According to Timeline, I joined Facebook January 2, 2008. I remember feeling ambivalent about joining. My life was already pretty full with no online social networking and I didn't see a big attraction to what I thought FB was offering me which seemed to me to be superficial observations on the lives of people I knew and the thousands of people I intended to befriend on the social networking site. I did not get on to look at family photos of people I knew and would come to meet, or see what people's mood were throughout the day or what they had for dinner. I got on for business reasons. I was writing a book and I believed there was no way one could become a successful author without having thousands of friends on FB.
Now almost 5 years later I am still writing a book, the last revision of the one I was working on when I got on FB and I want a break - from FB, not from writing. I ended up liking FB more than I imagined. I wouldn't say I'm a stone cold addict, but I spend more time on FB than I would like. I write my book and I browse on FB nearly everyday. I usually do my book writing in one solid block in the evening averaging about 45 to an hour on weekdays. Two or three times that much on weekends. I write much more than I FB on the weekends, but during the week I probably spend a combined 45 to an hour at various points in the day reading the FB posts of my 510 friends.
I love my FB friends: those I see everyday at home and work, those I have known several decades and see only rarely now and those I have yet to meet in person. But, I've had enough of this severely circumscribed structure for now. I see a compulsion growing in me for FB that I do not like. I am often amused by the posts, sometimes informed but very rarely educated. Yet, I keep going back looking for something that is not there. I think it's the humanity of my friends that is missing. I get bits and pieces of people's points of view. I get projections of their awareness. I get flat out titillation, but I never get their wholeness.
There are friends I have yet to met who I would love to have a face to face conversation with, but I have never reached out to one with a request. Sometimes because they are a provocatively photographed female and I know where my head is. Sometimes because they are geographically far away. Mostly because I don't have time for a real face to face conversation even with people I know and love who I see on FB. This does not make me sad exactly, incomplete is more like it.
Then there are the inanities. The bumper sticker philosophy sayings, the funny cat photos, the indecipherable comments and the loads of things I just don't care about. This is only a problem because I make it a problem by scrolling through these comments several times a day. I don't linger on the things that bore me, but I find myself wondering why am I back here. Nothing interesting happened to these 510 people in the past hour at least nothing that is FBable. So I'm through for now.
My FB fast is a new experiment. I will come back in a month if I miss it. Longer if I don't. I still plan to use FB and lots of other social media to promote this fabulous book I am writing about facilitating groups for men who are parents. Although more broadly the book is about facilitating groups for people to connect on a deeper level than we can do on FB.
I'll be thinking about you. Shoot me an email or give me a call if you want to be in touch.
Love, Haji
