Tangible Things

The past few days I've felt exceptionally icky about my Facebook usage. I just sit there and mindlessly scroll through the homepage, reading needless gossip, feeling as though I *have* to read the verse of the day, and catching up on the latest weather news -- all while my house is needing cleaning, the world is waiting, and my sweet two year old boy is running around chasing robots and fighting pirates. 

Before this sounds like I'm an absent mother, let me clarify: I love on him, play with him, let him know how wonderful he is to me. It's just that, I feel disgusting being on FB too much. I've fallen prey to an addiction (the first step is admitting, right?) I don't think I'm the only one, a brilliant photographer I follow threatened to delete his account, a mom I know said she would only get on while her kids were sleeping... there's something about it though that just gets me feeling grimy. Do the cyber debates about politics really get people convicted? Does telling the world we've had the worst day ever really make us feel better? Are our relationships edifying to one another over a Qwest connection?

 (If you start ranting back about the benefits, you're missing my point entirely.) 

Now, one could make the argument that blogs are just as evil, Instagram is the devil's playground and Pinterest is for the digitally gluttonous. Alright, but I'm not there personally, forgive me. You'll still see me following beautiful things, but I'm going to try to stay away from reading about people's personally public status updates and the like. Oh, how refreshing it's been lately picking up a book that inspires me to live well, I can't say that more than a handful of times from my blue and white homepage. 

I don't want to be accessible to anyone at any part of the day, and the only person to blame for that is me. 

I want the "old fashioned" way of communication -- a phone call if you need to ask me something, a pat on the back if I do something right, I want to be free of this addiction before I really regret it, before life slips past me.

Due to the nature of my job I'm still on the computer, but maybe I can be freed of this one guilt trip. 

Living life without regrets means making the right choices ahead of time, not forgetting the bad ones we left behind. 

I'm not making anyone any promises, I'm not saying I'm off forever, I'm saying I feel like I need to get off now. Sure, I'll tell you what our TRP news is on the fan page, but I want to be more like the people I admire and not be sucked into knowing everything that's going on with everyone else.

Well, there it is.