Facebook Rehab

I have a bit of a problem. I am addicted to Facebook. The problem is that I am on Facebook for literally 16 hours a day. I can’t stop looking at Facebook on my phone, my Nook HD+ and my computer, and sometimes all 3 at the same time. If that is not an addiction, I don’t know what is.

The problem is that I have an addictive personality. When I start something, I have a hard time quitting. When I got my first Windows computer in 1997, I would wake up in the morning and go straight to the living room and sit down and get on AOL and read email and sit in chat rooms all day long.

When I played EverQuest from 2002 to 2007, I was literally on my computer from the minute I woke up until the minute I went to bed.  Of course I had a few shows on each week, so I would watch my shows. When Facebook came out, I was on it from time to time, but not as much time because I started playing Lord of the Rings Online and EverQuest 2 and I had my PSP games.

The Facebook addiction came gradually. When I started writing my book in 2010,  I was on Twitter more than I was on Facebook, but by the time I finished writing and editing and after I published my book I started paying more attention to Facebook.

When I created the Facebook page for my book and my blog, they were both supposed to be a platform for both advertising my book and for posting articles with child abuse stories, but the more research I did, the more depressed I became about my childhood. The book was supposed to help me release all that pain, so that’s why I didn’t post or blog about child abuse issues and instead started posting and writing about LGBT issues. It just so happened that a lot of the issues was about equality.

At any rate, my Facebook addiction has taken a bad turn for me. On my personal Facebook profile, I like to post funny stories that friends post. I also crack jokes in the comments on other people’s posts. Unfortunately I started saying things that didn’t make sense and I started saying things that were off topic and many times people have yelled at me.

One person in particular recently told me that she disagreed with me. Ok, that’s fine, we’re all individuals with our own opinions, but you don’t see me telling you how much I disagree with you because I’m not that kind of person. If I see that someone has their own opinion about something, I respect it and move on. I don’t call them on it. I mean, who does that? I got really upset, not that she disagreed with me, but because she made it a point to tell me she disagreed with me. Lady, I don’t know you and I honestly don’t care if you agree with me or not.  Aren’t I allowed to have my own opinions?

Anyway, this whole thing has just taught me that I have been spending way too much time on Facebook. I stopped playing video games and I stopped reading. I was trying to learn to write fiction because that has been my dream since I was a child, but I stopped reading the books that I bought called Write Great Fiction because of Facebook. I bought all this D&D stuff to learn to play, but instead I kept looking at Facebook.

Of course I don’t blame Facebook. I don’t blame video games or computers or my cell phone for my addictions, I blame myself. So it’s not you Facebook, it’s me.

So this is what I have decided. I switched to a role playing character that I have on Facebook, which happens to be a character I played in EverQuest and will be the star in my fiction books if I ever start writing them. That way I can still post things on my book page, which I will spend 1 hour a day doing. If I can’t access my regular Facebook page then I won’t be tempted to sit on it all day. I will turn on my computer once a day to check for messages on my regular Facebook page, but I won’t read anyone’s posts or respond to any comments. I’ll look, but don’t touch. The rest of my free time will consist of me reading books and playing video games. It’s a vacation that I have needed for several years.

So as of right now, I am in Facebook rehab. Chat with you when I feel that I can space my time between reading, writing, playing video games and using Facebook and Twitter and whatever other social media outlets there are.

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