As I wrote that title I realized... I really don't have a problem. Other people just think it is a problem. Facebook came along and I enjoyed reconnecting with so many people. I actually found my first best friend. we had been friends since kindergarten and lost contact in high school. Thanks to facebook, we are now able to catch up with each other. This has been my story with Facebook. I am back in touch with my sorors from Jersey and friends from my childhood. I also use facebook to stay in the know with the friends I have made in the literary world. I do not accept request from people I do not know or who are not apart of the literary world since that is such a big part of me.
I post comments just about daily. Sometimes it is a quote I came across while reading, sometimes it is something insightful I thought of and sometimes it is just a comment about my day, my love for my family, my desire to get the kids to stop fighting, you get the idea.
Now facebook in itself can be addictive, but there are a few things I do on Facebook that holds my attention longer than status updates, my game!!! I love my virtual worlds. I enjoy the calm it brings to 'tend to my farm, plant seeds, plow fields, collect from the animals and any other task that needs to be done on the farm that day.
The funny part about this is that if you put me on a real farm, I would look at you as if you were crazy. My summers in South Carolina come to mind as I tend to my virtual farm. I remember my grandmother getting eggs from the chicken and me not wanting those eggs, but the ones from the store. I remember my grandmother grabbing a chicken by its feet as it ran past and killing it so that she could make it for dinner. A dinner I would not want, not because I don't eat chicken, but because I did not want to eat that chicken. A chicken I watched died, hang upside down with a slit neck and then plunged into boiling water to make plucking the feathers easier.
Needless to say, this aversion to home grown chicken products had me labeled as the prissy girl by my southern family. Honestly, being picky was beyond home grown poultry, they just never saw that side of me because they never witnessed my day to day life in New Jersey. I was just really thought of as the city girl who was looking down on her country side. That label was actually hurtful, because I never wanted my South Carolina family to think of me in that light. I was just used to my food packaged a different way.
There are so many aspects of that life I enjoyed and looked forward to each summer. Running in my cousins front yard, playing red rover when the sun had long since gone down. Going to the candy ladies house for a pickle and some candy because there were no corner stores there. Learning to make biscuits from my grandmother with no measuring at all. (please don't ask me to measure and tell you how to make them because the one time I tried to measure to share the recipe I made hockey pucks)
Ok, enough of memory lane, let me get back to the topic at hand. I love scrabble on Facebook, bejeweled and a couple of other games. Besides reading, it is really relaxing for me to just fiddle on the computer after a long day of sending people around the world. I know some people will wonder if I work on a computer all day, how can it be relaxing to be on a computer at home. Trust, when you are not being made to stare at the screen, it really takes on a different feel all together.
I do know that I need to let my crops go and get back to my reading because I am no where near the personal goal of 100 books for the year. I want to think that now that my son is done with Pop Warner football and I am done with being team mom I can get back into a comfortable reading groove and make reading and Facebook co-exist in my world and play nice together.
So back to the title, I thought I was going to add a snazzy line like, "hi my name is Lashonda and I am addicted to Facebook", but I have nothing to admit. I do not call it an addiction, I do not think it is bad for me and I need to give it up before it ruins my life. I am not ruining any lives, I am not breaking up any families, not contributing to the crime rate, I am just catching up with friends and cultivation my virtual worlds.
Now that I have gone from A-Z in this blog, I think I will sign out, take a shower and hit the hay. And no that will not be my status update on Facbook.(see I told you I was not addicted)
