A Momentous Decision

For weeks I've been thinking about it. Little by little I've been cutting back - I went from 57 to 43. All the hours I've spent reading stuff, looking at pictures and videos - and playing Scrabble! Holy Mackerel (it is Friday, after all.) Then there was all the discussion of information usage and privacy issues. And all the political stands and statements. I found I was more irritated than entertained. So this evening, April 30th, 2010 at 8:28pm MDT I deactivated my Facebook account.

It was a very good thing during the long siege scouring the internet job search wasteland, filling out online applications, doing assessment tests, emailing resumes and cover letters - and never hearing anything from anybody other than automated acknowledgements of receipt of said materiel. Facebook was a place I could go to hang out with friends. It was a great solace during those long days.

Now, however, I'm going to the theatre every day, leaving at 7:00am and returning home at around 6:00pm.There is some packing for the move that needs to happen. In about a month, people will begin to gather for that most momentous occasion, Carmen's Ordination (y'all come!) Moments after that's over, I'll be loading up the truck and driving my tools to Pennsylvania, where I already have more friends than I've made in New Mexico, looking for a job and finishing the house before the motherload arrives. As much as I'll miss my 43 Facebook friends, I won't have much time to dwell on it.

I think the big turning point came when I posted a picture of Snake Boy holding up his seven foot rattlesnake skin. I was expecting dozens of comments. There were three. Meanwhile, I was emailing it to my Facebook-free dad, and I decided to just go ahead and email it to the whole address book, many of whom are on FB. I got more comments from that mailing than from the FB crowd. "Hmmm," I said, "Why am I spending so much time there?" Ever since then I've been going back and forth between doing another friend purge, and simply purging my own damn self. Today I decided on the latter.