The other day, I posted a somewhat ranting post about how I believe the tone of Facebook has changed over the past year or so. Dreading the possibility of being maimed by soon to be mothers or being reminded of Thumper’s philosophy in Bambi (If you can’t something nice….don’t say nothing at all), instead I was, suffice to say, surprised. I actually had people agreeing with me, claiming that I had a fair point. Agreement then led me to realise that whilst I complain I have actually not taken any decisive action to separate myself from this toxic form of bragging. Until now.
The 40 days and 40 nights of lent are generally seen, in its most modern form, as a period of time to give up our life vices in exchange for….well not in exchange for anything, just to see if we are up for the challenge. (I hasten to add, obviously for the more religious, there is actually a point but us agnostic/atheist people just wanted to hop on the bandwagon.) In my younger years of 15 or 16 I once, successfully, gave up my vice of MSN for lent. Another, I rather less successfully, gave up chocolate. A couple years ago I participated in a different kind of lent where you spent 40 days and 40 nights simply doing kind things, or things that made you feel good. Apparently throughout all the other years I deemed myself too damn perfect to give anything up. Nonetheless, in the year circa 2006, my MSN fast was strangely a more positive experience than I had anticipated. Rather than scurrying home from school to chat to friends who I had seen 5 minutes prior, I spoke to my mother, socialised in person and if I wanted to catch up I sent emails or called my friends. I actually….communicated?! During the whole of the 40 days my inbox would be full of funny, private, personal messages and I spent so much more time constructing my emails. Our conversations were no longer based on infantile banter of ‘lol’ and emoticons. Despite the fact that I went straight back to using MSN after the 40 days were up, looking back, I realise that my contact with friends felt a lot more worthwhile when it was not constant and was not based on watching the little computer image of a pencil scribbling up and down as they typed.
So, learning from my 16 year old self, I have decided it is time to have a facebook fast. I have signed off, removed my app shortcut from my phone and have reverted back to simply using my phone to get in touch with people…and twitter. During the next 4o days I have no intention of signing back in to check the gossip or whatever is going on in my constantly updating newsfeed and instead I have every intention of actually….communicating?!It was also be a wonderful experiment to test just how much happier I will feel when the few weeks are up. No longer will I look at all the things that pissed me off in my previous rant and perhaps I might feel happy with my lot in life after I’ve stopped comparing it to everybody else’s.
That said…I’ll get back to you when I’ve had enough of staring at my phone praying for it to ring.
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