How I Survived a Year and a Half Without Facebook, Part 4: Separation Angst

The changes were subtle, at first, and mostly positive. When I went online, I found myself getting bored much more easily. There simply wasn't as much to do with the many idle moments of the day. This gave me more of an impetus to do some exploring and find new regions of the vast internet to enjoy, or even to get out of my chair and find something useful to do. I also found myself less likely to get irritated, possibly owing to my lack of exposure to irritating things. Overall, life became ever so slightly more interesting and less stressful. Ever so slightly.

Meanwhile, Google+, the young up-and-coming, was not taking off as spectacularly as I’d hoped. Sure, it had plenty of cool-sounding features, but very few of my friends had leapt onto that particular wagon yet. Why should they, when they still had Facebook? The few friends I did have on Google+ tended to post things on it as an afterthought, if at all; they were already posting to Facebook, and using one more network would be more hassle to them, not less. More than once I logged onto Google+, started a hangout, sighed, and logged out, having made no soulful connections energized by clever, streamlined technology.

Something else was happening that I had not anticipated. When I first joined Facebook in 2007, it was growing in popularity but not even close to the memetic leviathon that it is today. Until then, it had been restricted to those with email addresses affiliated with approved schools and companies, and had only just changed that policy. This made Facebook the elite, non-trashy, intellectual alternative to Myspace, which was fast becoming a breeding ground for glittery backgrounds and instantly-playing pop music videos. Not being on Facebook in 2007 was a nonissue, unlikely to have much effect on one's social life.

When I quit Facebook four years later, I naively assumed my life would return to something like its previous facebookless state (apart from the unrelated changes my life had taken since then). Unfortunately, the Facebook I left was the not the Facebook I had joined in the first place. It had not only grown and mutated like a fast-adapting alien life form introduced to the lush and unsuspecting ecosystem of Earth, but it had infiltrated the rest of my world behind my back, snaking its tendrils into every facet of the media and culture around me. I did not see the extent of the invasion until I myself was free of its grasp, and could look upon it with untainted vision.

Ads not only online but on TV and in printed media always contained the phrase "like us on Facebook!" along with a promise of better deals or special updates for those who did. Some even included a link to a Facebook page in lieu of an email address or even a phone number - meaning that without Facebook, I had no way to contact them. And it wasn't just advertisers who had been infected - everyone seemed obsessed. Hanging out with friends (in person, of course; I have yet to successfully attend a “hang out” of the Google+ variety) often devolved into a discussion of “Did you see what so-and-so posted on my wall?” Facebook was referenced on other websites, on TV, on the streets, everywhere.  Everywhere I looked it was Facebook this, Facebook that, Facebook Facebook Facebook!

It got a little grating at times.

I wish I could say that the great Facebook invasion (turning all my friends and family eerily like-minded, almost turning them into a hive mind connected through an invisible newsfeed) was simply a matter of superficial annoyance, but the truth is the effects ran much deeper. Slightly more serious consequences began when my best friend, whom I knew was planning a Christmas party, neglected to invite me. As the date of the party approached, I began to worry. I was secure enough in our friendship to assume I was welcome, but at least wanted a notification of the start time, and part of me was still old-fashioned enough to be more comfortable with a formal invitation. Eventually, with only a few days left, I broached the topic.

“Have you sent out invitations?” I asked.

“Yeah, I set up an event on Facebook,” she said.

“Oh,” I said. “Facebook.”

“Oh yeah, I keep forgetting you quit."

One might assume that such omissions were simply part of the adjustment process, a transitional situation in which people were still getting used to the idea of me not being on Facebook. But as the months went by, I kept finding myself left out of important social interactions, and it didn't seem to be getting any better.

In September, eleven months after I quit Facebook, I wanted to talk to a friend with whom I hadn’t been in touch for a little while. I gave him a call, but his phone went straight to voice mail. Knowing that he works an odd schedule sometimes, I assumed that he was at work, so I left him a message so he could get back to me.

