The Mindless and Endless

I went off Facebook two years. I did it in direct response to a mean-spirited attack against me from a family member over email. Tuning out of Facebook seemed like a good way to shut everything out for a little while. That little while turned into a year.

It was amazing.

But also somewhat of a hindrance when wanting to know about goings-on and being invited to things. Even hosting my annual Piesgiving became a bit more difficult because I didn't have email addresses for everyone I usually invited (through Facebook). Thankfully my friends were pretty good about telling me about movie nights on the Square and get togethers, so it wasn't as if I was completely removed from social gatherings and society in general.

Then I remembered my friend Will Bishop. Will was, and still is, old school in that he hasn't joined the smartphone ubiquity and still owns a simple flip phone. While I "celebrate" over ten years on Facebook, Will has also never joined the social media site. However, Will was ALWAYS invited to any and every event or get together that was being held. People just knew he wasn't on Facebook, so when an invite went out there was usually a last line to the effects of "And someone let Will Bishop know!".

In my sabbatical from Facebook I was still on Instagram, and I was running the Bike|Walk Denton Facebook page, so it wasn't as if I was completely off the grid. I reactivated my account purely for March Madness and the competition I run on an Anderson extended-family page (that I created and was admin for). It seemed selfish to not create the event since every one seemed to have lots of fun with it.

When I first came back on, I only checked it in the morning for the Memories. I am a very sentimental and nostalgic person, and I love seeing old posts of what I was doing on the same day but one, three or nine years ago. Then I was checking it at work. And at home. And all the time.

Facebook can be really great. But it can also be a huge time-suck. While I work to be better about not spending so much time mindlessly, endlessly scrolling through the same twenty people that the algorithms have deemed and countless ads, I'm going to attempt to blog more.

And get out and explore this new city of mine more.