Giving something up...

So have we all gorged ourselves on enough pancakes so that we most definitely do not have to eat one again until next year? Whilst helping ourselves to the third or fourth little golden wonder (in my case sprinkled with sugar and lemon) do you remember that pancake day bears its tradition from using up all of the eggs, milk, flour and sugar before a period of fasting and abstinence for 40 days and 40 nights, to replicate the time spent by JC in the desert.

 I have never been one for Lent, while other friends of mine will agonise for hours, days and weeks over what they will give up for 40 long days and nights, it has never really interested me. Now I'm not actually one of those religious types, and so I hope I can be excused from swinging on their coat tails, but I have done a little research and the modern equivalent (because I am not fasting for 40 days!) is also to give up a luxury or abstain from something.

So the reason I have been thinking about this is because over the last 6 weeks or so I have been slowly but surely falling out of love with a certain social media site. Yes, I'm talking about you Facebook. It wasn't until I read a post by Nickie about her journey to de-activating that account that I finally confirmed to myself that I would do it.  Many of the reasons I want to do this are similar to her. I luckily have never been the victim of a 'facebook attack' with horrible people posting horrible things on my wall, and when I look through my timeline I see only happy memories. But that is half the problem isn't it. No one posts about the s**t times that are having, and if  they do, lets be honest it's because they want to provoke an outpouring of sympathy from their 'friends'. I log on now, and see advert after advert, sponsored posts, invitations to join app after app, sprinkled with the odd post of someone doing the most amazing thing in their amazing life. 

I am just as guilty of this approach to my online presence and as a result want to cut back. Not a day goes by without checking this site, I check it almost as soon as I wake up, on the train to work, in my breaks, on my journey home and at various points in the evening before my last check when I go to bed. What am I looking for...I'm just not sure anymore?

Am I nervous? Yes. I'm in the midst of organising a big trip to the States and Canada to visit family all of which is being organised via Facebook, but I will be sending them my email address and hopefully we can pick up where we left off using another medium. Am I going to miss announcements of births, engagements, parties? Honestly, probably not, if these people want to tell me personally then they will. Will I be liberated? I hope so.

I'll maybe update you 20 days in, but if you'll excuse me for now I'm off to de-activate my account.