A week went by.

Thinking he perhaps had been planning to get back to me, but then forgotten, I called again. Again, his phone went straight to voicemail. I called a few more times over the course of a weekend, wondering at my bad luck that he just happened to be at work each time I called. If it had been any other friend, I might have shot him an email, but I knew that this friend preferred not to use email. I gave him another week to get back to me, and by the end of that week I had begun to get nervous. Had I somehow offended him? Or had something happened that was keeping him from returning my calls?

I was talking on the phone to another friend, the same friend who had neglected to invite me to her party the year before. I mentioned my difficulties getting in touch with our mutual acquaintance. “Wait,” she said. “How long has it been since you talked with him?”

“About a month or so. Why?”

“I think he changed his phone number.”

“Huh?”

“Yeah. I read about it on Facebook. Hang on, I’ll see if I can find the post.” I heard the sound of her typing fingers over the speaker of my phone. “Ah, I found it. He changed it about a month ago. Ready to write this down?” I grabbed a pen and paper and jotted down the numbers she read to me, then we said our goodbyes and I dialed the new number into my phone.

He promptly answered. “Hello?”

“You changed your phone number,” I said accusingly, but also lovingly.

“... Yes.” He clearly didn’t think this was cause for alarm.

“And you didn’t tell me.”

There was a pause. “But I posted it on... Oh yeah! I’m sorry.”

It wouldn’t be the last time that I missed out on some important social newsbit that had been disseminated on Facebook, and nowhere else. I would have thought that any important information would come to me by other avenues. Most people knew my phone number, and I was readily available by email and on Twitter and Google+ (which I still had not given up on), so I did not anticipate being so out of the loop. After all, if you have an important bit of information you want to share with as many people as possible - say a party, the results of an ultrasound, or some crucial gossip - it’s in your best interests to distribute it in as many ways possible, just in case not everyone is paying attention to the same channels. At least, that is what I had assumed based on many years of experience. It turns out, this is no longer the wisest course of action. These days it's far more effective to restrict all your communications to a single channel, because all you friends and family, without exception, are using Facebook.

Quitting meant that my friends would have to go out of their way to keep me in the loop, and it really wasn’t worth it to them. Once I realized this, I could have been offended, but instead I felt humbled, even ashamed. My decision to quit Facebook had been engineered to convenience me, not to inconvenience others.

But this did not cause me to reconsider my decision. I was out, and overall, I enjoyed it. Over the months I grew accustomed to being sometimes out of the loop, and to having to make a little extra effort to communicate with the people I care about - after all, I could hardly expect them to go out of their way to include me if I wasn’t willing to go a little out of my way to be included. I was soon to learn, however, that the practice in assertive self-inclusion I got from those first few forgotten invitations and misfired communications would soon be tested with some truly harrowing disasters.

To find out what happened next, go on to Part 5.

How I Survived a Year and a Half Without Facebook, Part 3: The Momentary Lapse

Unfortunately, a “clean break” isn’t always as clean as you’d like it to be. Habits, even dangerous ones, can be very hard to overcome. Your mind lets its guard down just for a moment, and your body goes on autopilot, as when you’re on your way down a familiar stretch of road, you zone out on the highway screaming along to your favorite song, end up taking the wrong exit, and are now on your way to your old job - or your ex’s house.

So it was with me, mere hours after quitting Facebook. Later that same day, after checking my email and scrolling through several pages of lolcats, I became hypnotized, just as if I were on a familiar highway. I went on autopilot; I began tapping the keys absent-mindedly. When one, by chance, turned out to be the F key, in a flash my other hand shot over to the mouse and selected the autofilled URL of Facebook. It loaded immediately, and with a swiftness born of years of practice, my fingers hammered out the six-to-twelve characters of my password, reactivating my account. I had already scrolled through several posts before I realized, with horror, what I’d done. I threw aside the mouse as if it were something the cat had left me, and I shrank away from the desk, hissing faintly and guarding my vital organs.

