The Facebook challenge

I cannot believe I have come so far.  I took a self-made Facebook challenge to stay away for a week. My week ended this past Sunday at 2pm, but I didn't realize I hit the mark until a couple of hours later. After that, I figured I had made it and I could log on anytime, but then I didn't.  It felt strange. All the facts that motivated me to stay on Facebook and to check status' constantly were suddenly irrelevant.

I had always told myself that I was on Facebook for the great articles or for the motivational memes, but then I would find myself swimming in this sea of psychosis.  The public forum of people bragging about themselves, or sharing too much, or too little or making irresponsible comments and the culture of likes and throwback Thursdays and basically the culture of being imprisoned by social media.  In a culture of attention seeking individuals, somehow you get to the comparison of lives and who's better than who and who did what and the constant ego parade.  Then you get into the smearing of people's happiness and sadness that you may not want to partake of constantly.

You see the anniversary posts that make you want to throw up and say "get a room!"  The posts that basically go, "to my best friend, my lover, my wonderful soul mate who completes my life..." are you throwing up yet?  "To my every thing, you have been wonderful and accepted me for who I am and for my faults, and I love you and we've had a great X number of years together and I can't wait for more and ... "  I get it.  Marriages are hard.  Getting through the years is a celebration.  Those heart wrenching speeches that you want to tell your spouse, should be told to your spouse and your spouse only.  The world doesn't want to know and we could care less.  The person who should get the message should get it in person from your own lips, not reading it through Facebook in such a public forum.  Don't get me wrong.  I was quite wrapped in it that I didn't know myself anymore.  I couldn't understand self without understand Facebook and that is a very sad state of affairs.  An illusion of friends that don't exist and throwing real friends in that same pool.

I haven't gone back yet.  I plan to, but not like an everyday thing or an every moment thing.  I'm still enjoying my time off and figuring out the new rules of returning.  I need to define for myself the reasons I left and I need to address them adequately before returning.  I also need to be honest about why I stayed for so long and what I truly did enjoy during that time.  There is, of course, the X-ing of friends.  Yes!  That's going to be important for me.  I'm thinking as I write this that I should make a list of friends that I need to de-face and move on.  I use the word "friends" loosely.  These are Facebook friends I'm thinking about deleting.  We need to realize the difference between "friends" and "Facebook friends".

I once heard someone say that it doesn't matter unless it's on Facebook.  I do understand the power of Facebook.  I also understand its evils.  With great power, comes great responsibility.  My thought: Use Facebook responsibly!

Best wishes,
TTR

Challenging myself

I have been on blogger for almost 8 months now and I wonder about my readership.  Does it really matter?  Of course it does.  Yes, I love to write and I would write irrespective, but the thrill of having people read my work, makes everything suddenly more worthwhile.  I guess, it's a form of validation.  I try to think of ways to get my blog more readers.  Well, to be honest, I am clueless about such things.  How does someone find my blog anyway?

I wondered about how people got chosen for "Blogs of note" and looking it up on google, I realize it's really random.  Or so they say?  Also, I notice there are a lot of bloggers out there.  When I say a lot, I mean a lot.  How does one compete with that for readership?

I know, I'm supposed to share my blogs on Facebook as often as I can and write as often as I can but the topic of this blog is challenging myself.  I'm going through a few challenges, but for now, for this post, my challenge is to get off Facebook.  Not completely though.  I think it would be more accurate to say, to use Facebook in a non-addictive way.  I find myself checking Facebook every hour as though a very important status message will show up, or someone will make a comment on my post and when I sit back and think about the truth, it's pointless.

Facebook, to me, has become this vehicle for narcissism.  Here's my selfie and I'm putting it on Facebook.  Don't I look cute?  I'm sorry, but I'm not into the bragfest.  As a matter of fact, it annoys me when there's too much unwanted sharing.  There are some amazing articles that are shared that I truly enjoy.  I have used that as an excuse for being on Facebook, but I'm really trying to downshift.  I'm taking a self made Facebook challenge.  A form of detox, if you will.  I'm trying to get more control of myself.  I'm tired of being the Facebook zombie starring at a screen, thinking the world will magically change at any given moment.

So, where does this all relate to my blog?  As I mentioned, I would love to grow my readership.  I know Rome wasn't built in a day.  Instead of staring at a Facebook screen, I would like to challenge myself to write more blogs and after a week of no Facebook to just go on to post my blog.  I would also use Facebook for my business and post there to keep things moving forward.  Also, I plan to limit my Facebook time to maybe a maximum of 30 minutes, if that, a week.

I took the challenge yesterday and it has officially been 24 hours since I have checked Facebook.  I feel that when I get back on Facebook, I will have a blog to post and I will have my priorities straight.  Instead of watching the craziness of the world, I can just delete the people I don't want on there and streamline my friends.  If I keep my blog posts public, I can perhaps grow my readership.  We'll see.
I know my blog about being a Muslim and the Ferguson verdict got a lot of hits.  I don't really want to be known for religion or politics though.  Blogging is such a balance.

Enough of my rants for now.  I'm still fasting from Facebook.  When I get on, I'll pick a few of my blogs to re-post, perhaps.

Best wishes all,
TTR