State of the Blog: Avoiding Social Media

This time last year, I talked about leaving my desktop computer dark on Saturday and Sunday [State of the Blog, Weekends Off]. That meant no work, no blog, no Facebook.

How did I manage?

By and large, I have stayed with it. Plus, given our level of weekend activities lately, I often don’t have a choice. Work isn’t so pressing that I need to burn the weekend oil. I blog a few days ahead anyway, so I simply make sure that I have hit the schedule button through Monday before I go to bed on Friday. And Facebook? Ah, Facebook. The feed we love to hate [Taming the Facebook Monster].

Before and during our trip to Kentucky last month [Show Report], I took a two-week politics and Facebook break – in my feed, often the same thing.

It was marvelous.

No crises. No one hurting at me through my screen. I ignored the world in order to tend my own small corner of it. Not everyone has this liberty. I was glad that I could.

On the other hand, avoidance is not the answer. Head-in-sand is not a viable method of getting through life. Plus, some readers (waves hi!) use the Facebook prompt as notification of a new post. I want happy readers.

I’m back to reading the news, as much as I can stand. For Facebook, I still over-read Monday through Friday. On weekends, I turn my system on long enough to post the Facebook and Twitter prompts, then shut it down. Yes, Facebook can be set up to post automatically. I found the program consistently choose the wrong photo to accompany the post, including photos I had deleted. I could put Facebook on my phone, but that is a rabbit hole from which I would never emerge.

BTW, when I got back from my news break, I was amazed to find folks screaming madly about exactly the same issues.

So, I’m trying moderation. We’ll see how it goes.
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Previous SotB posts [list]

Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott