Simple Living - Could you give up Facebook?

I am truly impressed with this blogger who is working to take back his time from all the timesucks and have a Simple. Organized. Life.

He took a sabbatical from Facebook, then realized, he kept checking and checking again each day wasting precious minutes of his life with people's "I had spaghetti for dinner!" statuses.

So he canceled his account and now lives a Facebook-free life. (I've linked the full blog post here.)

I completely admire this.  And in my "best life," I do not have a Facebook account.  But in this life, I do and I'm not sure I'd want to delete it fully as I like being able to connect with people quickly (instead of digging through my email addresses), and I like seeing what's going on in their lives sometimes (not all the time, hence my "Facebook Fridays," which seems to have morphed into Facebook Thursday and Fridays, a bad habit on my part.)

But there are things I do like about Facebook.

There are definitely things I don't like--

1)  The crazies.  This can be defined in so many ways.  It can be a real life friend who has a Jekyl/Hyde personality online, the bigots, or friending someone to only discover you've friended a writer-version of satan.  It happens.

2)  The peacocking.  This is my husband making love to me.  These are my clean kids.  This is my new designer kitchen.  This is my new arse after a good workout.  It's the people who post not to share, but to show how spectacular their lives are.

(Note: What's interesting about peacocking is that I actually like seeing kid photos and remodeled kitchens on my friends' statuses, however, there's always one or two friends on my low-tolerance level who come off as peacocking and not just sharing.  I'm not sure how they've crossed the line from one to another, but they have.  I can't exactly say how, but I know it when I see it.  And it never seems to be my poetfriends who do this, btw.)

3) Just the Garbage -- Friends defriending friends.  Constant status updates.  Revealing bikini photos as profile pics. It's the welcome to your life in high school again.  It's probably the reason many people never get a Facebook account, they just do not want to deal with garbage and the not-so-good-side-of-our-humaness again.  And honestly, I don't blame them.

But I think when I keep my limits on Facebook and use it for good, it's worth it for me to keep an account.  For me, someone who does *not* remember names especially if we've only corresponded by email, Facebook allows me to put an image with who you are.  Yes,  this I can remember (um, mostly).

And I like to see what writing news and successes people have had to share in the celebration.

I think for me, as long as I keep Facebook as the nice the photo album I only take out once a week or less, it's worth it for me to deal with all the nuttiness.  Though when I'm away from it (like on my writing residency), I do not miss it in the least.

It can be a bad habit, but I kind of like a few bad habits.  So, for now, as much as I look at this guy with is non-Facebook life and think, "Now that's how to do it!" - I don't think I will.

Happy Facebook Friday, Friends...