Facebook Furlough and Fast Company

The last couple weeks have been hectic and stressful. There’s been a lot going on at my employer. I’m traveling a lot, which I don’t enjoy. My phone is broken for at least the next 24 hours. While that makes for quiet days, it also means that I might be missing important calls. 

Winter is  coming, which means that one of my outlets for stress relief, riding my motorcycle, just isn’t fun. The heavy bag, which is also great stress relief, hangs in the aerobics room at my gym, so I wasn’t able to hit the bag today, either. You might imagine I’m a little stressed out.

Stress, for many people, causes them to be intolerant. I’m no different. I become intolerant of ignorance and idiocy very, very quickly.

The recent events in Paris, combined with the beginnings of the US Presidential campaign, and the repeated shootings here in the US, have come together in the perfect storm of ignorance and idiocy. The outlet of choice seems to be Facebook. I can’t block posts fast enough.

I decided to leave.

Certain things in life are voluntary. No matter how big of a thing social media is in your life, it’s optional. I’m exercising my right not to volunteer.

It’s not forever. A month off seems about right. 

Unlike Baratunde Thurston from Fast Company, I didn’t prepare. I went on Facebook and posted the following:

Hey folks, just an FYI. Due to my inability to ignore the intolerance and stupidity of the political arguments on here, I’m out for a while. I’m thinking I might drop back into Facebook somewhere about a month from now. Hope y’all enjoy your Thanksgiving, and a little time without me.

Yours,
John

Ironically, this blog post will probably get there, since my blog is set up to publicize these posts to my profile automatically.

I’m curious to see how this works out. I’ve noticed one thing already. I think about how I’m going to post things quite a lot. For example, I cooked a particularly fine meal this evening, which I enjoyed with my particularly fine girlfriend. Later, I thought about the words I was going to use in my post about it. Then I realized I’m not going to post about it. Not just on Facebook, but I’m not going to tweet about it, either.

I’m becoming less digitally dependent. I recently removed my work email from my phone for a vacation. I also shut off all notifications except phone and text messaging. Once I came back from vacation, I put the email back on, but I left the notifications off. I read my email and social media posts on my time, on my terms. 

I believe it was Judith Martin, better known as Miss Manners, who described the telephone as being like having your mail carrier come to your door and demand you read your mail immediately. That’s what email and social media is like. Like the phone, you can refuse to answer. I’ve decided that in the case of Facebook, I’m not going to answer for a while.