My Heart Was Stopped; I Cannot Be

I did a search for “be a good friend” to find images for this post. This came up. I thought it was kind of a cute idea. (Photo Credit – pecentral.org)

This is a continuation of an idea from yesterday -

though this idea has been sitting in my drafts folder for what seems like forever. I was going to put it in some posts after my 52 half marathons. But, then I never did. So, I’m just throwing it in there now.

L.A. is kind of a lonely place. (And side note related to what we’ve been talking about the past few days: I think that’s part of the reason it was easy to start using Facebook more often while living out here (especially in the unemployed times). It’s kind of like talking to people… only not really.)

In Los Angeles, people get used to being alone. We have huge apartments. (There’s so much space out here!) Most people spend tons and tons of time in their cars (their little alone boxes). There’s very little reason to live out here if you’re not in the industry. So, we’re all constantly hustling for more jobs – and trying to make money however we can until we become [insert glamorous job title we're chasing here].

Plus, everything is so far away from everything else. And traffic is so intense. So, I understand why unless you live or work right by the people you like, you will never see them. I understand all of that.

But, what I learned during the 52 half marathons is that if ever I do feel lonely in L.A., I should remember that I love and I am loved.

From WisdomPetals.com

I saw so many friends over the course of the year while visiting people in different states. I also met a lot of new cool people all the time at expos and events. It’s amazing how many nice, lovely people there are out there to hang out with – if you just go hang out with them.

And tying this idea in with yesterday, something for me to remember is if ever I’m thinking, “Man, I’ve barely talked to any human beings this week,” (especially during a time of unemployment) – friendship is a two-way street.

If I wished more people hung out with me or texted me – am I doing that for other people? You get back what you give, you know?

So, that just makes the whole idea of being “too busy” to hang out with people that much more… I don’t know, not ironic, I guess. But, just generally weird. ‘Cause there’s yet another disconnect. I complain that I don’t hang out with enough people – yet, I don’t always make the effort to be a good friend.

(Did anything in this post even make sense?)

Tomorrow, I’m I’ll start a post some final thoughts (at least for now) on friendship (and birthdays) and Facebook. Then we’ll talk about other stuff.

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/46213661@N00/4461019149

Picking up from yesterday -

I used to be great at not using Facebook too often. Since I didn’t really like it, I always kept in mind what it was for, and used it accordingly.

But, somewhere in probably the past year, I started using it way too much.

I think a lot of it had to do with giving updates on my 52 half marathons project – though obviously I have a blog. So, I didn’t need to Facebook about it.

I also got a twitter and public Facebook later in the year. Those were way more helpful, and made way more sense.

Since my public profiles are still pretty new, I think I liked the idea that maybe some people would actually be liking stuff if I posted things on an established profile.

But, that was needy – and not in a fun, cute just-barely-needy-way, but in an I’m annoyed with myself because as much as I loved having support, I should’ve felt enough from close friends, blog followers, and people who follow my public accounts – without needing to go into icky Facebook land.

I’m getting on a tangent (not surprisingly to readers of this blog). I think that mixed with that job I had last year. I had a lot of time when I was just waiting for footage to transfer, with not much else to do.

I also just never seemed to really get it together. I so often felt way too tired, ’cause I never got used to getting up early. So, I supplemented that with lots of sugar and caffeine – which just made me more tired.

And Facebook is a great way to waste time to make the day go by without really having to concentrate hard or think – perfect for a tired person with time on her hands waiting for files to transfer (or just trying to stay awake on the bus ride home).

I know, I know. Excuses, excuses. I’m just trying to pinpoint a little how it all went wrong. So, I started using Facebook too often, for sure. A month ago, I stopped really using Facebook a lot. I make sure to actually sign in and out anytime I want to use it. Forget this whole “keep me logged in” thing. I want to make the conscious decision each time I go to the website – do I actually want to look at Facebook, or am I mindlessly looking at it? What am I avoiding right now?

I set it so that I don’t get so many email notifications. I do still get them if I get a new message. So, in the past month, I’ve mainly gone on just if I get an email telling me someone’s messaged me – so I can respond.

When I do go on, I don’t scroll through my newsfeed. I have actually seen a couple of things right at the top of the newsfeed (when I signed in) that I was happy I saw.

