Pandora

I haven't decided whether or not Facebook is a blessing or a curse.

I've been Facebooking a lot recently. I don't mean to, but all of a sudden, there I am updating my status (usually something along the lines of being tired and needing coffee -- and I've been called boring for it...) or adding flair to my corkboard or receiving a Colin Ferrell as an Irish gift...you know, doing really valuable things with my time.

Then before I know it, an hour has passed and the kids are up from their naps. So much for that pile of laundry sitting on the couch in the living room. And really. Like I, as a blogger who can barely keep up with blogging, need another internet social outing.

I feel like Facebook is the "older crowd's" version of MySpace. Is that true? I don't know. All I know is that in my tiny bubble of life, I don't Myspace and most of my friends don't either. Us older people Facebook. But my sister, who's seven years younger than I, Myspaces. So that's the only way I have of making that assessment. Not very official polling results, but that's what I'm gathering anyway.

So Facebook was really fun at first. I started connecting with people from high school again, my old co-workers from New York and friends in Salt Lake City. It was a wall-to-wall messaging craze. Seeing everyone all growed up and with families or with husbands and wives, or with career-changes and successes. It's so nice that just a few short months ago, I had no idea what was new with so-and-so and where they even were these days, and now I know that they just got up and started reading the paper and drinking coffee!

The problem, though, lies in the "family tree" syndrome that eventually infects Facebook and makes me want to turn off my computer and delete my account.


Here's an analogy. When I was planning my wedding, I would have loved to invite everyone in my entire family tree, but well, funds were tight, and our wedding (which we are still paying for) was growing by the minute. And when you're carefully considering your invites, you think of it in terms of this: if you invite one person off a branch of the family tree, it follows too that you must invite that person's mother and/or sister, father, grandmother, brother, aunt, great-aunt and uncle. Before you know it, entire branches are being invited and you only have enough money for one person on that branch. Imagine if they all RSVP! Well since inviting one person usually means having to invite the entire branch of the whole tree, it can get very sticky. People get very offended very quickly.



Well on Facebook, it's like a "friend" family tree. You spot one person from a branch and then excitedly friend them, without thinking, of course, that all their friends see that you're friends. And there may or may not be one or two of those "friends" that in turn, remember you and in turn, reach out to you, and then, it is like a pandora's box that you thought was closed for centuries is back open.


Yes, it's all very mature. I'm in my 30's and I'm talking about this stuff.


And it's not just me, either. My husband didn't accept a friend request recently (yes, he Facebooks too) because if he had, that person would have seen all his friends. And he had the foresight to know that this friend would have seen that friend and well, before you know it, worlds would have collided just by pressing that one little button called "accept". So he pressed the other one. Ignore.


Things all of a sudden come full circle when you go onto Facebook and that's not always a good thing. Like finding out one of my old boyfriends ironically "friended" my husband because they graduated high school together. Worlds colliding!! I spent a lot of time praying that he didn't look at who my husband's wife was.


Sometimes a girl is glad that she moved on with her life and eventually became unreachable and old phone numbers were disconnected. Like in the olden days. Remember those?

I guess on the flip side, Facebook helps you close those open doors too. When you part with a friend on some weird note that never quite got settled, you finally get to fix it and move on. Little things like those always stick in my consciousness and it's nice to let those go.

I guess everything is ok in moderation. But I have that obsessive kind of personality so things like blogging and Facebook can be very dangerous for someone like me who has laundry piles everywhere and kids that need tending to. But as far as pandora's boxes go, I have become open to the "ignore" button. I won't lie. There are a few people I've decided that opening the door for would not add anything to my life and at this juncture, I'm all about adding happiness, not removing it. And I'm not sorry for that one bit.

TTYL. Off to go Facebook.

Pandora

https://babytealeaves.blogspot.com/2009/06/pandora.html