So, I’m turning facebook off for a while. I knew it was coming the other week when I read an article linked by someone I barely knew on facebook. It was all about a man my age who drank 10 cans of Coke a day for a month and blogged about these “experiences” every day. Can you guess what happened to him? Well, he put on a little weight and had high blood sugar levels. Surprising, right?  I realized I’d then wasted 4 minutes of my life reading this crap. What’s 4 minutes? Who cares, you can waste a few minutes here and there every day, right? I’m all for wasting time daydreaming or getting lost in that cozy world of memories, but not by feeling anxious and distracted checking facebook far too often in the silly hope something might actually happen. It makes me restless and uneasy, and I don’t particularly want to spend any minutes in that state.

It’s not just facebook, it’s all the news and music websites I’m constantly refreshing everyday. I’m hibernating. When it’s getting in the way of the time I’ve set myself to write, then it’s become a problem. Now I’m only checking (and writing) e-mails twice a day, and not looking at any news and music websites. I get the printed newspaper most days, I listen to the radio – that’s all I need.

I did something similar last year for a month and it just felt so good and I felt so energised and optimistic about things I don’t know how I could let things slide like this again.

I wanted to write about the beat generation…Well, that can wait. I want to live life in the slow lane, to have time to experience, reflect, and enjoy moments in time. Today I took my kids out, first swimming fun then we picked books in the library and went for lunch in the town hall café. Now we’re going to watch “The Mouse Detective” eating popcorn and drinking appletizer.  That’s where I am these days.

The poem below is not the kind of thing I normally read/write, but something about it bought tears to my eyes…

spmaughan@wildmail.com