I have friends who post on Facebook (hereinafter referred to as FB) every single day, several times a day. I have friends who are irritated that other friends are encouraging them to get involved in social media, when they have absolutely no desire or time to do so.
Me? I post photos on FB about once a week and keep tabs via notifications. I try and go in at least two or three times a week to post likes and happy birthday greetings. I post a link to this blog every week on FB, usually on Sunday later in the day. FB is where I went when I was creating a group forum for my 30th high school reunion last summer, and it’s very convenient when you want to message a few people at the same time to plan a get-together. I’ve never played a FB game. I like to chat from time to time.
I like it, in other words. I think I have a healthy relationship with social media. My obsessive/compulsive leanings lie in other directions. Like…oh, never mind…I’ll talk about my quitting smoking again and need to pick up stuff that has been tracked in on the stairs in another post. That is if it is quiet enough for me to write about it, because I’m very sensitive to sound...in fact, I can hear my cat scratching in the litter box right now, which means I’d better go scoop out the cat poop and sweep up all the litter Lady kicked all over…
I’m sure you are nothing like this. (As Anne Lamott would say, when I refrain from picking stuff up off the stairs long enough to remember to credit her.)
Some of us like social media more than others, and we all have our “stuff.” I read something Martha Beck wrote in O Magazine not long ago (can you tell I read O Magazine virtually cover to cover every month? Seriously, I’m not addicted!) that talked about the myth of social media – how everyone seems to be so much happier in posts on social media than they really are. How seeing someone else’s happiness on places like FB can lead to a form of jealousy and feeling “less than.”
Know, when you see the photos and read the posts, about a friend going to somewhere like, say, Aruba, that they are in exactly the same boat (so to speak) as you are. When someone sends you a personal message, like a friend recently did to me, saying something like “I really like your new profile picture, but the color is all wrong – you look so grey” that the color is all wrong only if YOU think it is.
I don’t see social media going away, and it can be an authentic expression of your heart as if you were speaking / meeting with the person in person (like me with my friend who thought my hair looked grey, whereas I was perfectly happy with it.) If someone writes something that brings about an emotional reaction…you have the opportunity to breathe first, get your bearings, and determine how to respond. When you think about it, this is a bonus, having time to prepare how to respond (rather than react face to face) in the great virtual hub of humanity. Or you can always just say LOL.
Authentically Yours, Laura
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