Facebook Fatigue

Holy. Crap.

Okay. Here is the post I wrote about what was bothering me. It's about Facebook. It's nothing. It's stupid. Read it and see:

Not too long ago I cut my FB friend list by about 25%. (Yes, I did the math. Yes, I am a dork.) I have always maintained a pretty small list as it is, but there were a few people I had not interacted with for over a year (at least) and several more who had never bothered to even say "hello". I didn't delete anyone as a result of any negative emotions or as a result of anything--I just pared the list down to the people with whom I interact. (Or relatives. I'll admit that I kept all the relatives, regardless of their activity level. How am I going to tell my grandmother I deleted her because she doesn't get on her account enough?!)

Anyway. There hasn't been a lot of drama on my account. I've talked before about how boring my friends are. (I love you guys, but you are--for which I am eternally grateful.) I've never had anyone attack me on a post, I've never had anyone send me a hateful e-mail, and I've never seen anyone post anything on their status about one of my posts either. (On my page; I have been or felt attacked on others' pages before, normally during a political discussion gone wrong.) It's a nice, safe place for me to be. I thought I had kept it that way because I am so discerning about who makes the friends list but this past week I learned a few nuts had slipped through the approval process. (That'll teach me to not pat myself on the back too much!)

In case you haven't picked up on it here at the ol' blog, I have a rather quirky sense of humor. In fact, this whole family is like that. We joke about things that sometimes raise some eyebrows, but it's just our way. So yes, last week I made a joke about paying someone in children if they would come clean my kitchen. It's probably not the most shocking thing I've ever said, honestly. It never occurred to me that it would upset someone. Does anyone actually think I would do it?! Who takes something like that seriously?! Well, I now know of at least one person who had an extremely negative reaction to this and I am honestly stunned.

People. I would not trade my kids away for a clean kitchen. Maybe a clean house and garage. Selling them for only a clean kitchen is just too cheap. They are great damn kids.

Ahem.

Once again I find myself in the midst of "Facebook Fatigue" and I have to wonder if it's worth keeping up with the stupid thing. There are days when I think I would like nothing more than to just delete the whole damn thing and call it good but for one thing: it is the primary communication tool that I have with many of my relatives and several of my oldest friends. FB is such a freakin' staple in people's lives now that I doubt I would hear from many of them (often) if I am not on there. I'm starting to regret having ever opened up the account to begin with.

***

There is the big secret post in all its glory. See? It's dumb, just like I said. A lot of hoopla over nothing. The person who got upset has already been deleted and blocked. (My first block! How exciting, right?!) It's not a big deal and, I promise, it has NOTHING to do with any of you reading this. (Unless you are that one person, but I'm pretty sure she isn't one who reads this thing. If I'm wrong, well, you still suck and I continue to roll my eyes in your general direction.) In the future, I will try to refrain from posting about ambiguous frustrations. I'm sorry that I upset those who e-mailed me; I'm publishing this just in case there were more who didn't contact me.

***

Question time! Might as well since I went and published the damn thing anyway. Now, I know that people use their personal FB accounts in all sorts of ways. I'm honestly curious...who makes the cut on your friends list? Do you "friend" everyone clear down to your sister's hairdresser's oldest daughter or do you just add your nearest and dearest? Do you hide your feed from people or is everything an open book? Do you hide people or delete them? Or both? And finally, do you ever think about deleting your account? I can't be the only one. Right?

ff: perceptions

Ah, Facebook quizzes. What would I do without them? (Probably some dusting. It would be more productive for sure!) Every once in awhile one catches my eye and I just can't resist taking it. Who doesn't want to know how long they could last during a Zombie attack (turns out, not so very long in my case) or which Scrubs character they are most like (I am Chocolate Bear...if you watch the show, you understand). What do you mean, "massive waste of time"? These are important matters, I am telling you.

So last week I took the quiz "Which Movie Couple are You and Your Significant Other?" After a few run-of-the-mill questions, the quiz spit out my result. We are apparently the most like Alli and Noah from "The Notebook". Of course this is the one movie/book I have not seen/read so I had no idea what that might mean. Luckily for me, the quiz writer put together a lovely little blurb to explain.

You have had your struggles but the fire between the 2 of you hasn't and won't go out. You 2 are crazy about each other. You have a unique love story. People envy the 2 of you. The love you share is so passionate, you make people cry. I wish everyone was as lucky as you!

Awww, right? It sounds great. And while these quizzes should never actually be taken seriously (according to one, I have an 80% chance of getting married and will have 2.3 kids), this one is relatively close to true in our case. I'm not sold on the use of the word "passionate" but we are crazy about each other, there is enough, ahem, "fire" involved and ours (like most) is a unique love story. Unfortunately, the "envy" part rings true as well.

