mother and a PTA officer have taught me that A, maybe N or Q but definitely Z are all people really need to know. the GHIJKs are nice for a lunch date, but not for really getting things in order. and you know how those STUVWs can be.

i thought my deficit / my threat was Facebook. but it’s not. it’s drama, aka: LMNOP cloaked as Facebook. i am an ACOA, also known as someone who grew up in LMNOP, i have written extensively about it, in fact my book details in a fictional way, my own fight against an “addiction to chaos” that i was diagnosed with having in 2005. just because my LMNOP awareness is going on eight years, it does not mean that i’ve got drama / LMNOP licked.

ACOA or not, humans are fickle creatures. we can rationalize how much we wish to keep our habit: “it’s not all bad”; “just not too much,” “don’t deprive yourself…” that’s human nature and it’s expected. sometimes that’s prudent, but it also has great LMNOP potential.

i saw some LMNOP during the five minutes i was checking in with the Facebook groups i started. but even before i logged on, i felt the lmnop because i didn’t need to be online. it didn’t grow to LMNOP until i saw it, but i made an executive decision to take the LMNOP to beyond Z: off the grid. i had to for the sake of harmony and peace.

it’s not that complicated: if you don’t mean to stir up LMNOP, don’t stir up LMNOP. make sure your intentions line up with your actions, otherwise it’s LMNOP. awareness.

another trap of relevance is the lure of Becoming The Rationalization. i can become too self-involved and waste time explaining the rationalization. like now.

in short: i need to be careful not to let my FB/Lenten experience become my only experience. don’t worry, it’s not. i just agreed to be president of my son’s rowing club. don’t ask. it was a moment of weakness bolstered by rational and artful persuasion. (i’ll write more about that moment soon.) in a little while i’m going to take an online water motor safety test to become a certified launch (coach’s boat) driver.

are you still reading? i’m not.

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

my ongoing break from Facebook has been extremely revealing. it’s not as though my life has changed monumentally, but it’s true that i went to it everyday seeking relevance, seeking community. it gave me a rush, that made me feel welcome. like the guys at Cheers yelling, “Mol!”

the speed and delivery of that relevance reminds me of how Bugs Bunny could order an anvil or a plane from ACME by post: he’d be at a mail box and all of a sudden a pen and paper would be in his hands. he’d write something down, seal it in an envelope which he’d drop into the mail box. within three seconds, a delivery truck would zoom up and screech on to the scene and a letter carrier in uniform would exclaim in a milky Minnesota accent, “Package for Bugs Bunny!” and Bugs would sign for it.

relevance is important, it helps us fit in with the outside world and it helps us learn to keep things private too, so that’s good. but if we get our sense of relevance ONLY from the online world, we’re losing out because more than 7/8 of the time, people won’t bother saving us from ourselves.

i’m coming to terms better with thinking of myself as a writer. last week when i wrote about Facebook, i branded my hiatus as a failure (because i’d replaced Facebook with my blog writing) and that was wrong. it’s really good that i replaced one thing: a time trap, with another thing: a skill that i want to improve; i’m learning my weaknesses.

i heard last week on NPR that the Facebook front page is changing once again. Zuckerberg wants to make FB even more image heavy. yay. more ADD.

for a little blogger and writer like me, it’s folly to imagine “winning” because of Facebook. the algorithms for content sharing are arbitrary and likely linked more to visibility than to clicks –meaning that poor guy who just paid $700 for an ad will have to hope that people are even online to see it much less click on it… and given the fact that according to the Pew Charitable Trust one in five adults has given up the network, that means it’s going to be even harder to reach people with the cash to buy what the $700 ad is promoting.

remember: no one ever gives anything away. (‘cept bloggers, we give this stuff away by the crate.) and remember again how Facebook started: as vengeance for a rejection. Zuckerberg has Relevance written all over his face.

i am learning that i don’t need to give Facebook that power of controlling my relevance, nor do i need to see it as The Enemy. i can use it for what it is: an elaborate communication tool, nothing more; as a marketing tool for writers, it stinks.

i hear the siren calls for artists and writers to develop their social media platform; they just have to be built smartly.

gah: as i type, one of my beloved cousins has sent me the cover art for her friend’s debut novel; flat water tuesday, a story about rowing and romance. it’s a real book on paper and everything. my eyes just rolled to the back of my head because i’m sitting here moaning and groaning about stupid Facebook and not writing My Book. again: the problem is me.

mudita to my cousin’s friend; the story sounds great!

thank you.

ps – here’s a good post about this very thing: http://warriorwriters.wordpress.com/2013/03/11/is-technology-to-blame-for-emotional-barriers/

here’s the next and (i really hope) final post in this experience: https://mollyfielddotcom.wordpress.com/2013/03/17/what-ive-gained-by-quitting-6-final-entry-svasanahhhh/

Feb24

What I Will Gain by Quitting Facebook for Lent — 3: Resisting Urges, Feeling Left Out

Posted on February 24, 2013 by Grass Oil by Molly Field

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So today is Day 12, but I journaled on Friday about it.

