I’ve never been a very social person. I don’t join clubs or go to parties every week. I have lots of acquaintances, but only a few real friends. In spite of this, Social media seems to be taking over my life. It started slowly several years ago with mySpace. When I was going to college I started a Facebook account. For a short time I was maintaining both mySpace and Facebook. After I dropped mySpace, Facebook became a near obsession. I got caught up in the games and began to spend more and more time playing. I “met” hundreds of interesting people there and enjoyed it immensely.
In addition to checking and updating my own Facebook profile, I had to stalk my family members. That’s the only contact I have with some of them. Then there’s the “Groups” I’m part of and the Events I’m invited to join. But the real time suckers were the games. At times, I was playing as many as six and they took an average of 30 minutes apiece out of my day. By the time I got through checking on all of it, the day would be half gone. A few months ago, I started a second profile. I set it up to link to this blog, but the dirty little secret is that I needed a “friend’ for one of the games I was playing. It required you to get people to send you stuff and I was just one short on several projects. It was then that I realized I had hit an addict status.
I tried for several weeks to control the games, but every time I quit one, another expanded to take up the slack. I finally realized the only hope I had was to just quit “cold turkey.” I deactivated the second profile and started deleting and blocking the games. So, now I have only one small word game left and it only allows you to play once a day. In fact, the activity on it is so low that I don’t know anyone else who plays and the people who own it are going to shut it down next month.
Now, I check Facebook twice a day. Once in the morning and once in the evening. I pull up my “family” list and scan through the feed. Then I check for Notifications and Messages. If I have time to spare, I run down the main screen feed. I only go to the Group pages when I have something to post there and I ignore Events that don’t tie directly into my life.
One of the reasons for cutting back was to have more time for my blogs and for general writing. As part of that process, I decided I needed to learn more about both. So, I joined Robert Lee Brewer’s April Challenge on his “My Name Is Not Bob” blog. As a result, I have reactivated the second profile, started a Twitter account and today he tells us that blogging is a form of social media. It seems I simply can’t escape.
Apparently, it’s a matter of quid pro quo. For a blog to be successful, it must have readers. What’s the point of writing it, if there’s no one reading? But to get followers, you have to make connections in….yes, Social Media. Otherwise, you are just talking to your family and friends and you might as well do it face to face. Well, maybe not. In most cases today, families are too busy and too spread across the country to meet face to face except for holidays, vacations, weddings, and funerals. Hence, Facebook. So, I am losing this battle, but the war will go on until I find a way to get my life organized. I have made an internal commitment to spend at least four hours every other day writing or doing something connected to improving my writing. I have realized I must treat it with the same seriousness I used to apply toward my “real jobs,” otherwise it will never be more than a hobby.
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