vanities of vanities (leaving facebook).

It's hard to believe that my last blog post was nearly one year ago. Then again, facebook has a good way of distracting me from blogs. Why keep a blog when you can update every 5 minutes?

"Heading for the store; hope there's no traffic"
"Got some new shoes!! Totally great deal!"
"Using the bathroom."

Every year, I re-evaluate why I am on the social networking site. If the good reasons outweigh the questionable, then I stay on and try to sort the other stuff out. If the questionable outweighs the good, then I pull the plug. This is probably the my fourth time. Mark Zuckerburg should stop accepting my friend request with the number of times I've left his website.

Many people have asked why I'm leaving Facebook. They ask the same questions that some people ask when you leave a church. "Did something happen? Did someone hurt you? But we'll miss you!!" Honestly, it comes down to these two reasons: insecurity and un-intentionality.

1) I am an insecure person. When I see another musician succeeding, I become jealous. When I see a girl taking a camera photo of herself in her new dress, I want to post a picture of ME in a new dress. When I see brothers and sisters in Christ putting website after website of amazing causes and activist activities they've joined, I feel stupid and lazy. "Elise, that's not healthy." I know. That's why I'm leaving Facebook.

2) I've struggled for years to have intentional relationships. When I find myself looking on Facebook to substitute for a phone call or personal email, I know something is wrong. Facebook tells me I have 319 friends. We may not have spoken in two years but we're still "friends." In reality, I spy on 319 people daily. You don't know it, but I saw that you made that new recipe from Smitten Kitchen. Oh, and that new bikini that you bought 15 seconds ago looks really cute. Does anyone else feel awkward? 


Socrates said, "For a human being, the unexamined life is not worth living." I might go as far to say that the unexamined life means I am NOT living. Instead, I am caught in the drone and monotony of what I'm accustomed to doing, and have forgotten why I started in the first place.

So until the day I can in good conscience sign back on, I suppose we'll just have to call/text/email/snail-mail/visit each other. Yeah, I'll miss you too.