A Week Without Facebook

So I deleted my account on Facebook last week. I would say that I thought long and hard about the decision but the truth is that I really didn't. I got a bug up my butt to do it for a variety of reasons, deactivated a week to see if I would miss it too much, went through withdrawal, came out the other side and then finally decided to delete. All I have to do reactivate my account is log back in. The temptation is occasionally there but not enough to get me to actually rescue my account. I have another week to stop the process. At this point I don't see that happening but never say never right?

Have their been inconveniences? Yes of course. I was waiting to pick up a package from a sales party I'd gone to the week before only to discover after I emailed the hostess on Saturday that the package had been there since Thursday and she'd updated the facebook page with the information but hadn't gotten around to emailing me yet because she'd forgotten I wasn't on FB anymore (in her defense I was on FB when she invited me so it's perfectly understandible). As well my friend Jenn has had to text me about another sales party that I would have simply been invited to as an event on FB and been able to reply without having to go through my poor intermediary. As well, and lets be honest, it's been a little lonely not sharing my life with 200 people on an hourly basis and sharing in theirs. One thing about FB -- there's always some way to keep yourself entertained there.

But the last week (two really) has also brought time for reflection about what I really get out of FB and what I'm sacrificing along the way. There's the privacy issue of course but there's also the amount of time and emotional energy it took from me. Now I'd like to say that since quitting FB my days are busily filled with cleaning and cooking and visiting with real life friends and doing all those things I always meant to do before but just never got around to, but that's not really the truth. I still don't like cleaning, I still can't seem to get into texting despite making a valiant attempt, and I still haven't even looked at that stupid book I'm supposed to be editing.

I have however done things I did want to do like start volunteering at Chloe's school reading with the grade 2s once a week. I have looked into volunteering at a Senior's Home and I'm seriously considering helping out at the local Food Bank once I get back from my visit home. I did gather up some non-perishables and take the girls for a walk to the Fire Station to drop them off and take the time to discuss poverty with them. I did write a letter to my aunt and uncle after meaning to but never getting around to it after 4 year of shuffling their change of address card around. Mostly though, and this is a tough one and an ongoing learning thing for me, I've started to let go of the need to get constant validation for my life.

The thing with FB is that there is always someone there to tell you that your kids are smart or pretty or that you're a good parent. There's always someone there to tell you that you're pretty or have good taste in clothes or a good person. There's always someone to tell you that they envy your marriage or that you've got a great spouse. There's always someone to give you that little dose of positive feedback that becomes so difficult to live without.

I'm reminded of an experiment we studied while I was a psychology student in university. A scientist programmed the phone system in his office to randomly give his secretary positive feedback throughout the day. He told her about it and she knew that it was simply a set of pre-recorded messaged that she would hear that had no actual bearing on what she was doing/wearing/feeling but nonetheless, when the recordings were turned off the secretary became depressed and sad. Even though insincere, the barrage of compliments became addictive and central to her feeling of self-esteem.

Now I'm not saying that the positive things my friends posted on my wall or commented on my photos were insincere -- merely that they were addictive. A "like" gave me a small charge, an actual comment an even bigger one and someone posting on my wall was like crack. To the point where I actively sought out things to post to prod my friends to respond and give me that much needed feedback.

The irony is that I'd always disdained most reality T.V. (I make an exception for home renovation shows or show where something is actually taught/created) and could never comprehend why someone would give up their freedom to make their entire lives available for public consumption but the more I think about it, the more I come to see that FB was for me a very very VERY small reflection of the need for that kind of adulation. And it's not really something I want for myself of for my kids.

So do I miss FB? Not really though I do feel badly that there are friends who miss me. Of course given the rapid pace of this reality of ours, I have to question how long the void will really be felt. I'm not saying that they're callous or cold, just that they will move on, and so it should be.

