yesterday a friend of mine left facebook for an indeterminate hiatus. after a lazy weekend with my lover and daughter, not accomplishing nearly as much as i wanted/needed to personally, i quickly jumped on the bandwagon. this is, after all, something i’ve wanted to do for months now. i was just too unwilling to cut the cord, clinging to the auspice of family… i told myself it’s (oh) so important to keep in touch with faraway or semi-/otherwise-distant family members (my uncommunicative half-brother, for instance). and i’ve been happily able to reach out to and have interesting discussions with other distant family members i’d imagine having really dry phone conversations with about once per year if there were no facebook. and of course, it’s good that i’m able to keep tabs on my niece and her ghetto tween influences. but it is NOT good for me, professionally or otherwise, to sit on fb reading bs in my free time and in ALL my in-between time…day after lazy day online… how many times a day do i log on just to read crap close and distant and long lost and would-be forgotten and not even interesting people are posting? people are sharing their daily agendas (sometimes blow-by-blow!), their meals, their desires, hurts, rants, and more, and you know what? i’m not convinced i need so many of their voices in my head when the ones already there speak loudly enough. the internet talks to me. and it has single-handedly destroyed my natural desire to read books and write like i used to. but i won’t let facebook take me deeper into the abyss of the non-thinking, fast-clicking world of…cyber dunces. if i “like” one more mutherfucking thing, i’m going to scream. plus, the bastards never even gave us the “dislike” button spammers promised. instead, we got community pages and widely-reported invasions of privacy. as a nod to them, i stripped my page of any identifying information, thereby negating my relationship with social networking. i suck at professional networking. what made me think i’d be any better socially? i’ll tell you what makes me social: a sexy black dress and a strong martini. forget this cyber shit (i blog). it’s time for me to get back to what i care about…and that’s not what you ate or liked or bought or want or need. i don’t care that you hate men, love your mom, hate rush, love orange skittles, and/or hate “niggas who still live wit they mamas,” or that you feel like—
wait. let me try to be fair/less hypocritical. true, i don’t care about a lot of that stuff. but what kept me logging in? well, i guess, there are people on my friends’ list who i do care about, and whose thoughts i am interested in. there are people who share information that i might not otherwise happen upon unless i spent more than the 20 hours per day that i’m online. there are highly literate people i know who mention great books (or places, or things) that i add to an ever-growing list of things to read (or do, be, feel, plot, or otherwise experience…). there are people that post beautiful things…art. babies. photography. video. i have friends who are talented and accomplished, but you know what? they don’t post a ton of shit everyday! they’re not on fb non-stop like the rest of us losers. so yeah. it’s time for me to get out. live a little. produce more. quit just giving my goods to the man and make some art. write some words. tell some truths. get back to who and what i’m really all about. seeing and living and reporting. in my own words and ways… so sayonara fb. get the fuck outta my hair. i got some purging to do. and i feel cleaner already…
Nonfiction Woman 