Chagrin Falls....

chagrin - A keen feeling of mental unease, as of annoyance or embarrassment, caused by failure, disappointment, or a disconcerting event


Yeah...

so...

I couldn't do it....

I couldn't stay off....

um...

I couldn't stay off.....

FACEBOOK.

If you're grinning and laughing at me go right ahead. I'll wait. I deserve it....

 ...

...ok, that's enough.

The story goes, I wanted to send Happy Birthday greetings to a friend from high school a few weeks ago. I realized I didn't have an email for them. But I really wanted to communicate with them and let them know that even now - over 10 years later - I remembered their special day. And I realized the main way I communicated with them before. I realized the reason I probably was able to remember the birthday in the first place. Facebook.

(I remembered their birthday not because Facebook told me to, but because seeing person's name pop-up on your feed keeps them in your mind so you put dates and memories together much quicker.)

So I logged back on.

And Facebook sent me a very smarmy, passive aggressive polite email welcoming me back. Letting me know that my account was reactivated and if it wasn't me I needed to check on that (of course it was me - and they knew it too...).

I was glad I did. I found out about baby blessings that are on the way, new jobs, health accomplishments and other big news. I also found out about more mundane stuff, but it felt good to connect on some level again.

I dropped off the facespace because sometimes it was hard for me to see other's lives and compare my current life situation with other folks. It was good to be disconnected. I was not jealous or envious of other people's jobs, houses, children, diets, traveling, etc. I was happier on a certain level.

The contrast of that is I was lonely on another level. I was left out of the loop with certain events and jokes even within the friends I have in Tampa who I see almost every week. I had a cousin move to Maryland and I had no idea he and his family were even thinking about leaving Alabama. All of these are normally things I'd know because I was on Facebook.

I'm going to have to work to find a medium. I'm going to continue to use Facebook to share in my friend's happy and triumphant moments, but I'm also going to have to work to not compare my life with others. No one is exactly like me and no one else has it as great as they pretend to on Facebook.

Any advice for this would be greatly appreciated. Is there a way to have my cake and eat it too? (side note: where did that statement come from? Who in the world would have cake with the intention NOT to eat it. I mean, why does it have to be so special to both have and to eat?)

I think the self imposed break helped me break the Facebook checking habit I was developing. I'm getting a phone upgrade this week and I may not even activate my Facebook app - just to keep the temptation to constantly check it at bay.

Continue chuckling with your smug feelings of superiority. ;-) I am definitely eating crow over this one. Oh well, we'll chalk it up to a research experiment for my Master's in navigating social networking as an adult. My thesis will be entitled, "She Thought She Knew Best - But Boy, She Proved Herself Wrong: A Study of a Failed Experiment".

I'm thinking of applying to have it published....

(and if you're on Facebook - feel free to drop by my page to say "Hello".)