Why I decided to quit Facebook
Ok, let me get something straight, I f*#$ing LOVED Facebook.
I loved that I could basically talk sh*t and have people read & comment on my useless musings. I loved the shameless vanity that it promoted and fed. I loved the feeling a little message icon would elicit – YOU ARE IMPORTANT. YOU ARE POPULAR.
But, evidentially, I loved my real life a whole lot more.
I had been tossing around the idea of killing off my virtual self for around six-months now. The amount of time I was wasting on the site was actually starting to annoy me. I was basically beginning to annoy myself at my lack of self control. Simply put, I could not use a computer without checking Facebook at least once or having the site sitting temptingly in the background. So, I quit.
That and I’ve got to get my sh*t together this year as I prepare a thesis for a doctoral candidature. I don’t want to end up submitting some half-assed novel because I wasted all my time ‘liking’ your status and ‘updating’ mine.
Leaving Facebook made me realise how transitory and painfully useless the whole site is. I’ve really gained nothing from it. All that time I spent on it, all those meaningless hours for what? Nothing.
Yes, it was fun and kept me occupied when I needed to procrastinate, but there isn’t one single way in which my life has been enriched my it. Wait, lemme think…. nope, not one.
And friends? The friends I actually want to have a relationship with are the ones who I see in real life and out of my say 500+ friends on FB, that’s really only about 5. Don’t scoff, according to this study, you’re probably in the same boat.
All that said, Facebook is an incredible useful social networking tool, whatever that means anymore. God knows I hate the very idea of ‘networking’ in any dimension.
I’m not writing this to try and convince you to delete your Facebook. Doing so reminds me of those militant ex-smokers who like to pontificate the dangers of a ‘cancer stick’ after giving up their 50+ packet a day habit.
Give it up if you want, or don’t. I just wanted to let anyone considering clicking that ‘delete’ button that life really does go on. And those ‘withdrawal’ symptoms? Be thankful it’s nothing like quitting smoking.
Here we go again
So, here it begins again. Suddenly, a New Year becomes your reason for change.
A fresh palette to master all your fears, vices and addictions. With a New Year comes a more pliable world, something more malleable giving you a chance to create your own private Idaho.
Deep down, we all know the world hasn’t really changed. Not at all. Not one bit.
The outside is still the same angry rush it was before the clock struck 12. The people who built those blockades along your path will still be there and so will the blockades. The only difference now is that they will lose their sting.
See, you’re ready now to fight that battle. Building yourself up to this moment takes time. Like all great battles, you need preparation, strategy, planning and courage. It has never been about whether or not you can do it, whatever “it” may be. You’ve always known you can. WE’VE always known we can. From forever we’re taught to believe in the magic of our dreams, never to take ‘no’ for an answer and to keep fighting & fighting & fighting. CAN’T doesn’t exist.
It is the fear that holds us back. What if we stuff up? What if our dream doesn’t turn out the way we imagined it? What if it doesn’t turn out at all?
‘If you want things to be different this time around, what you really need to do is ask yourself a few more questions rather than seeking a few more goals.’
I bet all resolutions come from a place much deeper than many of us care to realise. No-one is hoping to shed 15 kilo’s just to fit into ‘that little black dress’.
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you NOT to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us, it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
- Marianne Williamson
I’m hopeful that this New Year I can actually follow through on my resolution or rather, my promise to myself. I don’t want to say what it is, doing so feels a little bit vulgar, as if I’ve exposed more flesh than you ever wanted to see. I will say this though, it’s all about pushing forward with my dreams.
If anything, 2011 made me realise that dreaming is fine + good +VITAL in fact, but your dream will mean nothing if you don’t at least try to follow it.
Oh hai New Year!
“Go for broke. Always try and do too much. Dispense with safety nets. Take a deep breath before you begin talking. Aim for the stars. Keep grinning. Be bloody-minded. Argue with the world. And never forget that writing is as close as we get to keeping a hold on the thousand and one things—childhood, certainties, cities, doubts, dreams, instants, phrases, parents, loves—that go on slipping, like sand, through our fingers.”
-Salman Rushie.
Come on. 2012 is nearly here. There is no better time to cut your strings.
How to catch a man?
