we need to talk about...

...Facebook.

This very evening, my mind took a wander through the cobwebs and dustballs of several days / weeks / months worth of thoughts. If you want more detail, it was during my bath, while I was shaving my legs with a blunt razor (no, I have no idea why I did that either).

If you don't want more detail then don't read that last bit.

So, I was mainly thinking about my WRITING (cue: eye rolling from at least 2 friends who listen to my 'writing' based bleatings on a weekly basis) and how I have started doing it again, but with no real plans or aims or structure or ideas or goals or (and this is the important part) discipline*. My musings took me to realise that it was pretty rubbish that I managed to find time for things I don't enjoy as much - such as Facebook, when it hit me. You know? IT!

I should come off Facebook! I should! It would help me do stuff. You know, like writing. And speaking to people in the flesh. Or the telephone. It would help me to finish off the bloody peg bag I've been 'sewing' for 2 months (still only got 1 side done). It would help me sort out our storage crisis in the flat. And tidy up my junk all over my bedroom. And many, many, many, many other things.

Or would it? See, that's the problem. I am not so much a procrastinator as a time-wasting-twat. I truly believe that I am DOING THE THING I'M SUPPOSED TO BE DOING whilst doing something else entirely. I trick myself into thinking it's getting done when it's absolutely, catagorically NOT.

So where was I? Digressing? Yes! See?

The trouble is - I have no control with Facebook. I am so glad I was a teenager back then in the 20th century. Millions of years ago. When the closest you got to 'instant messaging' was writing notes to your pals in the evening in your bedroom on new fancy paper with matching envelopes ready to deliver them in the morning before registration.

God. Was that just me?! Probably.

Anyway - yes. Facebook. And lack of control. I open up my web browser to check something like the bus time table (no, I can't work that bus app so no need to tell me about it) or the weather, or my email and my fingers type in www.facebook.com before my eyes have even looked at the screen. I will check it several times a day, sometimes several times an hour and I will sometimes update my status 4 or 5 times a day.

Do people need to know I'm bored of my mugs (such was today's interesting status update)? No. Do people need to know that I was up 4 times in the night with Ida? No. Do I need to know that someone has been to the pub along the road from their house with their boyfriend? No. I do not. And when you check up on pussbook so many times in one day - that's exactly the sort of information you get. All the time. It's tedious. And there's only myself to blame.

So. Here's my BIG! BOLD! STATEMENT! I am going to come off it for 30 days. As of today. Well, tomorrow now - I am going to get Bry to shut me down. And put a block on it (don't worry - I KNOW I'm a pathetic failure, I know that, you are free to pity me) so I don't renege**. I am removing it from my phone when I can locate it from whichever little nook or cranny I've stuffed it into most recently.

Of course, there are concerns. The main one being that I have made this fairly large statement - all too knowingly in the face of disbelievers - and I crash and burn on day 1, but you know - I think it was Ghandi that said 'the first step to giving up is to totally humiliate yourself in front of lots of people so you lose all your friends and then there's no point in Facebook anyway'.

Another concern is that I come back after 30 days like a deranged crack addict - spending hours and hours pouring through everybody's timelines looking for the teensiest, tiniest bit of information about what they did between 2pm and 4pm last Tuesday.

Like a bad made-for-TV-movie on Channel 5: 'She Couldn't Handle Life Without Facebook' I'll start adding all the survey apps with titles like 'Which Happy Days Character Are You?' (actually that would be a good one. I'd hope for The Fonze but most likely get the batty Mom) and I wouldn't realise how much time I was spending on it till the day everybody pretends to be coming round for lunch but it's not really lunch. It's a humiliating intervention - the realisation of which makes me lash out at my mother and throw the laptop out the window to prove I don't need it, only to follow it 30 seconds later in a fit of despair and panic that I've missed a status update from a girl I didn't really know at school but who's boyfriend I once snogged.

That is a REAL, LIVE concern.

Otherwise though, I'm sort of pretty happy knowing that most people have my phone number and know where I live and would email me or ring me if they needed me. And in a weird way, I'm kind of looking forward to getting on with stuff. As mentioned above. All the way back up there at the top of this tiny, short & to the point statement. And I'll still be Blipping - I might actually have something interesting to blip. Other than the kids!

And I suppose...if the worst comes to the worst...there's always Twitter! I jest...

DAYS WITHOUT FACEBOOK: 0 (but counting).

*Discipline: A word so infrequently used by me that I had to write it several times before checking how the feck to spell it.

** Renege: A word used so frequently by me it literally trips off the keyboard in a flurry of key clicks, even though it is quite a tough one to spell if you're not a 'frequent user'.