Why I Left Facebook

There are two main reasons behind my move away from Facebook: it was turning me into a creepy stalker and I don’t actually find it useful.

Both of these points have roots in the main problem; Facebook is a way to waste time.  This meant I would log on, look through the news feed and click around my friends’ profiles idly, even the ones I had no real connection to.  While Facebook was the reason I knew when your birthday was, it’s also the reason I know you’re engaged or that you’ve just failed your last midterm or that you hate your job.  We haven’t talked in 8 years?  Doesn’t matter, I’m poking around your photos anyway.

As I surfed over to my next time-wasting website (Ravelry, if anyone wants to know) I’d think “What did I actually accomplish?” and the answer was always a resounding “NOTHING.”  In college, Facebook was useful for events, birthdays, photos, groups and occasionally finding the contact info for your lab partner 2 hours before the project was due.  Now, I really only find it useful for photos and that usefulness is mitigated by the amount of spam I get from those stupid applications.  Final conclusion?  Facebook is pretty useless.

So what did I do about it?  I’m not quite willing to delete my account (who knows when it might be useful again).  My vision for my use of Facebook was a bit more like a phonebook: me and my contact info and nothing else.  So I got as close as I could and severely limited the access to my profile, shut down my wall and locked up my photos and videos.  If you found me now, you could see my basic info and friends list (and how much does it bother me that you can’t lock down the friends list?  A lot.)  I set it up to email me for the things I care about (photos, birthday reminders) and deleted the bookmark.

The only thing I’ve noticed so far is that my cycle of wasting time on the internet is five minutes shorter.  I don’t feel disconnected because I didn’t actually care about your status to begin with.

Counting my blessings

Here in the US it is Thanksgiving tomorrow and tonight I am taking the time to think about what I am thankful for.

I am healthy, but physically and mentally.

I have been blessed with family and friends who love and care for me.

The people I love and care for are all healthy.

I have a roof over my head and food to eat.

I have been able to pursue my education beyond highschool in the field of my choosing.

There are other, countless little things that I am also thankful for, but I don’t think they need to be listed.  Oh, and:

I am more than thankful to experience the light after the darkness and for all the help I have received in order to do so.

God only knows

Today I’m working really hard on blame and believing that it’s not my fault.

One of the most difficult things I find when dealing with depression is that it doesn’t take much to let the monster rage through my head. It’s the little things that make me feel so tired and worthless. For example, I just realized that I forgot to mail out an important form to my employers about authorizing a background check. This isn’t a big deal. I’ll mail it out tomorrow and everything will be fine. Yet it’s made me feel like I am truly incompetent and that maybe I’d be better off without the job anyway. All because this form was in the wrong pile of papers.

There are thousands of these moments through the day, each with an opportunity to be equally damaging. Is it any wonder that depression makes it so difficult to get through the day? It’s been found that those suffering from depression have a skewed sense of proportion about the importance of things and I’m certainly feeling that today.

I realize that the reason I’m having such a difficult day is because I forgot to take my meds this morning. At least I have a reason, but it would be so nice not to have to deal with it at all.