Gratitude Post #7: Health

There are so many people who are sick, suffering from a myriad of ailments. Fortunately, I have been pretty healthy.  Only recently have I been affected by seasonal allergies or a cold of some kind.  And as annoying as it is to be sick, it makes me appreciate that I'm pretty healthy overall.

 vs. 

I'm looking forward to kicking this cold once and for all.  Go away cold.  I appreciate my health.  You've done your work.

The Social Media Vortex

It's so easy to get caught up in social media: check facebook, check instagram, check pinterest, and so on.  By the time a person finishes checking all his or her sites, an hour could easily tick by.

That was me, sucked into the facebook vortex.

So, I tried deactivating my facebook.  I think I lasted two days.  I probably would have lasted longer, but then I realized that deactivating my account makes all my posts invisible.  This is only a problem because I post jobs on the department facebook page.  All my posts disappeared.  And then I was supposed to post more - difficult to do if my account is deactivated.

So, I logged back on and am currently an "active" facebooker again.  However, I'm going to try to show a bit more restraint - post a bit less, comment a bit less, be logged onto facebook a lot less.

Why?

Aside from the obvious time-sucking, I think it can sometimes do the opposite of what people says it does: connect one another.  Yes, you can see photo of family members who live far away.  Yes, you can chat with someone once in while.  But the truth is, most of us just surf through hundreds of posts quickly, not really connecting with one another.  We just start thinking we know how the other person is, what they are up to, how their kids are, how stressful the jobs are, how sucky the weather is.  But truly, I think real connection is lost.  Only the surface is shared....and people take that as connection.

Clearly, messaging is different than liking a status.  A conversation is possible with a message.  Liking is just acknowledging a person said something, usually it's in passing.  It's not a meaningful exchange.  I think it just gives people a false sense of connection.  But, at least for now, I know *I* need to work on more meaningful connections with people.  While I know many of my facebook friends are people who are great at connecting both on facebook and in real life, I am not one of them.  Facebook makes it too easy to hide back into my introverted self, decline invitations, and pretend I am interacting with a ton of people.

So, this month I am going to work on not being on facebook and actually having more live conversations.  Only time will tell how this will play out.