A while back, I checked out of the hotel Facebook. I didn't like to admit that I spent my time there, but working from home, scrolling the "newsfeed" was a tempting distraction. My days were quiet, and I liked the little tiptoe into the world that this outlet provided.
The view of that world was skewed by the peculiar nature of the Facebook confession, and the fact that many of my 700 "friends" were just acquaintances. I know of divorces and affairs that might never have entered my line of sight.
I also learned useful things I might have otherwise missed, following links to stories people read. But this kind of learning didn't justify my hanging out in the virtual realm. I was wasting time.
Some days, I used a program to cut off my Internet connection so I would quit lurking on my email inbox and Facebook and use my computer to actually write.
The end of October, I found another exit from these distractions. I started cooking at the soup kitchen Unity House runs. Suddenly, I had a lot of real people in my life.
I didn't want to tell them how good my pancakes were, or how great it felt to ride my bike, which is what I usually said on Facebook. Face to face, my obsessions looked like what they were: selfish.
I'm not entirely offline, and I'm old enough to know that sweeping pronouncements like "I QUIT FACEBOOK" are bound to reverse themselves. But, for now, I'm socializing without computer screens. And that is nice.
Amy Halloran is a Troy writer. Her website is at http://amyhalloran.net.