Facebook Nation… or shall I say ADDICTION

OK, so I joined Facebook about 2 weeks ago. More than anything I was just curious about how many people I’d run into that I hadn’t seen in a long time. As it turns out, there are a lot of people on facebook I know. I’m up to 270 confirmed friends. That doesn’t include those who haven’t accepted my olive leaf inviting them to be my friends, nor does it include those I know whom I’ve chosen to pretend I haven’t noticed are on Facebook. (Bego, I need a grammar check) At first, I figured it would just be cool to see who was out there. But then I started running into people I really had wondered about, and was dying to find out where they were. It turns out that others were doing the same with me. Next thing I know, I’m having long chats with some “friends”, I’m writing on others’ walls, I’m sending messages to a few and I am getting all kinds of invitations to all kinds of events. I have found people from my elementary school, high school, UM, FIU, my high school and parish youth groups, my parish Young Adult Groups, former students, friends of my parents, and parents of my kids friends. Throw in some acquaintances that I’m not sure where I met, but I know that I know, and I have this very eclectic group of people whom I have accumulated as friends. And this doesn’t even include some that haven’t joined facebook yet. I want to know what’s going on in everybody’s lives, and not in a gossipy way. I don’t need to share the info. I genuinely want to know what’s up with all these people whom I’ve shared in some cases one, and in many cases many, many experiences with. And the kicker is that I don’t have time to do so. So I waste away in front of the computer sometimes knowing full well there are other more important things to do. I can imagine that this is how some people feel about drugs. They know they don’t need them, but they just keep coming back to them instead of doing the things they really must be doing.
Fortunately, I know me, and the truth is that this just a phase I must go through. I’ll blog for three months and disappear for a while (though I don’t want to lose THAT habit). I’ll work out for three months and stop for two years (though I REALLY don’t want to lose That Habit), I’ll play minesweeper every day for two months (that I can do without), and I’ll get into Sudoku, Kakuro, or Crossword puzzles in such a way that a day can’t pass by without me finding and completing one. And then it passes. Like gas, I guess. Once it’s gone it’s a relief, but while it’s there I hold onto it so that no one will notice what I am keeping. Am I making sense. Well to me I am!

Anyways, this too will pass, much like AIM did for me. In the meantime I’m going to ride this wave for a bit, and see who I can find. In fact let me check who’s on their now before I hit the showers, (Yes I am stinky from a workout) and then goto bed. Who knows, maybe I’ll run into YOU there