Trash Talk

Yesterday G and I watched an interesting documentary on garbage. It was about a family that kept their garbage for 3 months to see what they consumed. This was a regular family living in an urban setting with two kids and a toddler. Now granted the film was dated (2007) and we watched an edited version of it I think because some of the topics shown in the trailer were not part of the TVO program we watched last night, but it still reinforced a lot of the issues we have with our own waste production.

My family tries to find ways to lessen our garbage. We use bins for grocery shopping and reusable produce bags for our fruits and veggies. We buy some meat from the farm which is wrapped in butcher paper instead of white foam trays and plastic wrap (though admittedly not all our meat comes this way and some of the meat from the farm comes in plastic bags). We try to use all the parts of the foods we buy -- I rarely peel our vegetables and I use the rinds of our lemons, oranges and limes in baking. But to be honest, we've started slacking lately so this is a good reminder why we need to reinforce the changes we've made and to even take thing a step further.

Ultimately, the biggest problem for us as a family is that we're consumers. We love to acquire things and more things and even more things. The girls have enough clothes to clothe at least two other children their size, I have more books then I'll ever read again, G's movie collection borders on the obscene and to be honest, every holiday in this house is celebrated with new stuff.

I need to be conscious of this and of the message it sends to my children. I need to be more aware of the distinction between need and want and more importantly, between a genuine investment want and an instant but empty gratification want. I need to make changes in the way I shop and make choices about the things I do buy. It's not easy for me, it'll be a constant struggle.

But if I don't even try why should I expect it from anyone else?

Daddy's Day

Yesterday was Family Day in Ontario so we all had the day off and a government mandate to spend time with our children. Now normally this would be about the kids and we'd go swimming or to the movies or to their favourite restaurant. But we had taken them swimming the day before and while I had promised them dinner at The Rainforest Cafe, that left the rest of the day to fill up with family activities.

That's when G mentioned that he'd like to go to the Car Show. Now I'll confess that going to the Car Show is about as exciting to me as spending the day at The Home Depot -- I'm sure to be bored, have sore feet, be forced to spend the day feigning interest in things I really couldn't care less about and generally wish I was just about anywhere else, preferably by myself.

But G is a good guy and to be honest, 99% of the time we drag him places he doesn't want to go and he never complains because for him, it's almost always worth it to spend time with his family. So yesterday we all went to the car show.

Since we were going to be hitting The Rainforest Cafe for supper we opted to park at Yordale and take the subway into Union. Sarah and Chloe were so excited they laughed with giddy glee the whole ride in. Once at Union we took the Skywalk to the Air Canada Centre and I confess, I was quite impressed by the beauty of it. As I've said before, I tend to avoid the city so I've never been through the Skywalk before. It's a large glass enclosure that's really quite stunning and even I was pressing my nose against the glass to see the CN Tower.

Then we joined the masses of people - mostly men; the fun thing about the car show is that's it's the one mass gathering of people where you don't have to worry about the long line ups in the woman's washrooms -- and proceeded to pretend to drive about 50 different cars. I sat in a Jaguar and the girls sat in a race car, they both posed on top of a big BMW motorcycle and G shook his head often muttering about "stupid design." Hey, that's what you get when you marry a German engineer.

Was I bored? Yes though not as bad as I'd worried. Was I tired? Yes but to be honest, most of the walking we did was to get to the car show and not actually at the car show itself. Was I glad I went? You betcha. My G thanked me about a dozen times for coming and I always answered with the same refrain: "Of course we came, it's Daddy's Day too."

Rediscovering Public Television

We don't have cable T.V. We don't have satellite either. What we have is an antenna in the attic and free-to-air decoding. This is all fancy talk for G takes care of the T.V. stuff, we don't pay for it, it's still legal and we only get a handful of channels -- some from Canada, some from the U.S.

Because only a handful of channels come in reliably our viewing choices are rather limited. This was a choice because when we did have satellite TV we found ourselves spending far too much time in the family room. When it progressed to the point that we started eating meals in front of the television we knew that something had to change and so we converted to antenna and a much more limited viewing selection instead.