The first thing I said in my entry that day was this: “Woke up in Status Update mode,” which really bummed me out. I closed that sentence with, “rats.”

The thing is, I didn’t wake up in SU mode today and I’m glad. I went to sleep last night after playing around on my iPad with a new app using my new stylus called “Ink Writer” and it’s a great extension of creative energy — it’s described as a replacement for paper and ink. You can doodle, trace an outline of a photo, all sorts of things for active minds like mine and it wore me out, in a good way. So today, I woke refreshed, not thinking about Facebook.

Here’s what I did last night on the app. I outlined a photo of myself with my 83# lap dog, Murphy:

Here are some things I’ve learned in the last 12 days of being almost entirely (save for the fiction group and the fundraising groups I launched) off Facebook:

When I went on FB Friday for the fiction group, the first thing to show up was my home page newsfeed, and what was the first thing I saw? A meme. But this one was about Pistorius not being a flight risk. Pistorius is that double-amputee Olympian who shot his girlfriend three times because she “surprised” him.

Reaction: this isn’t funny. It’s tasteless. Does the fact that this is showing up on my newsfeed show more about me and the online company I keep or does it show how depraved people can be? Answer: yes.

But below the meme, I saw my FB community: their beings digitized and reduced to 1″ avatars and I sensed a quickening in myself, not unlike the sensation I feel when an ambulance goes by. That sounds morbid, but I don’t mean it that way. What I mean by it is to suggest that I feel disconnected, that I am observing, not necessarily voyeuristically, because I also felt no interest. The avatars reminded me of “TV Mike” from “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” (the only good one, starring Gene Wilder) when he was broken up into millions of little bits and his mother freaked out that he was the size of a coffee cup when he landed in the TV on the other end of the transportation or “broadcast.”

Most of the content from this post is coming from the journal entry, that I wrote in hand, on the advice of a friend. My second post about this lenten hiatus was also generated from my journal entry. I am glad I’m doing it this way, on paper first.

I don’t deign to suggest that this experience will be of vast importance to anyone but me, but I am getting feedback from both of my readers that they are encouraged by these posts and the fact that I’m sharing how I’m doing.

When I went on Friday to correspond with the groups, I had 78 unread notifications. I also got a couple emails from Facebook telling me they missed me, and that they’d noticed I hadn’t updated my fan page “in a day” and suggested that I might want to update it then. A day. Well, that’s about right. That’s what I mean to Facebook I guess. For someone who was not a super-heavy user, I was mostly an uploader and content sharer (news posts, etc.), I mattered that much to them. By this point, 10 days later, they missed me as about I as much as I missed them.

But 78 notifications in 10 days. That red 78 over my little monochromatic blue globe made me feel important for a moment and it made me feel as though people wanted me to know they were thinking about me, so I did feel that rush, that draw to go see! but I didn’t look at the notifications — that’s obviously how they get you in. I reminded myself that I don’t care about what I’m missing, despite the fact that I woke that morning with the concept that people needed to hear what I thought first thing. This is a sick trap… for me.

But writing this all in pen on paper gives me a connection with my content; it makes my thoughts indelible, not part of the internet (even though they are now), despite my conflicts.

I wrote six pages that night. Don’t worry, it’s a 5″x7″ notebook. I feel like Gulliver when I use it.

My life has opened up considerably since logging off and having to stare at my own neediness for approval and my estimation of self import. I’ve gone to museums, I’ve met with eldercare consultants for my parents, I helped out my son’s class with their bread making and then took my son to a food bank the next day to donate the bread… I’ve participated in life, but I found myself not necessarily sated by those acts because something in me, a years-long conditioning is impelling me still — despite my consciousness, awareness and reluctance — to share it on FB, to earn the Likes and the so-called approval for posts that compete with cat memes and glib someecards.

Egad, that sounds really snobby. But it’s true and this is hard for me. I’m truly being candid and am risking sounding like a jerk because I’m processing. It’s a little-known fact FB peeps, that FB has some sort of (another) creepy algorithm to determine what of yours gets seen first by your connections, in your newsfeed. I do know this: images win out. I also say this at risk of sounding completely paranoid and conspiracy theorist-y, but I wonder if FB is intentionally contributing to attention deficit disorder to keep people online; it’s like gambling … I’ve written before about dopamine rushes and pleasure centers and Facebook.

I continued on that thought,

It wasn’t enough to just do it and to document it and share it in a blog post. Something truly bizarre and I thought foreign to me is that urge from deep within that wanted the affirmation yet I know it’s completely pointless as well as soon forgotten once consumed. Do I remember anyone else’s status updates? For 99.829% of status updates I see, the answer is no. What’s more, do I remember any of my own? Do I remember my last one? Well, yes, because that one is when I said I was taking my leave of Facebook, but it’s sort of assholic of me to think that anyone would remember it; it’s an ego thing for me to think that anyone really cares about my status updates; but then I must remember not to be uncool to myself because then that opens up another rabbit hole …

The thing that feeds this concept for me as being an important member of my own Facebook community is that I’m a writer. And the publishing paradigms are shifting: self-publishing abounds, eBooks are all the rage (even though I really want to publish on paper), and the all-but-skywritten pronouncements that traditional publishing is on a DNR.