(A friend of mine started a web comic after talking about doing it for a while. So, I was really happy to see that. And actually, I randomly found out someone I hadn’t talked to in a bit was in Ohio when I was – and I probably wouldn’t have heard about that otherwise.)

So, you know, Facebook can give a little jolt of good or helpful news. I will admit that. But, I’m not missing out on too much by being, for the most part, pretty away from it.

I have felt so wonderful – definitely way happier – not checking Facebook every day, or even every other day. Whenever I’ve thought about mindlessly going on Facebook, I read something, or text a friend, or look for an interesting article or book online. I enrich my day so much more that way.

And to the other complaint I had yesterday – I’ve run out of space in this blog. So, I’ll get to it tomorrow.

Photo Credit: http://thebuzzbuilders.tumblr.com/post/17713322536/relationships-and-social-media-the-good-bad-and-ugly

Picking up from yesterday -

So, Facebook is really for certain things. But, I realized that somewhere along the line, I started using it more for not great things.

For one thing, sometimes my self-worth got a bit wrapped up in Facebook – not totally, but a little. For instance, if a picture or event I thought was great only got a few likes, I would think, “Why don’t people like me?”

Of course, it’s not that they don’t like me. Maybe they’re not on the computer. Maybe I’m not on their newsfeed. Maybe they just don’t want to click like. Maybe a million different things. But it was almost as though an experience was only as good as the people on Facebook validated it to be.

I started being a little less present in my own life, and thinking kind of outside of my life. If something great would happen, sometimes instead of thinking how amazing it was, I’d think something along the lines of, “I bet a lot of people will ‘like’ this!”

Then if a lot of people didn’t like it, it would make me wonder – is the thing as cool as I thought it was? Well, guess what?! Everything in my own life is as cool or as uncool as I think it is. It’s my life and my experiences and I should enjoy them because I do – not because they impress anybody else. How could there be any tiny part of me that thinks some random internet group gets to decide what’s cool in my own life? That’s just silly.

I also allowed Facebook to kind of… I dunno, maybe hurt my feelings a bit. For instance, I had this friend who was always saying that we should hang out. But he was just “sooooo busy” that he couldn’t make time for me anytime in many months. But, we both went through a phase – maybe kind of around the holidays and even beginning of this year, where we were both almost living on Facebook. I’d see him on it all the time.

He’d be constantly liking and commenting on a million statuses. So, let me get this straight. You have time to watch 800 cat videos, but you don’t have time to have a simple coffee with me? Am I not more interesting than stupid internet crap?

The difference is – at least Darth Vader started out not on the dark side.
(Not sure who to credit with this – just saw it floating around the internet.)

So, then I’d get a bit mad (or at least peeved) at him. But then I’d start to wonder – how can I possibly be mad at him?! This is insanely weird behavior to be able to see what so many of my friends are up to all the time. I shouldn’t be judging what they do with their time – ’cause I shouldn’t be watching! (Not that I’m watching more than anybody else is – it’s just odd that we have that ability.)

Also, I noticed some really bad behavior in myself. I started writing wall posts to my good friends. We have telephones! If I want to know what’s going on with an actual friend, why don’t I give a call – or at least a text? I mean, come on!

I’ve been going through a bunch of my old Facebook activity – trying to clean up my profile, get rid of some pictures – sort of generally streamline it all. (Thankfully, I’ve been pretty good since I’ve gotten it about usually deleting stuff once it’s been up for a while and has become a little obsolete. So, I never have too terribly much stuff to go though.)

(And yes, I know if I run for President someday, anything that had been posted at any time I’m sure will be able to be drudged up through some kind of internet craziness. So, I do my best to never put anything up that would cause a firestorm in the public eye – but I still like to clean out my Facebook timeline/photos/etc. every once in a while to clean it up a bit.)

Anyway, as I was going through the activity page to see things I’ve posted – I saw that when some of my former classmates were nominated for Tony Awards – that’s right nominated for freaking Tony awards – I wrote them congratulations on their Facebook walls!

What is wrong with me? If that is not a “send a card/flowers/whatever” type of moment, I don’t know what is!

And tomorrow, I will talk about fixing my Facebook behavior.