When I was younger, I remember pouring over magazine articles that taught me how to embody “What men what’. I took notes. I read, remembered and applied tips.
You know the ones, like: ’10 Things Guys NEVER want to hear you say to them’ and the classic, ‘Five Things Guys Want In A Girlfriend’.
In case you’re like me and don’t have a fork handy to stab yourself in the face while reading the entire insightful article, here’s an excerpt:
“So if your guy says, “I might hang out with the guys on Saturday night,” and you reply, “Okay, have fun!” he’ll think you’re cool. And it’ll make him want to hang out with you that much more next Saturday night!”
LOL, kewl! 
For some reason, some editor somewhere thought it was important for 8 year-old girls to educate themselves in the ‘Art of Catching a Man’. This is important, apparently. Apparently women need to set a trap in order to ‘trick’ a man into having a relationship with them.
Let’s check out something for a second here.
This isn’t meant to be scientific or anything (God knows I struggle with simple maths) but have a look at this:
If you go to ‘Google’ and type in ‘what men want’ , you’ll get this many results: 2,160,000,00o.
But, if you type in ‘what women want’, you’ll get this many: 85,300,000.
No point ignoring the difference, so why do women CARE so much about what men want from them?
When men wax lyrical about their ‘demands’ they tend to speak as though they’re representing the entire male population. Let’s take this one radio show for example that’s hosted by two blokes. Now, neither are stunning examples of the male specimen, yet, they seem to feel confident enough to enchant us with their insights into the male mind:
‘Guys don’t like chicks who are too high maintenece. Seriously girls, we wanna know what you look like, like all the time. You know what I mean?’
Ummm, what?
What guys? You guys? What’s ‘high maintenence’ anyway, cause, y’all know chicks have a totally different idea to you. Does it refer to make-up? clothes? someone who cleans alot? I don’t understand. Are you planning on applying your girlfriend’s fake tan and you’re not prepared for that kind of ‘high maintenence’?
Women, from my experience of being one myself, don’t seem to lay out that kind of law when it comes to a guys appearance. We’re more ‘He has to make me laugh’. Not that I’m saying that’s any better, it’s basically substituting one evil for another.
What I am curious about is why women care SO MUCH about following advice on how to BE what men want?
Looking back, I wasted so much time trying to ‘follow’ tips and attempting to emulate what I had been told was ‘what men wanted’, when what I really should’ve been doing is learning to grow into my own skin. The right person for you is going to like you exactly how you are, not how you act when following tips. And if someone only likes you when you say, laugh at his jokes even though they’re not funny ’cause you were told that’s what you should do, then they’re not the right person for you. It don’t matter how cute.hot.funny.smart.rich.powerful.kind.nice they are, you can only keep an act up for so long.
The doctor is in the house
If you are hoping for a post with some kind of substance, then I suggest you look away now. GO. SHIELD YOUR EYES. For the next several paragraphs will be purely gratuitous musings.
The subject? Michael Mosley.
Yes. Michael Mosley.
The wonderfully sedate, stuffy yet ‘oh so intellectually sexy’ (or something) 50+ doctor, who you’ve probably seen stuffing chillies into his mouth or taking a psychedelic drug, is the BBC’s go-to-guy for medical doco’s and the like. So, you get to feel smart while having a perve. It’s a win-win situation.
No doubt you’ve noticed his little lisp, something I normally find excruciating, but on him it’s just sodamncute. God knows how long he’s been in the game for, I’m not too keen on really reminding myself just HOW OLD the dude is, but he is somehow able to maintain the same childlike wonder in every doco he does.
His eyes widen and his face brightens at each new wonderful nugget of knowledge.
And, he’s smart.
In Stephen Fry’s autobiography, ‘The Fry Chronicles’, he struggles to understand those who have no desire to learn:
the only reason people do not know much is because they do not care to know. They are incurious.
I still can’t believe people like this exist, but they do. I know they do. Heck, I’ve dated a few. I once had a guy try to pick me up by pretending he’d read ‘Catcher in the Rye’ and that ‘Atticus’ was his favourite character in the book. That book. Yes, exactly.
You know who has most probably read ‘Catcher in the Rye’? Michael Mosley.