I would guess that this is the social-networking equivolent of waking up next to your recently-dumped ex. In addition to the shame of realizing just how weak your self-control is, there’s the matter of dealing with the aftermath. You must reiterate once again the entire breaking-up process, except this time, your words lack the strength of finality due to your having demonstrated, in painfully explicit detail, just how precisely “no” means “no.”

And so, once again, I had to de-reactivate my account, with all the same whys and are-you-sures and confirmations and verifications. I may have imagined it, but this time, Facebook seemed less in shock and more gleeful, now that it knew that my every “yes I’m sure” could still mean “we’ll see.” I closed the tab with a grimace of shame, vowing never again.

If only it were that simple. Over the course of the following week, it happened more times than I’d ever like to recall. It got so that the process of de-re-de-re-deactivating my account became almost as automatic as that first inadvertent sign-in. After several days, tired of playing out the same tragic dance again and again, I tried to think of a way to force myself to stop. I needed help.

It occurred to me that, even with my account deactivated, Chrome remembered to fill in my username on the sign-in page, even if I’d managed to keep it from remembering my password. If I could get it to forget my username as well, would the extra step involved in signing in help break the cycle? It was worth a try. I cleared my browser history, something we all need to start doing more regularly, and checked back; the username field was now blank.

That did it. That one tiny change was enough. The next time I went on autopilot and typed in the Facebook URL, the blank username field gave me just enough of a pause to break the spell, shake me out of my trance, and bring me back into my senses. Then I could close the tab and make my escape. Finally, I was free. For real this time.

Promise.

To find out what happened next, go on to Part 4.

How I Survived a Year and a Half Without Facebook, Part 2: The Clean Break

As you may have guessed, a social networking site whose revenue depends entirely on their promise to ad-buyers of thousands upon thousands of users does not take kindly to quitters. Signing up is easy: just type in a name and an email address (and everyone has one of those, what are you, feral?) and remember your alphanumeric password just long enough to click the “remember me” box. Quitting is another matter entirely. First you have to figure out how, and Facebook does not volunteer this information willingly. I ended up googling “how to quit facebook” and following some kind soul’s instructions.

Once I’d managed to find and click on the words “deactivate my account,” Facebook appeared to go into shock. The conversation went something like this:

“I’d like to see other websites.”

“Yeah, I know you’re getting into Google+, how’s that turning out for you? You know I’m okay with that, right? I never said anything about being exclusive.”

“No, I mean, I’d like to see other websites, and not you.”

“Really? Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Are you really, really sure?”

“Yes, I’m really, really sure.”

“Pretty-sure with gumdrops on top?”

“Just delete my account already!”

“Okay, as long as you’re sure...”

“I am.”

“But are you really? Because I think your friend Jasen might miss you. Don’t you want to stay in touch with Jasen? He spends a lot of time here.”

“Yes, I know, because I live  with him. I see him every day. We’re engaged, as you very well know.”

“Oh, yeah. Well, what about Michelle? She lives hundreds of miles away. How are you going to keep in touch with her if not through me?”

“I don’t know, by phone? She rarely updates anyway. Since she, you know, has a life? She doesn’t need you, and neither do I.”

“Well, I guess if you’re really, really sure. Just tell me one thing.”

Here I sighed in exasperation. “What is it?”

“Why do you want to leave me?”

Facebook displayed a list of possible reasons to choose from. No matter which one I chose, it came up with a way to fix that problem. In the end I chose to say that I did not find Facebook “useful.”

“Really? You know, you might find me more useful if you’d just find more friends. Or maybe you just don’t know how to use all my wonderful features. I’m sure if you visit the Help page, you’ll find just what you need.”

“Look. It’s not about what I need. It’s about what I don’t need, and I don’t need you. Please delete my account.”

“Sigh. As you wish. I’ll do it. Nobody will see your profile or your comments or your pictures. You’ll be turned away from your old friends’ personal profiles. All your information, your past status updates, your old pictures and tags, will be gone, and you can never get them back again.”

