So Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, which is February 18th this year, and I had to decide what I would give up for it. Last year I gave up Twitter with a friend of mine, she is giving up Twitter again this year and that got me started thinking about whether I would give something up as well.
At first I thought I might just go without giving something up, for most of my life I never really gave anything up so it is new to me to be doing this lately, but I did know that I got a lot out of it last year when I gave up Twitter. I reflected on that and knew that it would be nice to have another good experience like that, but what would I do?
Then last weekend came around, I got in my head a little more deeply than I would have liked and I realized there was one culprit and it was Facebook.
Now obviously not everything about Facebook is a bad thing, but there is enough there that can cause negative things to arise, that I figure I should go ahead and leave it behind for forty days and nights.
I won’t play Candy Crush on my computer for that time period, so that alleviates a time suck right there.
I won’t read a lot of articles that make me shake my head and further pushes me to the left politically. With not reading some of these, I won’t have to question the future that we are headed towards, and how I just can’t believe that some people are as they are. So that’s gotta be a good thing.
I notice that I read posts and statuses that make me wonder about what people mean, wonder what they are getting at, and at the same time they cause me to take on some kind of judging which I don’t want to do, isn’t necessarily fair to do, shouldn’t be done at all really. So let’s go ahead and take that out of the equation as well.
Last year my Twitter reprieve helped me to look at that site differently, helped me take on new habits with it that weren’t so “focused” let’s say. I went from having to know everything that was going on, having to read every last tweet on my timeline, to relaxing and reading what was there when I was there and not worrying about the rest.
This year I want to take on new habits with Facebook as well, and I think taking the app and it’s messenger app off of my phone will help with that. I won’t check things as often. I won’t look to conversations I am trying to have, that just don’t pan out. I won’t have random things hanging over me that really shouldn’t be there. To hell with Damocles sword, man!
Facebook, you are what you are and we all know that, goodbye for now.