Facebook Anonymous - the plunge

My name is Jeff, and I'm a Facebookoholic.

It's been 75 minutes since my last Facebook log-in. To my knowledge, Facebookoholism doesn't run in my family; I'm the first and I had my first Facebook in 2008.

So why then? Why stop now? I've been doing a lot of reflection lately - I am on Facebook a lot. I mean a lot a lot. When you spend all day on a computer the urge is continuous. Checking every 20, 15, 10, 5, and even 1 minute to see what's going on with "all" my friends. And then there's the posting. I got to the point where I was beginning to annoy myself with my random, way too frequent, self-fulfilling comments, pictures, and "likes". Besides who were they really for? What was I trying to get out of them? Acceptance? Closeness? To feel good about the life I choose to present to the world?

I recently went to an ad hoc college reunion with some of my fraternity brothers. When I mentioned to one of them that I was going through a divorce he said "Really?" with a confused look on his face, "you look like you're in a great marriage and happy as all hell on Facebook." That's when I started to reflect on my Facbookoholism.

So my experiment begins today; the account has officially been "deactivated", indefinitely. I'm going to begin by reconnecting with the people that really matter to me. I'm going to call them and talk to them. I'm going to ask them questions like "what have you been up to?", "how are things going?", "how do you feel about that". I'll ask them to email me pictures so I can see them(most of them aren't on Instagram yet), hell, we might even video chat. It's a start.

Already, I'm fighting the urge to go see the most recent update by someone who I haven't talked to in 15 years. Will they miss me? Will I miss them? Who knows, only time will tell. Wish me luck.