Usually, I’m one of those positive-energy mongers, always pushing myself to keep the Big Picture in mind and seek out the good and/or humorous in everything. It’s been a very rewarding practice in the last couple years since I adopted it, actually, and is something I hope to pass along to my kid(s). However, in the last week or so since The Bad Thing descended on my psyche, I’ve felt like more things have begun to weigh on me. Even with my inherent Autumnal Excitement and the good things that are going on around me right now, I feel like my mind is going, “Wait! I just need an effing break from all this positivity. I’d like to look at some things objectively and note that they suck without having to think of a way to make them better or fix them or whatever. Just gimme a second.”

And, because I do believe in the Law of Attraction, I know that a lot of the negativity that’s cropping up has a lot to do with the negativity I’m wasting time thinking about and/or being frustrated over. So, while this Release of Complaints to the Universe could really go either way, I’m hoping that I’m just using this as a means to exorcise these thoughts from my consciousness. Perhaps I’ll counter this with a Counting of Blessings post. That actually sounds like a good way to recharge myself after the following Whineage Dump.

Lessgo:

~ I’ve become completely disillusioned with Facebook in a way that’s beginning to depress me. Admittedly this is mostly my fault for making my frequent visits a daily habit. I sort of justified posting pictures and commenting on people’s pics and stats to myself as me being able to stay in better touch with people I don’t get to see as often as I’d like. And for the most part that’s pretty true.

The thing is, I have 630+ “friends” on there, all of whom I know by name and have had real actual conversations with in real life. (And only one of them is an ex boyfriend!) At first, it’s really a lot of fun to pull a High School Reunion and go look through photo albums to see how one’s 2nd-grade crush has turned out or find out if the prom queen got fat and any of that other stuff that keep people returning to reunions with people from adolescence. (Thus the reason that h.s. reunion attendence has declined in the last couple years.) But after that you just kind of find yourself hanging on to these electronic connections between these people for the sake of manners or some other new internet etiquette bullshit for absolutely no reason. After a while it becomes apparent that laughing at how that middle school bully turned into a fat, ignorant, racist drunk just isn’t as much fun or validating as it used to be and that the only thing that connection succeeds in doing is reminding you why you hated him so much in the first place. Sure, there are instances where I’ve been able to forge new connections with people I wasn’t necessarily friends with in high school and I’ve even been able to have really intellectual conversations with those types of people that have broadened my thinking and challenged my beliefs. But really, who cares? If we all really wanted to be involved in each others’ current lives, wouldn’t we make it a point to do so? We can share internet memes and funny websites with each other via email, we can pick up the phone and call people who live out of town, we can organize parties and arrange reunions without the use of a formal “Event.” Hell, we can even go about our daily activities without requiring commentary from everyone we know.

And before we start weighing in on my inherent hypocrisy, I realize that I’ve bought into the hype as well. I syndicate this blog through my profile and post recent pictures of funny things that I’ve seen or experienced and send friends links to hilarious new websites and take meaningless quizzes about what sort of famous person I’m supposed to be an embodiment of. Like a lot of people, it’s become a bit of a lifestyle if not only a habit. I check it when I get bored, I kill time by commenting on other people’s ramblings. But after a while, it all just seems like perpetuating our own desperate need to be noticed and recognized (much like, say, a blog) where we’re throwing every detail of our lives into a public forum in hopes to prove that we’re still alive! And existing! Look! Here are pictures of me with other friends hanging out in real life!

And the truth of the matter - and the thing that makes me the most depressed - is that it’s apparent that Facebook is sort of like living in a small town; while there are people who are genuinely exciting to be around and may find you exciting to be around as well, mostly there are just a bunch of people you don’t particularly wandering around believing in the great myth of themselves and living in this state of circular nothingness that’s not exciting enough to warrant even an hour’s worth of conversation, let alone constantly updated spot on a News Feed. Same people. Doing the same shit. With the same other people. This time via the Internet.

Aside from the fact that the whole system is kind of boring and trite, I’ve become bothered with my need to participate in this as often as I do and even more bothered by the realization that I can’t just cut myself off from it just yet. I think this may be a weaning, trimming-of-the-fat situation in which I whittle down my friend base to just the people I care enough about to keep in touch with in the Grand Scheme. And then there is the adjusting-of-the-frequency-of-my-visits. I wonder how much I could get done in my day if I didn’t stop by Facebook so often to reply to someone’s commentary or share a funny link with everyone I know. I wonder if I could do everything on my To Do List in a realistic amount of time and I wonder how far I could go about developing this Great Image I have for myself and my life.

I feel like in anyone’s life there are ways to create distractions from our higher purpose and even if I get rid of the habit of Facebook, there will always be something that will invite me to slack off and divert my attention. But I also think that this is a major thing that is also draining a bit of me personally. I gotta do something about that.

~ My haaaaair. It’s not really as awful as I make it sound and, after scrubbing it with Dawn detergent and superduper dandruff shampoo, it’s getting better but it’s still not what I wanted. I hate wasting an autumn on a mediocre hair color.

~ I think I’m going to have to ditch some friends. This is always hard for me because of my weird thank-you-for-noticing-me mentality I developed in jr. high in which I just feel honored that anyone is taking note of me at all (I really should start growing out of that. I’ve had enough therapy. It’s time.) and I should be lucky to have friends at all, so I don’t want to run the few I have off. And really, in the last three years I’ve become much much better at cutting off people who like to perpetuate self-loathing insanity and the resulting drag-everyone-into-it drama that inevitably ensues. (These are the people for whom I used to prepare arguments to defend my reasoning and give them a respectful “This is why I’m cutting you off” speech -complete with bulleted points and relevant examples - only to have them completely disregard it or not get any of it at all. Now there’s just a personal severance.)

The problem at the moment is that the [useta-be] friends I’m having to cut off at the moment hit a little closer to home. I’ve not always been a good friend to a lot (a lot) of people that I consider my friends and I’m incredibly lucky to have received love and forgiveness from many of them, but these days I work really hard on being selfless and giving and nurturing and attentive and all that. I really do. And, again, I’m incredibly lucky to have a handful of really good friends who give me the same - or moreso - in return. (Some of these friends I haven’t even met in person. I know that sounds weird but I’ve had a small group of old message board buddies that I’ve known for about 5 years who have been amazing to me.) But I have a few friends who have been very Take-Take here recently and I think it’s about time I pulled the plug on it. And I’m not the type to just give up on someone but if it’s been a couple years and I’m not getting anywhere and they’re not “getting it” then I don’t really feel bad at all. In fact, with one of the friends I’m shocked at how apathetic I feel about the whole thing.