Life Without Facebook

I have to thank my friend Chris (Tales of the Deadman) for asking me about this and finally spurring me on to write it.  It's been sitting in my list of blogs to write since it happened.

Almost two months ago I deactivated my Facebook account.  It wasn't a spur of the moment decision which may have seemed the case.  I had been thinking about it for a while and then something happened, which I won't discuss, that finally cemented the decision.

So I ended it.

It turned out to be a good thing.  I spent more time on there than I realized.  I would check it constantly at work.  A quick check would turn into a half an hour of scrolling through my feed.  That would turn into a rush to get stuff done, only to be repeated a couple hours later.  I spent more time on there at work than I should have.  I realized work is for work and I should be focus while I'm there.

I also had an issue with most (not all) of the people I was friends with.  My friends fell into three categories.

First was the friends I didn't know too well or didn't know much anymore.  You know who I mean.  Friends that were my friends in high school that I found, or found me, and I thought "I haven't talked to that guy (or girl) in forever!  I wonder what they're up to?"  There would be a small back and forth about how we've been and then we would never speak again.  The others were friends from old jobs that were like "Hey! You're on Facebook! I'm on Facebook!  I'm gonna add you when I get home!" and they did, and we never spoke.

The second group consisted of family.  You think that wouldn't be so bad, but turns out they were the worst.  Now I'm not talking about immediate family.  Although now that I type that I think of things that annoyed me and I want to retract it.  I'm talking about extended family.  Cousins, in-laws, my wife's family, etc.  Mostly cousins in my case.  Their posts were meme's that were beginning to get vulgar and I'd either end up deleting them or removing them from my feed.  Basically my Family group turned into that dark place I didn't go out of fear of what I'd see.

Finally there were my actual friends.  The ones I kept in contact with.  The ones that meant something to me and I enjoyed reading their updates.  They'd post on my status and visa versa.  The funny thing is that leaving Facebook actually weeded out my true friends, because my true friends still keep in touch.  The ones that I thought were true friends and don't I guess I now know where I stand.

The best thing is the lack of complaining.  I still have G+, which is like Facebook but better, but I don't get on there and hear anyone's incessant complaining about something that shouldn't really be posted to Facebook.  I was of the mind that if it's personal it should stay that way.  Why does EVERYONE need to hear about it? Seriously there were a few people that ONLY complained on Facebook.  Every post of theirs would be complaining about the crap they were dealing with.  It was depressing.  I have enough to deal with in my own life than having to hear you pissing and moaning about how horrible your life is.

I still have a few social network accounts.  G+, like I mentioned, Twitter, and here, which those true friends still keep in contact on and it suits me just fine.  The nice thing is I can get on G+ to do a "quick check" and it's just that.  Not a half hour perusing a ton of crap from people I don't care about or seeing stuff I don't want to read.  It's quite nice.

Really without Facebook I've given myself the gift of time.