“Good.”

“Yep. Gone forever, unless you log back in.”

“Wait. What?”

“You know, just in case you change your mind. You just have to type in your old username and password, and your profile will magically reappear, just as if you’d never left.”

“Seriously? I thought you were going to delete it.”

“Oh, sure, but come on. Why burn bridges? I just want you to know that I’ll be waiting for you, and if you ever feel like picking up where we left off... just drop on by, and I’ll be there. Just like old times.”

At this point I would have given Facebook a much-needed talk on the importance of moving on and accepting loss, but then I remembered that I was talking to a website, and just clicked “okay,” as if everything was. After reassuring Facebook that I was indeed who I said I was, that I wasn’t an imposter trying to maliciously delete an innocent person’s account, and that no, I did not want Facebook to send me periodic emails “just to check in,” I was finally free. No more Facebook.

It felt good to break it off. I announced on Twitter and Google+ that I’d now be using them exclusively, and I enjoyed a slightly-less-encumbered online existence... for a while.

To find out what happened next, go on to Part 3.

How I Survived a Year and a Half Without Facebook (And You Can Too!) Part 1

In October of 2011, I was fed up. I was sick of the Mafia-Zombie-Cloneville invites. I was sick of reading the inane and often poorly-written “updates” on the lives of those whose lifestyle consists primarily of updating Facebook. I was sick of the constant layout changes obviously implemented to copy Google+, or whoever the prevailing competitor was that month. I was sick of the awkwardness of “liking" ambiguous posts such as a thought-provoking and well-written news article about some utterly unlikable atrocity. I was sick of the copy-me memes aimed to “raise awareness” in the most irritatingly faux-clever way possible for causes that we’re all very much aware of already thank you very much. (Seriously, do we really need to raise any more awareness for breast cancer? Who honestly believes that the Internet doesn’t pay enough attention to boobs? This does not strike me as a severely neglected cause.)

I’d been using Twitter for several months, and had just gotten an invite to Google+. Then a blushing newcomer to the social networking scene, not even out of beta yet, Google+ promised to be every bit Facebook’s superior. There was no point sticking with a sub-standard social networking website when there were so many alternatives available, and fully capable of providing all my networking needs without all the glut and annoyance.

So it was time to cut it out. No more Facebook for me. I was going to quit and never look back.

“But why quit?” you ask (I imagine, for you’re not actually interacting with me as I write this). “Why not just spend less time on Facebook, until your interest in it is equal to the amount of effort you expend on it?”

Funny thing about websites: once you’ve developed an overly serious relationship with one, it can be hard to go back to casual use. It can be done, but trust me, it’s hard. You start off innocently enough - you log in for a quick glance at your feed. Responding to a few comments couldn’t hurt. Before you know it, it’s 1:00 am, you’ve been obsessively tagging disembodied extremities in forty-some photos from your second-cousin’s wedding last week, you’ve become a fan of seven more minor celebrities plus a few ironic puns, and now you’re trading lolcats with an old gradeschool “friend” who, upon reflection, was always mean to you when you were kids. Your eyes are tearing up from staring at the screen, and you feel a vague sense of shame, but can’t seem to extricate yourself from the desk chair, which has molded to the shape of your ass.

No, I had to make a clean break of it. I knew myself, and I knew that moderation has never been my forte. The only way out was all the way out.

To find out what happened next, go on to Part 2.

Five Minutes of Mindful Breathing

When I was younger, I meditated easily and often.

I’m not sure when and why I began the practice. It may have began in the yoga class I took with my mother when I was fifteen, or a few years earlier, when I began following a Neopagan, New Age spiritual practice. Either way, I did not find it difficult to sit or lay down, regulate my breathing, relax, and focus my mind for long periods of time. For quite a while I made a habit of doing so before bed each night. Perhaps, as a teenager, I was simply predisposed to inactivity and empty-headedness. Turning it into a spiritual practice didn’t take much effort.

