It’s been interesting watching the responses from close friends to I guess my rather sudden deactivation of my Facebook account. People want to know if I’m ‘okay’. As if coming off Facebook is some kind of sign of possible madness, depression or some other crisis of social exclusion.
Truly, I’ve always kind of questioned my sanity but not enough to seek professional help. I mean, who needs meds when there are mangoes and meggies, right?
Anyway, for an addict I seem to be coping really well. Haven’t broken out in sweats or anything and my primary thought all day has to my relief not revolved around creating a witty, thought-provoking status update. I’m still on Twitter, but it’s never really consumed my life as much as the ole crackbook.
I don’t know what prompted me yesterday to deactivate, maybe it was the full moon, but much like when I stopped eating meat, it was a thought that entered my mind and once it did, I didn’t second guess it or wait for the doubt to set in.
It was a lot easier too, after a week and a half partial fast caused by the sudden and untimely demise of my hard drive. After the initial distress, I woke up the next morning and started doing the gardening that I’d wanted to do since the beginning of the rainy season. In the hour that I would ordinarily have spent fiddling around with my page, I managed to sort out my compost heap and chop my way through some weeds, and set up a bed of tomatoes, pigeon peas, and peppers.
I was stunned and quite frankly ashamed of myself to discover just how much time I could waste. Time that I could never regain. Scary.
When I got my laptop back it was easy to fall back into the same old pattern. It’s easy when it’s your news feed, your grapevine, your companion, your measure of yourself, your propaganda.
But I find myself these days desperately wanting to break out of familiar patterns and my FB addiction is a rather good place to start.
I realise now that I’m writing this that FB encouraged me to write more in sound bites. Which is not really the best thing if you’ve got a book to get out of your head and you have a woefully short attention span anyway. Of course there was also the immense element of navel gazing, people macoing, how many times a day can you check one person’s profile-ing. Luckily for me I get bored easily. I guess yesterday was the day I got bored with Facebook. It remains to be seen how long I can sustain the fast. I now have no clue about friends birthdays, haven’t bothered to check the news and I also don’t have a clue about what is happening in Port of Spain anymore. I guess if it’s important enough somebody will actually pick up the phone or something. But for the most part I am enjoying not being caught up in the noise of other people’s lives.
Tillah Willah 