Admittedly, I feel a little bit icky musing over a man who is not only married, but who also has four kids (the eldest 18 — feeling like a creepy mccreepster right now). But, let’s face it, you and I know both know this is nothing more than a wonderfully depressing schoolgirl crush.
So, let us both ‘oohh’ and ‘ahh’ over Dr Mosley and his collection of pink shirts.
One of the hardest posts I’ll ever write…
Firstly, let me make this emphatically clear, I love my grandmother with all my heart, but I do not respect her. Having to write that hurts me more than I can describe,bBut I have always believed that great strength can come from honesty.
As a child, I considered my grandmother the pinnacle of goodness. A fervent catholic, she never remarried after her divorce some 30-odd years ago because priests had told her that if she did, she would “go to hell”. But see here’s the rub; marriage, for her at least, was really the only thing she ever wanted. Strike that. A good marriage, rather, was and I guess still is for her the greatest achievement one could attain in life.
The thinking behind this ideology isn’t really important. I forgive her for it because I know she was born in a different time that pushed different values upon girls. I am quite certain she’s not alone in her thinking. So, perhaps I am rallying against a generation here rather than just my grandmother. Heck, I’m ok with that.
As the years went on, I watched all the joy and happiness drain from her life, until the only thing she garnered some form of satisfaction from was praying. ‘This world’ had merely become a prelude to something greater, something far more fulfilling. She never did get remarried and now it’s too late. Rather than stepping out from behind the veil of religious ideology, she chose to hide and punish herself for not being able to maintain a marriage.
Nowadays she cries that ‘a marriage was all she ever wanted’. I can’t fault that. I can’t be angry at that. We all want different things. What I can fault and what I can be angry at is her inability to look outside her religion and her past and to try to find herself. To not need a man to make her feel complete. Or, at the very least, to walk away from the archaic advice given to her by priests, and to find someone else. I hate that she didn’t. I hate that she didn’t consider her happiness enough and I hate those who didn’t encourage her to pursue it.
How is it that her happiness suddenly became the very thing she actively tried to prevent? Being married is what made her truly happy, why was this suddenly a bad thing?
I resolved to never be like that. I resolved to discover what it is that made me truly happy and to work tirelessly towards cultivating that.
Her sadness taught me that life is far too short not to spend each moment working on your happiness. I won’t consider haters. I won’t even blink at those who attempt to talk me out of my own private pursuit of happiness.
There is a bitterness in my grandmother that was never there before. When I was younger, I imagine she believed life would ‘get better’, she would be rewarded for her emotional abstinance, things would ‘just fall into place’. None of that is true.
You cannot be the passive voice in the story of your life. You need to push forward and fight for whatever it is that makes your heart sing.*
*I know, I know, I sound all sentimental and disgusting and for that, I apologise.
Facebook vs Happiness?
So, this author has come out saying that he believes Facebook is ‘Making us Miserable’.
This isn’t really that new. For a long while we’ve known that Facebook has completely changed the social scope of our lives, mostly for the better but also for the worst.
it has, for many of us (for me at least) become an obsession all good obsessions, has changed the way I live my life. Everything about the world around me has been moulded and shaped to fit in with my fixation.
Moments have now become events to post, tag and comment on. Gone are the days when photos represented snapshots of un orchestrated flashes in time. Now, they’re posed. All of them, and all of them for Facebook.
There isn’t really anything that wrong with it. I mean, it’s basically just an exercise in vanity, one we’re all getting really really good at.
Now, Author Daniel Gulati reckons the reason the site is making is us sad is that “it’s cannibalizing the offline interaction”. Cannibalizing is right. It’s a good word. It’s the perfect word, infact.
Gultari is right, how often have you intended to catch up with someone only to find them online and ended up wasting all you have to say on ‘chat’?
The idea is that we’ll save time. Why waste a coffee date on them when I can kill two birds with one stone, you know, chat with them and spend the rest of the time doing stuff I need to do? Like, sleeping.
Part of my New Years resolution is to give Facebook the flick, or at the very least, curb my usage. I can’t believe it’s come to this that I have to make a “promise” to myself in an attempt to tear myself away from a website. It’s like I’m 15 all over again.