I hear time and again the need for writers and other creatives to develop a “platform” which is based on the person’s accessibility and social media “persona” and well, my “persona” is me. So that means, as far as the social media platform standpoint is considered, that I keep up with the Joneses, or more likely, the Hausenhaufers and Nardletters and Fingleworths — other completely unknown writers and trust me … there are a lot of us. I lament (quite ironically, by the way) that if I were just a regular person (I KNOW!), then leaving FB would be so much easier… but like Joan Crawford, I have to consider my public, dahling.

Don’t worry — I get it.

I stated in some posts leading up to my eventual decision to abandon FB that I’d had some epiphanies about living life when I was sick with Norovirus. Exhaustion, dehydration and vomiting does wonders for existentialism by the way. Another reason I had was one I don’t talk about very often (great line from “A Few Good Men,” “Because in places you don’t like to talk about at cocktail parties …”) is that I felt left out. That’s hard to admit. It makes me vulnerable and yes, real blah blah blah… but it’s true.

For a long while, when I first joined FB in 2008, I don’t recall ever seeing anyone else’s status updates. I recall going to someone’s wall (and I was a total noob about FB at the time, and I’m grateful that I’m still an FB / social media noob) and seeing what they had to say. I would just post my update or share an article and be off. But then something changed and I saw my friends’ updates and they were often about … well, themselves. And some mutual friends (this is where it gets sticky) and what they did together, with photos, without me. So I felt small, and unimportant and I would become sad.

So, I even did it myself a few times, just to make other people feel small and unimportant, thinking that would make me feel big and amazingly important and you know, special. I’d tag a friend or two in a status update and share it. But then I felt like a dick. So I’d take it off. I learned later to share my thoughts more generically, “A regular night is always nicer with good friends and a dinner served by a hot waiter.” That is a status update that anyone, anywhere can agree with. And you can borrow that status update free of charge.

I have an actual friend who has a rule (which I admire): Anyone she sees on a near-daily basis or who lives within 30 miles of her is not allowed on her FB connections list. (I’m not going to use the word “friend” anymore.) Her connection group is less than 100 and her bullshit ratio is controlled.

So there were also times when I was convinced ~~(because I’m a deluded, self-entitled, paranoid conspiracy theorist)~~ that some of these socially exclusive images were posted as a giant (swear alert) “fuck you!” to me and despite my weirdness, I know I’m right.

Why? Remember how Facebook first began: as the vengeful scheming of and public slandering by a jilted small-minded emotionally arrested boy at Harvard. It all started with his system of rating women based on their looks. Some women liked it and others didn’t; but guess what: they all got talked about and so did the women who weren’t included in the original idea. Facebook was founded on exclusion and rejection. So then that begat the question: do you want to be included in this or not?

Granted, Facebook has evolved (as I’ve stated on a previous post about this topic) or that’s what the marketing would have you believe. No… I don’t know about that. Would the marketing have you believe that? I have to say this, I’ve never seen a television or heard a radio ad or even seen an internet ad for Facebook. Why? Because they don’t need it: in the digitized, Internet-based world, Facebook is ubiquitous. But that doesn’t mean it’s healthy or unhealthy; the more I process this, the more it comes back to my knowing myself and my limitations.

I have another human friend who recently shut down, completely deactivated her account as did her teenage son who will likely be followed by his teenage sister. Why? Because they decided that it’s a freakfest of self-promotion and for my friend at least, she found herself completely unimpressed by it all after a while. And she did it silently, no pronouncements, because she didn’t want to hear about it from anyone. She’s like that. I dig that about her.

And so, here’s me: feeling like after four years that maybe it’s time to graduate. Keep the yearbook, stay in touch an’ all, but you know… get a life. This break has been awesome for the most part, despite my feeling twitchy and needy at times about sharing my thoughts and experiences.

The drop in data and light in my face have helped me become more self-aware, more calm, my thoughts are cohesive and productive and I don’t feel bad about being “away.” Despite what happened Friday morning with the Status Update thought, I haven’t thought that way again and I don’t really feel like hearing about other people. That sounds selfish until I realize that Facebook doesn’t share status updates anymore the way it used to. Back in the stone age, when you had a status update, it stayed at the top of your wall and people would know you’d not been online in a while and that was cool. Now FB shares posters and pictures and ads and cat memes and someecards and other stuff that quite honestly: has done nothing for my life.

The problem for me: it can be fun to get a glimpse of what my friends and family choose to share. I really like to see how everyone seems to be doing. I am a social creature who loves banter and seeing friends and visiting and travel. That’s the social part of social media that I dig.

I remember that before Facebook, I didn’t not think about my friends, I just didn’t think about them not thinking about me. It never occurred to me that I figured that large in their lives. I think about the thought of completely deactivating and it doesn’t completely appeal to me. Still chewing on this; the key is to not be distracted by it.

Thank you.

ps – here is the next post about this: https://mollyfielddotcom.wordpress.com/2013/03/06/what-ive-gained-from-quitting-4-overcoming-habits-resurrecting-old-good-ones/