Thursday, July 1, 2010

July 1st

Last Christmas, my dad gave made everyone a personalized calendar with photos. Sprinkled throughout the calendar are fun, humorous holidays, like “Embrace Your GeeknessDay” (July 13th and you know I’ll be celebrating that day!!).

Today, the little blurb says “Second Half of the Year Day”. SAY WHAT? It’s already the second half of 2010??? WHERE DID THE FIRST HALF GO??

I thought about this. Sure, I read some books. And finally mailed my Christmas cards. And spent a few hours watching and re-watching Eclipse trailers. But where did the rest of my free time go? I finally figured it out. It was simple. One word.

FACEBOOK

I can hear you saying, “But Countess, you can’t possibly have that many friends that it takes all your free time to catch up.” “Wow, Countess, you sure are popular!” But, my friends, while I am incredibly popular with more than 1000 500 10 friends, catching up with them is not the time-sucker. Oh no. It's the games!

First, it was Farmville… planting, harvesting, plowing, planting, harvesting… and if you don’t harvest within a few hours, the crops wither and DIE. YES, WITHER AND DIE!!

When I finally got over THAT, it was Fish World. Oh, how cute. You can have your own aquarium. Oh baby fish. How cute. Oh, I need to feed the baby fish. What? All my fish died because I couldn’t get on Facebook yesterday? Oh my heck!

When I finally decided I couldn’t keep up with Fish World, I found a new time waster. Bejewelled Blitz. WOW. Can you say addictive? Match up three or more gems and get points. If you go really fast, you get to blazing speed! All the while, the game is peppering you with compliments like good, fantastic, stupendous, you are the best player ever, NEW HIGH SCORE. And when you have spent 3 hours straight in your quest for the elusive blazing speed and a score of 200,000, you glance over at the leader board. And there is Wendy and Sue, in the high 200,000s. And Paul and Jamie in the low 400,000s. And you get really mad because you can’t figure out how they are cheating (because they can't just be better than you. No, they are cheaters, I tell you...) So you play some more more more I can beat them more more and then you blink and

It’s July 1st.

So my friends, I have unplugged. I am taking the month of July off from Facebook to see if I can continue on in my life without it. So far, it’s been touch and go. I haven’t deleted my shortcut icon yet and that little F is just staring at me, taunting me, calling me…

Meanwhile, I wanted to leave you with these lyrics as a little “Goodbye Facebook” song (this song that I have sung to myself since I was, oh, about ten years old):

Maybe some day you’ll wake up, wake up to find me gone
And you will hear me singing to the dawn
And you’ll wonder if I’m happy there, a little more than I’ve been
And the answer will come back to you like laughter on the wind…


But it appears that these aren’t the actual lyrics to Corner of the Sky. Who knew?

Rivers belong where they can ramble,
Eagles belong where they can fly
I’ve got to be where my spirit can run free
gotta find my corner of the sky


So, happy July 1st. Remember, less than half way to Christmas. If I start those cards now, I might actually mail them before Christmas. Shocking, I know.

12 comments:

Oka said...

My friends got me hooked on FB games for a bit. They are still addicted, I walked away. I'm still on FB, I just don't touch the games. In fact, they annoy the crud out of me. Good Luck! If you'd like a hint...remove the application. Then you don't want to go back and rebuild...

A Musing Mother said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHdgN8t_EYw

Mae Rae said...

i knew that there needed to be a good explanation for the post yesterday. Now this explains it.

Kristina P. said...

I have never played a FB game in my life. That way, I can mock people who do.

Lee-Ann said...

I know it is crazy! I have time wastes all over the internet! So bad! I can never keep up with anything and it feels overwhelming sometimes. I enjoy my blog but I can't even keep up on it! Good luck on cutting yourself off! :)

MrsMama said...

I hear you. I'm addicted too! Ugh. Hope you have a fun, fabulous, FB-free, Fourth. :)

Chief said...

LMAO

I wondered where you were. Facebook misses you! There are postings all over asking where Laurie is... not that Im trying to tempt you.

Im gonna go play bejeweled whatever... for you

mCat said...

Holy Hannah! I thought you were teasing on FB. Whatev. Does this mean it's like an alcoholic and you can't come back ever for fear you'll slip up and play a game and then be sucked into it's mindless nether regions forever?

I'm pissed.

Carolyn King said...

good for you. I never even tried to play any games on fb because I knew i would be hooked...and with everything else i have to do...cannot get hooked on anything else :)

enjoy your un-hooked summer!

Amy DM said...

I have to laugh because when I read your post, first, I freaked out because how can it be half a year is gone?? second, your talk about time wasting games on FB reminded me that I have been wanting to try Typing Mania.

So, I'm off to try my skilz!

Sandra said...

Wow...you really and truly have unplugged...how fascinating...it's like you're ET and I'm Drew Barrymore poking at you.
Can't wait to read more when you're back though.

Kim said...

I have resisted Facebook for many of the very reasons you've listed! I don't have enough time to properly blog, and I can't imagine adding FB to my limited computer time. Good luck going cold turkey! And now I'm off to start working on my Christmas cards . . . ha!