Saying Goodbye

(I wrote this new year's weekend)

This weekend I logged into my goodreads account to update the books that I have finished recently. I keep an extra "shelf" open on my page to track how many books I have read for each year.



When I first had Ivy I panicked about slacking off on my reading, which is one of the activities of my life that defines me to myself. At that point, I made a goal of reading 52 books a year to keep myself motivated on doing something so important to my individual self, to not sacrifice every cell of my brain to motherhood or watching my samsung home theatre system while nursing her.


And every year I scramble, yet each year I have made my goal. Until this year. 2010 is receiving a big fat F on this goal that I have loved and honored for 7 years. And I'm blaming that failure on Facebook. And it's the last straw.


This year I have seen 2 friends be genuinely mean to others with their facebook postings. One in a full on, name calling rant that involved my brother and his current girlfriend (the friend was an ex of my brother's), and the other was in a sickly, sugary comment on a post that I had put up about snow. and it wasn't to align myself with her, it was to show another one of my friends how "close" we are. this friend is the sworn enemy of my friend's mother. I know that this is all confusing, but they were hurtful, mean spirited postings that didn't have anything to do with me, but made me feel horrible.


And I'm not clean either. After blocking someone's updates, I have found myself stalking them and getting very angry at their posts. But I cannot seem to help myself. I find myself being judgemental and mean and envious in my head because I think that she is not using Facebook the way that I think it should be used. And every single time I head over to her page, I feel like crap about myself. And then, I let her win. I also once posted an update to hurt someone. Not that what I said wasn't true or heartfelt, but I knew that posting it would cause someone else to feel badly. And I'm still angry that I did that.


So, I've been blogging up a storm lately and feel so much better. And although I'm saying goodbye, I'm not murdering my account. There may be late night times of weakness. I may hop over to see my birthday comments. I may be back in a month but I really hope not. In college, I had a realization that I had too many "friends". That I needed to cut back on the fringe and stick with those that were worthwhile to the time to spend having a friendship. This is the identical way that I feel right now with FB.



I started this post this weekend and have still been checking my account. Far less time than I had been before. I've been also wondering what to do with my time away from social networking. There have been times that I've been about to hop on to facebook, but make myself do something more positive, like read or paint instead. It's going to be rough. It's going to feel like Lent. But, I'm thinking that it will be worth it.