So for the most part I watch the same shows week in and week out and don't seek out a lot of different stuff. I know what I like, I know when it's on and the rest of the time we watch movies from G's insanely extensive movie collection. But as you might know, I have been making changes in my life and so one night, when G was in bed and I was bored I started flipping through the guide and setting the T.V. up to record shows on TVO which is a public television channel that we never watch.

And what a treasure trove it's proven to be. We're enjoying Canada's Worst Handyman and Canada's Worst Driver, though they are admittedly silly and not terribly informative -- why we'd ever want to know how to properly make a wooden toilet seat is beyond me. We've also watched Fake or Fortune which was quite interesting and This Old House which featured a segment on how recycled glass was made into the most beautiful countertops.

These little gems were hidden, scheduled in strange time slots or just unobserved because I was too busy watching shows about grisly murders and teenaged vampires and witches. I'm pretty sure we also get the CBC channel. I'll be scoping out that one next to see what pearls they have hidden. It's not that I want to watch more T.V. -- rather I want the T.V. that I do watch to do more than just entertain; well at least some of the time anyhow ;)

A Night At The Theatre

When I was single I lived in downtown Ottawa. I was a student and within walking distance of the National Arts Centre. As such I could get discounted seasons tickets and every year for a few years I did -- one year for the ballet, one year for the orchestra, one year for the theatre and one magical year for the opera. I went with my sister Marie who was also a student and just so happened to be my roommate at the time. When she left to go to Japan to teach English with her family, I stopped going to the NAC. And then I met Gunther and moved up here.

I did attend a few events after the move up north -- most notably Mamma Mia and a Holly Cole concert, but nothing compared to what I would enjoy in my youth and after the kids came, nothing at all. But now the kids are older and I have this great new wardrobe I want to show off so I decided that this year G and I would have a date night once a month.

I enlisted the help of my inlaws who wonderfully stepped up to watch the kids for us and then I went online and started looking for different activities G and I could enjoy. The first month we just went to The Keg which was nice but was also something we've done before. February needed to be different. When I found out there was a new Ronnie Burkett show in town, or in the big city more precisely, I was OVER the MOON (if you've ever seen a Ronnie Burkett show you'll understand the shouting -- RB is LOUD).

So nervously I asked G about whether he'd be interested in taking me to a puppet show and he told me he would and then I explained that it was "downtown" and he said that that was fine and so I bought tickets and we arranged for a babysitter and the night was set.

To help you understand what a big deal this is to me, I hardly ever go downtown. I live within an hour of downtown but it still makes me nervous to go there. Traffic is insane, parking is insane and there are people everywhere. There are subways and streetcars and one way streets. It's a morass of humanity coming and going as full tilt and I never did get the handle of it even when I was working there so many years ago. So to go "downtown" to see a play is a big deal; a very big deal.

But this was for Ronnie Burkett and I was going to see this play even if I had to take a train home to Ottawa to watch it at the safer, quieter NAC (for the record I still might -- it wouldn't be the first time I've seen a RB show twice) so I bucked up and put on my brave face and google mapped it, mapped out some parking, looked up public transit situations and in the end, sent the map to G's car.

We were both a little nervous about it though I was much more so than G. We decided to leave an hour early and got the theatre much too early. But that was o.k. There was a lounge and I was dressed up and frankly it was going to be the only time during the night when I'd actually get to show off my outfit anyhow so I had a coffee and watched the different patrons came in.

Then it was time for a quick pee before the show because you can't leave during the 1h40min performance. G went after me and I confess I squeed a little when Don Ferguson of the Royal Canadian Air Farce went in after G. He later ended up sitting in our row and that was very exciting for me -- G never watched RCAF so wasn't nearly as giddy about going to the theatre with a real celebrity as I was so he read the program and I eavesdropped on the other patrons whispering about how that guy from the Royal Canadian Air Farce was in the audience and smiled smugly.

