This is not a bad thing. It's just who I am, and I am accepting the truth of what it's like living in a technological world while being resistant to that technology. It just doesn't come naturally to me, and yet I am surrounded by it and use it all the time!
Enter in Facebook. This savvy little invention is a user friendly segue for digital immigrants to learn how to interact with everyone else in the digital world, now at our disposal. Facebook teaches us how to upload our photos; tell people what we are thinking, feeling, eating, watching.......; tell other people what they should think, feel, eat, watch, avoid, learn, and do. By using Facebook we can keep in contact with people who we moved away from, who moved away from us, who went to school in another state, people who we never met but who say really funny things, people who are celebrities and we will never meet, people who are friends with our friends. Facebook connects us to people....right? That is what I first thought anyway.
Being a digital immigrant, I did not get onto Facebook when my friends did, or when my husband did, or when the people in my church did. Most of those people started using Facebook because it was easier to use than MySpace, or more of their friends were on it. (See, that totally dated me right there, I just referenced MySpace) It was the new trendy thing to use, so they tried it out. Not me, I don't even know if I had an active email at that time. I just.... was not interested.
But I became curious, and after watching my husband look at a screen for hours in the evening, I began to peer over his shoulder to find out what he was laughing about, aahhing over, and sighing about. He kept suggesting I get my own, but I didn't want my own account. I didn't want to get sucked into it. But there is only so much peering over the shoulder a man can take before he is annoyed at his lovely wife who wants him to "go to this person" or "click on this video" or "tell me what So and So wrote" He wanted me to make my own account.
So I did. Not because he told me to, no, but because I wanted to know all the things that happened on there that everyone else in my world seemed to know about. People just knew everything about everyone in our circles and around my circles and about things all over the nation and the world because news just traveled that fast! I wanted in on this experience. I wanted to see who was funny, and play the games with others, and poke people, and feel involved with others. There I said it, I wanted to belong in this digital world, because that is where everyone around was, in the computer.
What was my first post? (Spelling is how it actually is on my fb)
December 30, 2009
Hey Look I exist!!!
- 3 people liked this.
- Friend 5- you are moving into the 21st century...welcome!!
I felt so loved, welcomed into my new digital existence. It was a fitting arrival to this digital world I had been so slow to join. I spent the next 5 years building my friend list, sharing my photos, letting people know how amazing my kids were, and verbally vomiting all my emotions into the computer. At times, it was lovely, but as time went on, I found more and more unlovely things about my experience on Facebook, mainly with the type of person I had become, and while it is just Facebook, an online extension of myself, I had realized how my real self had changed through using it.I cannot begin to tell you right now all the factors about what led to this decision, but just 5 years into my wonderful Facebook life, I decided I didn't want it anymore. I wanted to commit Facebook suicide and DELETE my account. That's right, I wanted off Facebook. And I didn't want to just deactivate my account, no, I wanted to delete it.Deleting is so much more final that deactivating. By deactivating, I could change my mind a few months later, even years, and step right back onto the Facebook train to pick up where I left off. Being a committed person, I did not want to look wishy-washy by telling people I was leaving just to come back a year later.... no, I wanted to completely get off.But in order to do so, I would need to delete everything. Delete my friends, my posts, my photos, my likes, my activity. I would have to delete the digital self I had created on there through years of interactions. The process would be long and thoughtful.
I am only a couple months in and I am learning so much about myself. And I really want a place to write it all down. I tried to make a word document to replace the living diary that fb once was to me, but it just wasn't going anywhere. So I thought perhaps a blog would be a better avenue to write it down and potentially share with others about what this process involves.
Today's coffee: World Cup coffee, Java Blend, 4 creamer tubs, and 3 seconds of sugar.......