I’m not sure when and why I stopped. Perhaps it was when I turned eighteen, became a Christian, began college, and for the first time grappled with such distracting influences as lust, love, and a significant social life. Whatever the ultimate reason, I got out of the habit, and quickly got out of practice as well. The next time someone suggested I try meditation as a way to relieve stress and improve my mood, it had been years. Although I acknowledged it was a good idea, something in me cringed at the thought, and cringes still. I’d come to value productivity, and had learned the worth of time and attention. Spending minutes on end merely breathing seemed neither practical nor desirable, even though I knew the benefits to be great.

This is not to say that I am so busy that I can’t spare a few minutes out of each day for inactivity, or that I am a paragon of time-management and productivity  I have dropped out of college, dealt with long periods of unemployment, and even while employed I have spent as much of my free time surfing the internet as I have doing chores or working on creative projects. It is not physical inactivity that I object to, but mental inactivity.

I have a distaste for meditation for the same reason that I prefer to listen to music while driving, and to read comics while falling asleep. In the absence of noise, pictures, words, and other stimuli, I am forced to deal with the contents of my brain undiluted - and I have come to believe that my brain is not an especially pleasant place. It is in darkness and silence that fear, anxiety, self-loathing, and regret most easily make their voices heard, so I tend to drown them out with distractions. When I am at my best, my distractions are art, work, exercise, and relationships. When I’m at my worst, my distractions are junk literature, video games, the internet, and other addictions. Whatever the quality of the distraction, it is a thick and effective buffer between me and myself - and, ultimately, between myself and the rest of the universe.

For a long time now I have known that my dependence on distraction is hindering my spiritual growth, and possibly hurting me in other ways. I have never been less in touch with my own feelings. I am already yelling before I know I am angry, and I am already crying before I know I am sad. I have trouble making decisions, acting on decisions I have made, and being fully present in any moment - even the happiest moments of my life. I know that I need to break the habit of distraction to really live as I am meant to.

As might be expected, I was in denial. I thought that meditation must still come easily to me, as it used to. That I could pick it back up whenever I wished. That I needn’t worry about setting aside a specific amount of time. I scoffed when I read a suggestion that I should write it into my schedule, sit in a quiet, secluded spot, and set a timer for five minutes. Why would I need to set a timer for such a thing? To pencil it into my schedule? All I had to do was do it.

Yet I couldn’t.

When I became a Buddhist, I was of course aware that meditation is one of the most well-known aspects of Buddhist practice, and my inability to even entertain the thought of it became more distressing to me. Still, it was a few weeks before I got around to addressing it directly. On March 13th, I began my evening with a list of several things I intended to do - small chores, errands, tasks both urgent and optional. On that list, I bashfully wrote “meditate”, and because I was still feeling ambivalent about the whole concept, added a “?” just to be clear that I wasn’t fully committed.

When I began to work my way through the list, I was tired from a relatively busy day after not having had enough sleep. I did a few small chores, then went to the kitchen to make myself some tea. While the water heated up, I thought about meditation, and how difficult it has been even to begin. When the water boiled, I poured it, and since I had a few minutes to wait for the tea to steep, I decided it was time.

I set the timer on my watch for five minutes, sat in a nearby chair, closed my eyes, and breathed.

In the silence and darkness, thoughts inevitably made themselves heard.
“I wonder how much time has gone by.”
“I hope slouching is okay. It’s hard to have good posture in this chair.”
“I should call George later.”
“Slouching doesn’t seem to be keeping me from breathing okay. Maybe a bit shallow, but who cares.”
“I wonder how much time has gone by.”
“What’s the point of setting a timer if I keep worrying about the time anyway? It keeps me from looking at my watch, but doesn’t keep me from thinking about it.”
“I should be making more of an effort not to think about how much time has gone by. Let the timer worry about the time, so I don’t have to.
“I should write about this experience for my blog.”
“I’m not very good at quieting my mind, am I?”
“It’s not necessarily about quieting my mind, not at this stage. It’s about quieting everything else. I can work on quieting my mind later.”

