No FB – Days 2 and 3

[note: typed earlier as the subject title indicates, but posting majorly delayed. I blame holidays and vacation chaos.]

Classic me, I make a plan to try to post daily, and immediately skip a day. Life takes over even the best intentions.

Yesterday afternoon ended up being taken up with a grocery trip, dinner, having Jessi make cards for teachers, wrapping teacher gifts, and making reindeer noses (see below) for Jessi’s school party today. Because, in classic busy parent fashion, there’s nothing like waiting till the last minute.

A tray of small pretzels, each with a slightly melted rolo on top, and a red m&m on top of the rolo. — Reindeer Noses

After getting the kids to bed, it took me most of the night to finish up my work. But now I’m FREE!! No work for 2 weeks. It’ll be amazing!

As far as the tarot card for the day, Lovers, I honestly have no idea what it was referencing. Hardly interacted with my husband that day. I did have a crush on my mind and talked with a friend about it a little, but that was something pre-existing and the conversation already in motion before drawing the card. So who knows. Love for my children? Love for the holiday? Not typically what I associate with the Lovers card.

Today has been packing and trip prep. I was doing good until I sat down at my computer to check my to-do list…then total ADHD rabbit hole…

Update my to-do list.
Check if book my husband was looking for was available on library’s e-book lists (it is).
Message my mom about something.
Remember my list. Go back and finish checking off things that are done.
Add a few things.
Remember that we won’t have wi-fi on the plane and start thinking of prep we need to do for that.
I decided to make sure my Google Drive files were set to be available for offline access.
They weren’t.
Get to the bottom of setting that up.
Double check that it’s working right.
Realize that my old Book of Shadows file that I just imported from my old computer is still in Word doc format. I want to use that for a ritual today and know it needs updating. Spend an hour fixing the formatting because damn…whatever I did before (I haven’t used the file in several years) looks like crap!
Remember that I hadn’t posted yesterday and needed to pull a card for today and post for today.

LOL…ADHD vortex sucked me in…

As for the whole no FB aspect of things. I do think it helped me yesterday. I was the most productive and focused for work as I have been in ages…which isn’t saying a whole lot, but I’m still happy at the improvement. I also think the anti-anxiety med I’m on (Buspar) might also be starting to kick in to help. (Probably should have waited until the meds had had their full chance to kick in before cutting FB to have a better idea of which thing helped…but oh well.)

The one thing that sucked about staying off FB yesterday was finding out that a friend had her baby. I did make a quick exception to log in and see a pic and say a quick congrats, but I wanted to lurk around to see more updates. They’re a couple who posts a lot and I’m sure there’d be updates. I’m having a hard time not logging back in to see more.

Today I’ve found it an annoyance to stay off FB. Wanting to hop on to ask questions of FB about this, that, or the other thing. Wanting to see political updates of friends as we hear how Trump is going on about how a shutdown would be a long one. Which is probably better for my productivity overall, but annoying nonetheless because I want to hear about these things.

So with that said…today’s card is… [I never did that drawing]

No FB – Day 1

Person typing on macbook keyboard. Only forearms and hands of the person are visible. Person has big watch with a small ring on one hand and a bunch of small bracelets and a thick ring on the other.

Staying off FB was HARD yesterday. This morning has been hard too but for a different reason. Yesterday, it was hard because of what I described last time how I use it as my escape from work anxiety.

Last night and this morning it was hard because I use it to share the cute silly little things my kids do (like how they thought it was absolute hilarity when we were kicking the dog’s ball back and forth like a soccer ball or when Sammy started having her lovie “blow raspberries” on my belly) and my little victories in life (I finished wrapping all of this year’s presents!!). It feels weird to have no one besides my husband to share those things with. Like am I really going to text a friend to share these random things? Like sure, maybe they might come up in the middle of a conversation, but to say that out of the blue? That’s weird. Plus, then it creates an expectation of a longer conversation which isn’t what I want to do. Beyond that, who do I send it to? I’m not going to send it to all the people who might have “liked” something like if I had posted it on FB…especially because not all of them are close friends. That’s just weird, even if I just send it to my few closer friends who’d like it. Still weird to do it out of the blue. So the cute moment goes by unremarked on. To be lost over time. Because without FB’s “on this day” feature bringing up old memories, those little moments get lost in our memories. I like sharing those moments with friends in hopes of giving them a cute/relatable story that might brighten their day. I also already miss seeing those cute/relatable moments from friends as well for the same reason. I imagine this is going to make the whole parenting gig seem a lot lonelier.

The other thing I’m missing already are the political/news posts that a small handful of FB friends share. Not the ones who post the sensational nonsense, those I don’t miss. But the 5ish friends who post real links, often with thoughtful commentary. THOSE posts I miss. The posts that help me keep up to date on the things that are happening. The posts whose perspectives help me form my own perspective. These friends post things that get me thinking about the news in ways I might otherwise not. Especially one FB friend who is a journalist (doesn’t cover politics himself, but has good insight) and another one who is a person I met through Occupy who always pushes me to grow in my thinking around subjects. For example, I heard about the “sweeping” criminal reform bill the Senate passed, but when I went to find an article about it, there wasn’t much detail mentioned about the contents of the bill. I know at least one of these people would have had a good article to share. What this is going to mean is that I’m going to spend more time watching the news again…which had been really contributing to my stress before I cut back.

So, at least so far, I’m not impressed. At all. I realize the first few days are the hardest, but uugh…I really don’t see how this is going to help me.

To attempt to replace some of the more positive things I get out of FB, I’m going to try to make either daily, or every couple of day, posts here about cute family stuff that has been going on or other things I don’t want to forget.

I’m also going to take advantage of a little bit of the time I won’t be on FB to do a daily tarot card drawing. Each post, I’ll list today’s card and include a reflection on the previous day(s) card.

Today’s card: The Lovers