41 days to go

It is day 5 of my facebook fast, and I can't exactly say it's hard - it's more an issue of suppressing a reflex. I have started typing in the URL on several occasions, until I realized my fingers were betraying me. There are several reasons I am taking a break during Lent, but none of them are "it wastes too much time." I honestly have a lot of free time, so I don't feel like I'm misusing it. The real reason I gave it up is because it feeds a lot of negative dependencies and motivations:

• I like to feel connected to people, since I don't see my friends that much during the week, and since I don't see a lot of family members...ever. However, facebook is not a real connection. You see a lot of superficial things about a lot of people, like who wrote on whose wall, but you don't usually use it to have any meaningful kind of coversations.
  
• It's an easy way to project an image and get attention. Everyone gets to see all the fun things you do in photos and all the awesome music you listen to and whether or not you profess certain political or religious beliefs. They can even comment on all your witty status updates. Ultimately, this is dumb. We do enough image projection in our culture, and we don't really need one more outlet for it.
• I guess I like to feel in control by keeping tabs on people. If I know what someone did on a particular day or see pictures of a certain gathering, I feel a sense of control. That is just plain unhealthy.
  

Hopefully this fast will lessen some of these tendencies, since I won't be giving in to them. Altogether, I will not quit facebook entirely, because it is still awesome:

• I DO use it to keep in touch with friends and family members who are far away.
• I have actually been able to fill in some of my genealogy through family groups.
  
• It's a good way to maintain some contact with friends with whom you just aren't close enough to call.
  
• It's fun to look at pictures.
• It's the supreme stalking tool, and sometimes stalking is necessary.