A Week of No Facebook

Well, it's been about two weeks since I started that "No Facebook" experiment. I actually ended it the evening before the week was up because of a karaoke contest I was in at the Alaska State Fair. I wanted to post a video of my performance for my family and friends who wouldn't be able to see it otherwise. (Before you ask, no, I didn't even place. I don't really want to talk about it.)

I've been visiting Facebook the last week, even going so far as to load the apps on my phone and iPad again. Here was what I noticed:

I'm spending far less time on Facebook than I was before. And in some ways, I kind of feel bad about that. I'm getting on to post things about my own life, but not really spending much time seeing what's going on in others' lives like I want to. It's just too much. There are so many people I love and want to see on Facebook that it has become a giant time-suck I just don't have the energy to keep up with. So there are a few feelings of guilt tied in with it.

I got so much more productive when I got off Facebook. Getting things done around the house, cooking some new recipes, writing more, and so on. Yesterday I noticed that I was returning to my habit of checking Facebook on my iPad multiple times during the day (though not spending as much time on it as before). That was preventing me from doing things that needed to be get done, like dishes. (I hate, hate, hate doing dishes. Have I mentioned that before? So I always go for the distractions to get away from that sink.)

So I have once again deleted the apps from my phone and iPad.

I've been sending more text messages to the people I miss the most (the ones who have text messaging, that is. Yes, there are still people out there who don't have it and don't want it.)

So I still haven't deleted my account. And I'm not sure why I haven't. If I don't want to spend time on it, why bother keeping it? I guess it's to leave that one window open to those who use Facebook for communication and nothing else. Like those people who don't have text messaging in their phone plans. (Ahem, Mom?) ;)

And I imagine I'll probably want to use it for information mining as well, asking people about their experiences and reviews on places or products. I've found that to be very helpful this week in particular.

More on that later.