I deactivated my facebook account and survived...

... and I feel so free!

It's not that I didn't love facebook, but I could get sidetracked for hours. It was great for keeping in touch/catching up with/getting to know faraway family and friends. But it really could suck away the hours.

No wonder I haven't blogged as much as I wanted to. Not that I want to, but that's beside the point. I may want to occasionally. And to think I may have frittered hours away looking through someone's facebook, or putting things up on mine is a (slight) worry.

So I've temporarily deactivated my account. And it wasn't easy to do either. I sent everyone my email address and asked them for their contact details. I didn't want people to notice I wasn't on their friends list anymore and think I'd unfriended them, so I made a point of contacting people and telling them. I mean it's not the end of the world that I'm not on someone's friends list, but I would hate to hurt someone's feelings. Or be rude. Aren't I a funny one?

It's only a temporary deactivation, but I said that a few years back when I got rid of that other time-sucker, the television, and it turned out I never missed it. We do have a small TV now, which I reluctantly purchased when I was making films, so I could see them on a TV. I admit weeks can go by without the TV being used.

I have some projects I want to do. I am looking around for other things to give the chop to also. Like reading the news online, which takes about an hour or more a day, (several online news services) - it is really interesting to see which news topics draw me in. Once I stopped listening to National Radio because I got so annoyed with the celebrity of it all, and even now I haven't really got back into switching it on again regularly. It sounds mean, but I don't like to support the egos of those who don't deserve it by giving them my time. I would rather devote my hearing/thinking to my own projects and creating, and they'll never know because they are in their own bubbles of celebrity and being the one that everyone tunes in to. But when I switched off National Radio and stopped having these other thoughts and on-air conversations entering my orbit, my own creating improved. But that is a different issue and reason from deactivating from FB. That was about avoiding the world's hype and nonsense. My deactivating from FB is about giving myself time free from distractions to focus on some projects which are important to me. The people on FB I actually care about. The guests and commentators in the media are those I don't want to care about.

Julia Cameron calls it going media-free.

It really does feel luxurious to have so much free time, like being on holiday.