My New Year’s resolution…

...is to stop being a social media hermit.

So I deactivated my Facebook about 10 months ago because it worsened all the already painful problems in my life. Kinda like putting a magnifying glass to an ant on a sunny day.

Then I stopped blogging. I don’t know why. A friend of mine once warned me to NEVER blog about how you don’t blog enough, but I’m doing it anyway. Because it’s actually hilarious, when you don’t keep up your blog it becomes the spawning ground for spam comments (who knew?!). Comments used to give me a thrill. But then I wrote this one really upsetting post awhile ago in which I basically just sobbed all over the internets, and the first comment I got was from Viagra Online. That really messed me up. Now I get comments DAILY from oh, I dunno, maybe “Free Cambodian Dating”? Or, better yet, just plain 'ol “Boobs”? It just feels so violating, like someone spray-painting your baby’s face.

Then I tried to replace blogging and Facebooking with Twittering. It didn’t work. I’m going to say something now, something that may shock and offend. Twitter sucks. It’s boring and stupid. I have an account, I guess I’m pretty active on it or whatever, but it’s useless. If I’m going to blog, I’ll blog. If I’m going to write status updates with links for my friends, I’ll do that on Facebook (or even AIM for that matter). Twitter just adds nothing. I got jazzed about Twitter exactly once, and that was when Robert DeNiro responded to one of my tweets. But then it turned out it wasn’t the real Bobby. Of course it wasn’t. Freakin’ Twitter.

So here’s the part where I admit some hard truths. Here we go:

I get lonely without social media. And not just any social media. MY social media. Twitter never felt like mine, but rather a hodgepodge of many people’s one-liners. Flickr was never mine either—I don’t want my photos searchable on Google Images. LinkedIn has always been fine, but that’s my WORK place, ya know?

I miss blogging. But when you stop, it’s really hard to start again. It’s like, if you haven’t written in awhile you feel like your next post has to be THE BEST. And then you get freaked, because you have no ideas that can live up to that. And then you feel like you just have no ideas AT ALL. I guess that’s called writer’s block, or blogger’s block, or something.

And, yes, I miss Facebook (picture me cringing as I write this next bit, ok?). The truth is, I’m severely saddened that no one knows my favorite movies anymore. Or my favorite quotes. They’ve changed in the last 10 months, and no one knows because I don’t have a stupid Facebook account. Also, I so much miss exclaiming “new profile pic!” after a fun night out. And speaking of photos, my new ones have no home without Facebook. They sit in iPhotos, all lonely and lifeless with no comments or thumbs up. Poor photos. Maybe it's juvenile, but it’s almost like deactivating one’s Facebook profile disappears a huge chunk of one’s social life.

So I’m going to start blogging more. About whatever. Even if I have no ideas, I’ll just write about Tiger Woods or something.

I’m also going to reactivate my Facebook account sometime soon. It’s so scary, because I deactivated during one of the hardest times of my life. So my profile is like a time capsule of crap-land. But I gotta get over it. Not to say I’ll never deactivate again (I most certainly will if I feel the need), but I think now it’s about time I reentered the social media world. Because these late-night convos with my plant (it’s a her and she has a name and she’s brilliant) are getting pathological.

Comments

[Stephanie Vincent]

I will definalty be reading. I agree with your views on twitter and sadly its hard to imagine life without facebook.

I have actually joined the world of blogging myself....
radicalhateloss.blogspot.com

[cnkeach]

Glad you're back! I missed your posts. never tried Twitter, but it sounded pretty dumb to me. Looking forward to reading this blog regularly this year.

[Action Bob Markle]

glad you're writing again...but save the movie stuff for facebook and write about all that societal/political observation stuff you did...