Resting from Social Media

I haven't been on Facebook in a while.

It's not you.

But it probably is your friends.


Like many people, I am increasingly disturbed by social media. It's your buddy making racist, misogynist and homophobic remarks disguised as Christian/American/political truth. I happen to like nuanced and well-reasoned debate with reasonable people who are willing to dive deep into an issue, explore it, and agree to disagree. But based on substance, and "he's not Hilary Clinton" IS NOT A GOOD ENOUGH DEBATE POINT, nor is it a mic drop.

It's also the carefully crafted Facebook profiles that have been making me feel crummy. People with either seemingly perfect lives, or significantly beautiful insight into their imperfectly perfect lives that it was making me feel inadequate. My reality is that life isn't perfect, and I don't have spiritually significant insights into why. Sarcasm and black humor? Sure. Wisdom? Yea... I'm a quart low on that.

And the running posts, but that's mostly because after nearly 5 months, I'm still limping around not running. I was tired of wishing I was going all the awesome runs that it felt like EVERYONE ELSE was, while I'm here on the floor doing stretches and gaining 15 pounds.

There was also the obligation factor. I was starting to feel like this:

Seriously.

If our relationship is based on what I do or do not "like" of yours on Facebook, and if my knowledge of what's going on in your life is based on social media... Well, I think that's a problem.

So I hit the pause button.

Ok, I initially disabled my account, but then I remembered I needed some contact information off of there, so I re-enabled it, got whatever it was I was looking for, and deleted Facebook off my phone. But anyway.

I realized there were times of the day when I was reaching for my phone and clicking on the Facebook icon, without necessarily thinking about it. Like it was a physical habit and I wasn't totally sure what to do now?

But I think this is better.

There are some thing that I would like to check in on, but I think I should just message those folks and ask how things are going. Passive monitoring of life events... I don't know, maybe that's a route that I don't want to take right now. Maybe I need to be more intentional, and if I don't have time to do that, I need to learn what that means and why.

In all likelihood, I will go back (well, I said that about meat and never did, so who knows...) But until then, send me an email, will ya?