To Love or Hate Facebook

I've been sitting with this for awhile now, whether I love or hate Facebook and it wasn't until I took this conversation from my head to some of my trusted sounding boards that I really understood my internal conflict.

I'm just going to say it, I don't think Facebook is a great way to stay connected. In fact, I think it has become a detriment to personal connection. However, I do think it has the potential to immerse you in the lives of those you are connected to if used wisely.

When I came to this conclusion I felt like such hypocrite because I use Facebook all the time and I'm not willing to give it up.

My primary hesitation to giving it up is that I primarily use it as an easy way to capture my life as part of my memory keeping/scrapbooking. There would be weeks/months that I would be lost in Project Life if I didn't have my feed to go back to. This is simply too valuable for me to give up.

Ironically, I also think that relying on Facebook to capture our life has taken me away from blogging. As much as I love having all those quick snapshots & tidbits of life on Facebook I hate that I'm missing some of the intricate details of our stories by not capturing them on this blog. You see, I believe that this blog is in its simplest form one of my scrapbooks, pictures and stories captured.

My biggest pet peeve with Facebook is probably the thing I myself am most guilty of. We are aware of the details of others lives without actually being involved in their life. There is no need to reach out to say I'm thinking about you and want to check in because it is all there laid out in neat little snippets. I hate this. Connection is not about snippets and cannot be captured in status updates and wall posts.

The last month I've been experimenting with Facebook, commenting more, liking more, and removing it as a crutch by actually calling friends and sending personal emails. I think I might be able to make it work for me but I have to make some changes.

When I first signed up I was deeply involved with Library of Memories and posting crafty things on a regular basis. In turn, my friends list is a very diverse group that includes personal friends, family, crafty friends, neighborhood friends, old school friends and some work friends with multiple layers of connection in each group. I feel like these are too many worlds coming together. I've decided that this week I'm going to take a good look at my friends list and only keep the relationships, in all categories, that have connection. In order for me to craft the life my intuition is telling me I need to be living I need to focus my energy further developing these life lines instead of spreading myself too thin.

I'm learning that when I have too much (of anything) I become overwhelmed and am not able to focus on anything effectively. I truly hope not to offend anyone, that is sincerely not my intention. In the end, I'm at a place in my life where I need to simplify so I can fill my life with recognizing and appreciating the gifts that I have, most importantly the people who have an impact on my daily life.

So as not to leave you without a picture, here is a shot of a little more simplifying my life. This weekend involved a lot of purging and giving away of supplies that I no longer have the energy or space to keep up with.

And I got to the point where my cardstock and patterned paper fit on one shelf in my new space in the playroom.

I invite you to follow me on Twitter (MonicaMcNeill) where I tend to find and share more crafty focused tidbits and to continue reading this blog where I hope to spend more time sharing my personal life as a result of this change.

Thanks for listening,
Monica