Taking a Break from Facebook

The joke in my church small group is that if anyone needs me, I can always be found on Facebook. While that is mostly true (having Facebook on my phone make it easy to leave FB open all day even while I’m at work), I would also like to think that if I take Facebook away, I would be fine.

After hurting the feelings of some folks through my anti-MLM post a few days ago (three people defriended me altogether, and I noticed this morning that at least two others have chosen to hide *all* their posts – not just their non-MLM posts), I have made the decision to take a vacation from Facebook until December 1. I’m deleting it from my phone (which is where I use it 90% of the time) and removing the quick link on my desktop at home. I even debated whether or not to keep Messenger on my phone, but decided now that it is a separate app from Facebook I can keep that so people can contact me if they want to. I think a couple of my other apps on my phone will automatically update to Facebook (like my TV watching or my Swarm check-ins), but other than those automated check-ins, the plan is that I won’t be personally active on Facebook.

I’ve uploaded a “Gone Fishin'” graphic to my page and deleted the app from my phone. Tonight when I get home I’ll delete the link of temptation from my desktop computer. My hope is that by not being on Facebook I will accomplish four things.

First is to let my MLM friends post with abandon without fearing that they are annoying me. I don’t mean that in a passive-aggressive way. I didn’t intend my original anti-MLM post to make people feel like they couldn’t post what they want on their walls. Heck, people post stuff all day long that I disagree with (politics, religion, etc.) and I’d never tell them they CAN’T post. So perhaps my not being there for several weeks will let them breathe easy and feel more comfortable about posting.

Two is to put Cootiehog to good use again. I’ve let it languish for far too long, which is a shame. I left NetworkedBlogs a while back, so the updates won’t post automatically to Facebook anymore – I’ll trust that if people are interested they’ll come here to find out how the rest of October and all of November are going.

Thirdly, a friend of mine this week asked if I ever considered being a writer. I told her that yes, over the years, I’ve thought about it but never got past the first chapter or two. When contemplating the Facebook Fast, I realized that not only can I work on Cootiehog, but I can participate in NaNoWriMo and see what kind of end product I come up with by November 30. So last night I logged into my account, cleared out the cobwebs, and am eagerly trying to figure out how to go about writing The Great American NaNoWriMo Novel.

And lastly, I won’t lie – my quiet times with God have been paltry over the years. And yet I’m still able to carve out plenty of time for Facebook. My hope is that by getting rid of Facebook for the next several weeks I’ll be able to carve out time to really concentrate on doing a quiet time – and not during lunch at work (which is normally when I do it, when I actively pursue doing it).

So to my THREE (!) known readers (KF, MBM, and JS – you liking these shoutouts?), you’ll see a lot more of me over the next several weeks.