I have had someone throw the phrase "perfect husband, perfect family" in my face during a disagreement. And while only the one person has actually verbalized this bitterness toward me, others have expressed it through their actions. It's not really something you can fight against; once someone has decided that your relationship is superior to their own and, furthermore, that this means that you believe that you are superior to them, there isn't much you can do about it. It's a frustrating situation because the only way to convince them otherwise is to lay out all your dirty laundry to show them just how "imperfect" your relationship really is. I'm just not going to do that.

I don't think we're perfect at all. We don't allow people on the inside of our marriage; that's just how we do things. For the majority of our marriage the worst thing people would hear me say about Jason is that it takes him forever to put his socks on*. (And it does! I've never known anyone who can stretch that one activity out more. Argh!) Does that mean that he doesn't do anything else that I have trouble with? No, not by a long shot! And you gotta know that I drive him up the wall at times. We've both hurt each other terribly on more than one occasion. But we've nearly always had mutual friends; people who were just as close to one of us as the other. I'm not going to put those people in the situation of feeling as though they have to "choose sides"** and neither is he. It's just not fair to anyone involved.

Our marriage is not perfect. It actually irritates me to think that anyone can think we got to where we are today without putting a lot of work into our relationship and family. It has not been an easy ride by any stretch of the imagination. It has been a lot of work and we've had more than just some "struggles". We've been down some very dark roads together. There have been times when we weren't sure what was going to happen to our relationship. I think this is true of nearly anyone who has been together for any decent length of time regardless of how "perfect" they may look from the outside. I find myself hoping that "The Notebook" has that as an underlying theme in the story. I'm guessing that it does...otherwise, where would the story be?

So does anyone else find themselves routinely perceived in a way that just doesn't ring true? How do you deal with it?

*This does not include when I started outing him about his smoking to anyone and everyone who would listen earlier this year. He was warned prior to me doing that though...so it doesn't count.

**Except that one time. Sorry, D.

facebook friday: that small town feel

When you live so far away from your family and friends, and when said family and friends are spread out all over the world, you have to find creative ways to stay in touch. Jason's family is on the east coast. My mom and the majority of my extended family are in Indiana. My dad is in Texas. My brother is in California. We're a military family with military friends; since living here in Germany we've had friends in England, Guam, South Korea, and Hawaii. The time difference between here and all those theres makes phone calls a little difficult. The good times to call there are not good times to make calls here. The good times to call here are not good times to make calls there. So we've had to adapt.

A little over a year ago my dad went and got himself a Facebook account. And I dragged my feet about getting one because I just thought it was ridiculous. I had a MySpace account (which I only grudgingly got to help keep in touch with my dad and brother anyway); why on Earth would I need a Facebook account too? But then he started spending less and less time on MySpace and so eventually I made up an account too. Just to keep in touch with dad, of course.

And then this crazy thing happened. I started finding all these people I had lost track of over the years. My best friend from first grade (who also doubled as my first crush). My best friends from Junior High (all three of them, crazily enough). My favorite zoology lab partner. The two guys I skipped school with that one and only time. (That is a story for another day.) The girl I spent uncountable hours of hilarity with when I was visiting my grandparents. Not to mention that nearly every one of my aunts, uncles, and cousins has an account. It's like a family reunion every day of the week. And I was hooked.

I don't really have a "hometown". I mean there is a place I was born and I still have a lot of family there, but we didn't stay in one spot while I was growing up. My parents don't live in the same place we did when I graduated high school. So when I do talk to my parents on the phone I don't hear about how mom ran into so-and-so at the grocery or that I'm just not going to believe what my old neighbor's best friend's mom's uncle's dog did. Because we just don't have that presence anywhere. I've always wondered what it would be like and I recently got a taste of it thanks to Facebook.

Last week my mom went to a festival near the town from which I graduated. I found that amusing because I had just been reading the status updates of a bunch of people who had gone as well. Since several of the people are mutual friends, I got to "overhear" their conversations as they posted to each other's walls. And so when she said to me, "Mandi, I saw someone that I just know you went to high school with but I can't think of his name for anything" I was able to say, "Well yeah. So-and-so was in the parade. I saw it on Facebook." Which seems a little like saying, "Oh yeah. I ran into So-and-so at the pharmacy and he told me he was going to be in it."

For just that moment I felt like I was pretty plugged in to all the people I've known and loved over the years. It was a nice moment of "normal" for me.