Letting Go Of Facebook

As you may know, I have been on a Facebook fast for the last 20 days. And while my blog posts have been showing up there on the regular, that is due to nifty little tricks that my blogging friends and I call auto-posting. It's pretty awesome.

At any rate, I think I may be done with Facebook. I have found that anytime I remember anything about Facebook all I hear is the chatter of my 200 some "friends" in my ears. And sometimes it is just too much to try to concentrate on the constant chatter that is my own life, while reading the snippets of every one else's lives.

It's been nice the last few weeks to not have that constant chatter, to really be able to focus on my family and the things that I really love to do.  Like read. And create pretty things.

I made this Saturday morning. 

And this, on Thursday morning before work.

I need to have a mute button from all of the information (and non-information) that everyone is throwing out there.

Facebook does not serve any vital function in my day-to-day life that cannot be served in another way. (I know this all sounds crazy, right?) I have the blog, so you are all informed with how screwed up and messy my life is. I have a texting package on my phone so that you can talk to me directly (or, and I know this is a novel idea - you could just call my phone). I have Twitter (also on my phone). I even have Skype for those of you that would like to video chat with the munchkin and I.

All that the mirror of Facebook ever shows me is how I don't match up with other people's edited versions of perfect. How many times do you take the same picture before you post it? How long do you spend typing up that status feed? How much do you censor your real thoughts to sound cool to the 1% of your "friends" that you consider to be the cool kids?

Facebook has missed me. It has sent me 3 messages about notifications that have not been read and messages that have been received.

And, when I can login back in again on Wednesday, I am going to break it off permanently. I will still have the blog page, because I understand the importance of a blog having a Facebook presence (which means that you should probably click here if you want to keep notifications about future blog posts in your news feed) but it is time to end the relationship that I have with Facebook.

I would rather have a stronger relationship with the people that I walk with in my daily life, than to sacrifice that time to virtual friends that don't even nod in my direction when they see me in real life.