Stepping Away, Stepping Up

I am the type of person who retreats into myself when I get down. Isolating myself and living in a mostly made up world online. By that, I mean, my preferred contact with the world is online where I can hide behind the screen and pretend everything is fabulous. First discovering chat rooms (hello, ICQ!) enabled me to further dissolve into an online world. I would spend hours with my "friends" in online chat rooms full of drama and gossip and it would feel so real. Until I started to feel better, then I would realize that the bullcrap online was just that; bullcrap. The drama and gossip was made up and there wasn't much that was real - hiding behind a screen name is a great way to try on any persona for a little while.

I haven't lurked in chat rooms for some years now. But I have spent my fair share of time on Crackbook Facebook, and more recently Twitter. It is so easy to get sucked into both of these forms of social media. On facebook I can start by checking out a close friends pictures of her new puppy and the next thing I know it's 2 hours later and I'm looking at a complete strangers pictures of a wildly drunken night on the town in Texas. How does that happen?? That's what social media is all about; you can connect yourself to anyone with only a couple clicks. A friend of a friend, of a friend, of a friend, of a friend, is that bimbo in short shorts in Texas.  Anyway, that's besides the point. The point is, it's easy to get lost and caught up in it all. It's easy to forget time and come up, blinking, out of your facebook/twitter comma, wondering "what was I doing? why did I go on there in the first place?".  At least I hope I'm not the only one who feels like this....

So after refreshing myself on my trip, and vowing to get back into Healthy Mind and Body mode, I have decided that I need to limit my facebook and twitter time. They take away too much from me. They give me too many excuses to not do the things I need to do, and then end up feeling guilty about not doing. Just because I won't be on social media as much, doesn't mean I'm not hanging around - the best way to get ahold of me is text or email (or msg through facebook - those go right to my email for sure).