So I've always been apt to keep a blog of things and This will be my lent blog.
I am a practicing-ish Catholic, I was raised into it and it has been a part of me for as long as I can remember. ( I make this sound like some type of disease.)
Unsurprisingly, as most girls do I gave up Facebook for Lent.
now if you dont know what facebook or lent is, google it.
here is a short summary; you are supposed to find something and give that thing up for 40 days and 40 nights. There was a pretty shitty movie about it in the 90's.
This time instead of sex im actually just giving up a social networking site that I've dedicated entirely too much time and effort into.
I would easily blog/post/write 20 different items by the time was done and that's not even including half of the menial pointless facebook status updates that I was so terribly fond of posting.
It is entirely true, if you're not posting senselessly well then you dont exist. Four days off of it but besides my room mates I have honestly not really heard from anyone, Well maybe besides my parents.
So is that it? We've become so dependent on this thing to tell us what people are doing we dont really bother to reach out anymore besides a wall post every now and then? Mind you, I didn't expect a parade of "welcome back to the physical world." and I did get one text message from a best friend. However, straying away from something so cozy for me is still incredibly hard. I'm on my fourth day and the first thing I reach for every morning is my phone. I would scroll through the newsfeed and expect some outlandish details of the night a friend had or even some drama from my step family.
Never ever did I really expect myself to have been so ..desperately dependent. I however, am just speaking for myself. I recognized how exactly addicted I was. I thankfully have not turned this addiction to any other site. Granted I've re-started this blog just to depict the ridiculousness of my results but lets face it. I'm not even a week in and i'm jonesing a bit more and more each day.
Facebook isn't the problem; I recognized that right off the bat, it can be helpful, insightful and even hysterical however, I WAS.
People seem to need permission to approach you now, never before have i had that immediate urge to wonder why someone was calling me. They never really needed a proposition before. Yet now, i welcome it. I check my phone like a crack addict much like I have done with facebook opening the screen up. closing it putting it away, opening it up again once more just to make sure that I havent ignored any phone calls/texts/anythingGODANYTHING.
My God I'm seeing a pattern.
Anyway-- with the negative there is a positive. My attention span is growing again. I managed to focus on my homework again and not blip back and forth between windows. I needed more discipline but you dont exactly realize how much it takes until you let something go to allow yourself to focus. May I just say, for myself. Focus is fucking hard!
I ladies and gents, come from a generation who cant put their phone down for one fucking second just to listen to a conversation. We check it like mad, in hopes someone else is longing to hear back from us via text message. I watch as my closest friends zoom down freeways, cell phones in their hands half paying attention to the road half texting back whomever they please.
It scares the shit out of me that I did the same thing once.
Typing this im almost repulsed at my own phone, pushing it away from my wrists as I try to keep myself on this very own blog post. The worse part of is is that I LET myself get that way.
At some point I stopped making eye contact with my ladies and started picking up the phone.
I can nurture myself by communciating with people outside of a window.
I can go a day without posting something that people will click "like."
I can write in this knowing fully well if no one read it I would be okay. That I wrote it for myself to see; huh. I really did manage a full day of online long reads/ more fanfiction/ more stories/ more homework and long talks on the phone.
I never realized how much I missed the sound of someone's voice on a phone. Laughing or concerned. It's kind of warming and humbling to realize I had gone so long without it.
Blah-- getting sentimental again.
For now this is day 4.
I feel strong and weak all at the same time.
so far I havent flubbed up on eating meat! Hooray Veggie tuna fridays!
snicker.
