In My Absence

I’ve been absent from facebook for the better part of three or so weeks excepting the occasional like here and there. There was a point at which I posted everyday and multiple times with varying insights and comments and photos from the mall, the store, the office, wherever. Lately, however, I’ve wanted to do that less and think of what else I could do if I weren’t logged into or checking or reading or updating Facebook.

Mind you, it wasn’t a chronic issue, but I do check a lot to respond to comments or take note of new things.

So I took some time to drop off the face of the earth (metaphorically speaking, of course) and I noticed a few things that may be of interest to you:

• Ultimately, no one really cared. I want to say otherwise, but it’s true. In the purest sense, no one really cared that I was posting every day, every other day, every week or even if I posted at all. They all have their own lives and enough to read from everyone else on their feed. While I may bring value and impact to the lives of some people here, a majority of the people on my friend’s list could care less. The world continued to turn. The sun rose and fell and everyone slept relatively well. Sometimes, social networks make us feel more important than we are or need to be.
• The people that wanted to contact me, contacted me. Any of the people that wanted to really get in touch with me while I was away did so and had little problem doing it. They called, sent a text, emailed, skyped, whatever else if they wanted to talk. I was mildly surprised by the people that did take the time to make contact, but ultimately, people that wanted to talk found a way to do that. It is, in fact, very possible to communicate with someone you want to keep in touch with outside of FB.
• Facebook is not the standard for communication or friendship. This may come as a surprise, but my friends are my friends whether they post or not, comment or not, like or not. That said, I’d like to be more involved in the lives of you guys via this channel, but my liking of your statuses seem to make you uncomfortable. For a while, I took that to heart and it hurt, but lately, I don’t care as much and hope that you’re enjoying your life doing all of the things it makes you uncomfortable for me to like.
• All of the above is perfectly fine — GOOD even. It’s fine that I didn’t get swarmed with likes, comments, messages, and people panicking about my absence. Sometimes, having a constant demand on your presence can be very taxing. Every now and then, I need to disconnect in order to reconnect. That’s not a trait unique to me; it’s a very human thing.

I’ve been “back” in a manner of speaking for the last few days (sometimes around last thursday or so) and who knows how long that will be, but in the meantime with that, I’ll probably be around a bit less. Responses may be slower. Maybe not at all. Maybe things will be as they were before I left. No matter how it goes, one way or another, I think the general idea is that proper perspective is crucial to dealing with social media; Facebook is only a communication channel. It does not create friendships, people do.

With that in mind, later.