What really terrifies me, as a parent

As a parent in today's world, there are certainly a lot of things to be scared of. Kids getting hurt, contracting an incurable disease, the threat of the ever-ubiquitous Boogeyman, the worry that kids will grow up to be ax-murderers, or worse: garage band drop-outs. All things that will keep anxious parents up at night.

But what really terrifies me is none of those things. Maybe because they are all unknowns: you have no idea if any of those really scary things will touch your family in some way.

No, what really scares me is something that I know without a shadow of a doubt will affect my kids in a profound and unpreventable way.

Life Without Facebook: Take 2

So, last year on a whim I took the plunge and gave up Facebook for a month. It was fabulous.

Although I missed out on a lot of posts about The Bachelor and pictures of various babies and puppies and whatnot, the benefits far outweighed those costs: I looked at my phone less (once I gave up Google+ too), I didn't get caught up in whatever online drama was happening that day, I was more focused and productive at work, I got more sleep.

When the month was up and I got back on Facebook, I felt I had a better perspective on what it was all about.

Karma's a Bitch, But She's Got a Point

I've had a few run-ins with Karma lately, and it's making me realize you really just need to stop and listen sometimes.

The first run-in was over the holidays. I had a great idea that I should really minimize in the year 2015 -- get rid of anything we don't NEED in our lives. As I was packing up all the Christmas crap stuff, I decided I was just going to do it: I would toss or donate anything I didn't love. Why pack it away and store it for a whole year just to drag it all out again next year, if we didn't really love it? One of those things was a bunch of window candelabras - they don't match our other lights, they're falling apart because they're cheap, and besides they're just a bit ugly. But, old habits die hard...

Life without Facebook - Day 2

I accidentally replaced Facebook with Google+. Ooops! I know what you're thinking: nobody replaces Facebook with Google+ silly! I didn't think it was possible either, until I found myself scrolling through G+ just now.

I guess the month without includes G+ now too... They are both time wasters for the large part, and if you're hooked it's best to make a clean break I think.

In other news, I didn't even THINK about Facebook until after 9:30 this morning. 

Life Without Facebook

Every year, a friend of mine goes "offline" for Lent. Now, I am not religious at all, but every year I think, That's great! But there's no WAY I could do it. I depend way too heavily on my online interactions every day...

Which is exactly the reason I've decided to do the same this year.

An entire... month?

I won't lie, I am actually having heart palpitations about this right now. It's been exactly three hours since I made this decision, and I've fought the urge to check Facebook no less than a dozen times already.

I realize for a lot of people who aren't online all day, this may sound pretty ridiculous... But I am sadly one of the many Facebook addicts out there.

Just to give an idea of my mental state when I made this decision: my first thought when I made up my mind to do this on a whim this morning was, "But I haven't posted about my break to anyone." Meaning... I haven't prepared anyone for the devastating news that I would not be checking posts constantly, scrolling through my newsfeed, commenting on random things throughout the day, liking anything, for an entire month. How will anyone know what I'm up to? How will I know what everyone else is up to??

Clearly, I am way too caught up in the day-to-day goings-on on Facebook and other social media sites. (Who am I kidding - it's Facebook 98% of the time) I have wasted far, far too much time browsing, reading, checking, looking, mindlessly scrolling. FAR too much time.

So, there it is. Here we go, another digital diet, but this time it's a cold-turkey full-on break from Facebook. I will still be checking email and texts whenever they come in, and writing here, but besides that, you (hopefully) won't see me online in the next month. If I can stick to this.

It won't be that hard... will it?...

(In case anyone is wondering... I will share my blog posts on Facebook during this hiatus, but I can do that from my blog, so no cheating!)