Seeking balance in a social media world.

I’ve been wanting to delete my fb account, but I realized it has become a second email box, and a good way to stay in contact with friends and family while overseas. Then I read Why I Stopped Using Facebook and it made me think about how I can scale back my time and usage on that damnable site.

This theme of regaining balance has been a goal since I realized how out of sorts my life had become by the end of 2013. I was spending too much time on the computer and not nearly enough on taking care of myself. And now that time off is coming up before starting a new job, I’ve decided this will be the perfect time to kill bad habits, and create good ones that actually use my time more wisely.

I pride myself on not having an addictive personality. I’ve never been addicted to alcohol or drugs, but you could say I’m addicted to coffee. So I’ve quit coffee many times, unsuccessfully at first, as the headache withdrawals were quite painful, until discovering Teeccino as a substitute which allowed me to gradually withdraw without any migraines.

Then I was like, Why am I quitting? I love coffee. I only drink one cup in the morning, maybe one in the afternoon, every once in a while. I just don’t like the idea of needing something. Ah, screw it, I love coffee.

I think in my attempts to seek balance, I have a tendency to go to the extremes. But I think in order to be successful, I can check social media once or twice a day, instead of checking it when I have few minutes here or there, and be done with it. No feeling deprived. No extremes. Just moderation and time won back from mindless scrolling in attempts to be “current”.

The problem with fb is it gives you the illusion you are doing something useful with your time, but maybe after a few minutes, you are not. It’s become riddled with ads, and recommendations, and uses a strange algorithm that allows for the popular posts to be seen, and the small fry guy and gal, to go unseen. It’s more of what’s wrong with our prevailing culture, and less of what’s right.

Now you could argue, why don’t you just focus on the positive? This idea has become very popular among current culture. The problem with that though is we’ve become more tolerant, and I don’t mean that in a good way either. We’ve become proficient at tuning out the bullshit. I wish we’d become more proficient at doing away with the bullshit, but we’re a lazy lot.

So in an effort to attain some sort of balance, and well-being in my life, I’ll have to continue to be vigilant about what is important to me. So I’m sorry fb, twitter, g+ and digg, it’s time to reclaim a lifestyle of harmony and happiness.