And then the lights when down and the show started and once again I sat entranced and amazed, I laughed and I gasped, I teared up, I smiled and I let myself be battered by the constant flood of emotions and the very loud performance. Sitting next to a stranger was weird and a little uncomfortable, my knees hurt from the cramped seating, some parts of the show were so loud they hurt my ears -- and it was WONDER-full.

Like the best performances it didn't hit me until much later. G and I trading quips about different parts of the show on the drive home and laughing all over again. Discussing the ending and which parts impacted us most strongly. Telling my inlaws about the show as we waited at the door for a very sleepy and Chloe to gather the bird houses they made with Opa so we could take them home. Letting my mind wander back again to the magic and wonder of it all.

Yesterday G looked at me and said "I really enjoyed that last night." Truth be told, so did I. I have missed it -- that feeling of witnessing something special, something creative, something that goes beyond merely entertaining.

And as we drove through the big city I realized something else: I was letting my fear of the big rob me of the pleasures and wonders offered in my own backyard. So this week, Thursday I think, I shall take the train back into the big city, just me and go exploring. Maybe I'll find some quaint shops or maybe I'll go to the AGO. Maybe I'll just find a cafe and read a book and watch the people rush by. I don't know yet but that my dear friends, is all part of the adventure.

Are You Going To Put That On Facebook Mom?

I made cake pops and cherry cheesecakes for a fundraising luncheon the other day. Chloe and Sarah offered to taste test them and while biting into a cake pop Chloe asked me if I was going to take her photo eating a cake pop and post it on Facebook. You see my kids have come to expect that random moments of their lives will be documented and shared online with hundreds of people.

This is, I have come to conclude, not the message about online (and offline) privacy that I want to send my children.

Now I know there are hundreds is not thousands of people who can have social networking accounts and use them responsibly without feeling the need to post about what they had for breakfast or whether they have a pimple on their nose or whether their kids have a cough or a math test this morning, but I am not one of those people.

When I have a Facebook account I share stuff. I OVERshare stuff. I share just about everything from what we're eating to where we're going to what I'm wearing and which T.V. shows I'm watching. I document it all with commentaries and photographs and little to no filter. And my kids have come to expect that this is normal and how things are.

But that is not safe for them. It's one thing for me, a grown woman with a limited set of mature online friends and knowledge about privacy settings to overshare. It'll be quite another when my girls do it when they're 16 or 18 or 20. It'll be different for them because they won't be settled down, they won't be just chatting with other Moms, they will have grown up with this and will think nothing of it -- and that's not what I want for them.

So I'm going to stop putting their lives (and mine) online. I'm going to try to learn about discretion and privacy and appropriate sharing. I'm not going to snap photos of our supper or every new piece of clothing or jewelry I buy. I'm going to protect my girls and myself from my overwhelming need to get constant approval and acknowledgement from other people.

And I will clean up my Facebook account -- and then I just might delete it altogether.

Withdrawal

I'm cranky and short-tempered, emotional and easily upset. I'm walking under a little cloud of doom and feeling rather hard done by and martyred. Yes, it's withdrawal time again.

I'm trying to get back to a place where I was losing weight -- or at least not bingeing nightly -- and it's not going well. I think I expected it to easy. I'd forgotten about all the emotional and physical crap of addiction.

I've also deactivated my Facebook account and so it's double withdrawal for me. I'm being forced to take a long hard look at who I am, who I want to be, and what kind of footprint I would like to leave on this world. I'm not sure what it is yet, but I do know that it goes beyond the life that I am living now.

Add to that of course that it's February -- the worst most God-awful month of the year -- and it's no wonder that I'm somewhat miserable.

But you know what comes from understanding that you're going through withdrawal? The strength to tough it out until it gets better because experience tells you that it will, as it always does, get easier.