A More Purposeful Life

I'm slowly whittling away the things that suck my time away from me.  It's very difficult, because it turns out that I'm completely addicted to facebook.  And the many blogs I read.  And Failbooking.  And movie reviews by Eric Snider.  And a host of other things.

But I'm realizing that when I spend almost an entire afternoon reading the reviews of all the movies  from A-H that I'm even remotely interested in, I don't feel very happy with myself.  (Even though I adore Eric Snider's writing-- you really should check out some of his reviews so he'll still have pelnty of traffic on his site even without me around!)  And some of my favorite wastes of time-- like Failbooking and PostSecret-- have a bad tendency to leave me feeling yucky or scared for humanity.  So why do I keep visiting those websites?  I've decided to put a stop to that.

I've been wondering for months now (possibly even years?) if I should just close my facebook account and remove that waste of time, but I could never quite bring myself to do it.  For every 3 hours I waste there, there's the occasional birth announcement or wedding announcement that I'm really pleased to learn about.  But that's still a lot of "Click Share if You Have a Daughter You Love More than Anyone Else Loves Their Daughter" memes to sort through in order to get that one bit of information that I actually cared about.  And I spend just enough time sitting around nursing the baby that gives me a perfect chance to sit and stare at my phone, that I figured it was fine.  But recently, it doesn't take Camille very long to eat, so I'm still staring at the phone long after she's done (and possibly ignoring other little children around me during that time).  And honestly, if I am sitting around, why not spend that time staring at a good book, which at least I find worthwhile?

Finally, yesterday, as I was thinking about deleting my account, the thought occurred to me, "What if I just didn't look at facebook for today?"  That seemed so much more manageable.  So I did it.  One day with no facebook.  And I didn't miss it at all.

So now I'm not looking at it today, either.

And during the time when I wasn't there, I managed to do some on-line training I'd been meaning to get around to for three weeks now (for my new, terrifying calling as the Cub scout committee chair).  And I got the dishwasher loaded, run, and emptied, so we'll have plenty of clean spoons for dinner tonight.  And I got four loads of laundry folded and put away.  And I even fed Camille solid food, which I'd been meaning to get around to doing for two weeks now...

So I'm definitely more productive without facebook.  And I feel better about that.  I'm not saying that I won't ever look at it again-- but I'm going to try to keep it to a healthy minimum from now on.

I'm not cutting out blogs just yet.  I don't think they're a waste of time, since the ones I read are either by my friends (Hi, you!) or are well written enough that I think they're good for me to read.  (Or both!)  But it might be time to cut out a few of the recipe blogs I enjoy that have turned into travelogues and ads (I'm looking at you, Picky Palate).

I realize it's a bit ironic to blog about how I'm trying to not waste as much time on-line.  But I think you can see the difference as well as I can.  I'm working on producing more and consuming less, mentally speaking.  I'm trying, at the end of the day, to be able to say to myself, "I accomplished something."


But if you know of anyone having a baby or getting married, please tell me!  I really want to hear about that!