While all these thoughts came and went, I paid attention to my breathing, not letting my focus slip very far from it. And after a while, the thoughts themselves seemed quieter, gentler, less intrusive, and less frequent. Finally, I felt truly alone with myself, and it wasn’t nearly as frightening as I had feared.

I heard the door open, as my parents had returned from having been out for dinner. I opened my eyes, and slowly looked at my watch.

One second remained.

Finding Religion

On March 1st, after two years of wandering agnostically between faiths, I became a Buddhist.

Like many conversions, this one took place without warning and without the consent of the convert. Some people opt to do the proper research, perhaps take a class or two, and undergo a series of ceremonial initiation rites before converting to a new religion. Some religions even require such preparation before allowing converts to call themselves members. Others have less stringent screening processes. For instance, to officially join Islam, one need only declare “There is no god but God, and Muhammad is His prophet” to a fellow Muslim (if I remember correctly), although I assume most people prefer to read some of the fine print first. I have never been one to take the proper precautions. Religion has a habit of coming to me sloppily and inconveniently, like the flu, or like falling in love.

I still do not know how or why I became a Buddhist, and am well aware that I’m not an especially good one. Off the top of my head I can name, at best, three of the Four Noble Truths, and am only sure of two or three parts of the Noble Eightfold Path. I have only a vague understanding of concepts like Dharma, Dukkha, and Samsara, and am not even all that clear on how to pronounce them.

Faith is about more than memorizing doctrine, of course. Unfortunately, my conduct and lifestyle is neither moderate nor mindful, and I am far from the universally compassionate ideal when it comes to my treatment of and regard for my fellow beings. I resent those who offend me, speak and act out of anger, and perpetuate my own and others’ suffering in many other ways. In short, I am a typically unenlightened being, unlikely to escape the cycle of rebirth any time soon.

The good news is that one need not be enlightened to be a student of the enlightened one. That’s kind of the point. After all, you need not be highly educated to go to school, and even the most educated among us could still benefit from learning more. From all I have read on the subject, enlightenment is not an exclusive club, but a gift freely available to those willing to practice.

I will have more to say on this subject later.

Blogging As A Practice

Late in the night of Winter Solstice I was at a party, and the host prompted all in attendance to announce their "resolutions" for the coming baktun. Without having thought about it, I made a decision to write more often. It was something I'd wanted for a few months, and I felt that the formality of public pronouncement might lend strength to the decision.

Specifically, I resolved to write at least 400 words each day. I have not been especially loyal to that minimum. One reason for this is that initially I was trying too hard to work on fiction stories, when right now my inspiration is to write about my own life and experiences. This kind of writing isn't as comfortable to me, so it's taking some practice to feel like writing about myself counts as productivity rather than narcissistic mirror-gazing.

I've also been suffering from the usual artist's insecurity about whether anyone is really interested in reading my work, and whether it's worth doing if nobody is going to read it. The answer to this anxiety, of course, is to realize that it's worth doing for its own sake, and that art made for its own sake will generally find an appreciative audience eventually. Such art is often more deeply appreciated and loved than art made with the intention of pleasing an existing audience. It's the difference between pop music produced by corporations based on focus-grouped market research, and songs written by an individual with a guitar and a heartfelt message. It's hard to create anything truly great while worrying about it being popular.

So, in an effort to get into the habit of creating things and allowing them to float out into the universe, I'm going to start blogging on a regular basis. My goal will be at least one entry per week, without a whole lot of rules about length, content, or genre. I do not know how long I will hold myself to this pattern. I have a decent record for sustaining such practices - for instance, in my late teens I wrote at least one poem each day for over a year before deciding enough was enough. I sometimes feel that my best work is produced when I don't wait for inspiration to strike, but rather coax inspiration out of reluctance, fatigue, and tedium by working within arbitrary restrictions.

Here's to the future.