At first though, this is exactly what I felt like:
I have not written im my blog in quite a while. I have only written sporadically, when something motivated me in one way or another. Mostly I have done my writing on FACEBOOK. Facebook has become my blog of choice, (more like my drug of choice!). Is it purely coincidental that after not writing in this actual blog for quite a long time, I choose now to update this blog? Probably not. I have been really busy with "life", and with part-time work that becomes full-time more often than I would prefer, as well as with continuing to work on my genealogy. I've made some accomplishments in all of those realms over the past few months; but it seemed nothing was happening quite worthy of inspiring an actual blog entry here...until now. That is how much this thing called Facebook has impacted all of our lives over the past couple of years.
A lot of us have a love-hate relationship with Facebook, including me: we love to hate it, but can't seem to live without it. We even have withdrawal symptoms if we go for more than a few hours without checking in to see what our list of Facebook Friends are up to, read their status updates and shared postings, and post a few of our own. I have gone through phases lately where I manage to avoid Facebook for periods of time, sometimes whole days at a time....once or twice even several days at a stretch! Once I was on a cruise and the ship did not have internet access working, a couple of times I was camping in the wilderness out of reach of internet signals with my camping group of friends called "Sisters On The Fly", and once recently when Hurricane Irene hit the east coast and kept me too busy with work for a couple of weeks to even logon more than a few minutes. Fortunately though, I work from home as an insurance claims examiner, and even during a major Catastrophe I can always find a few minutes to sneak onto Facebook and check in. Even the poor field adjusters onsite out slogging around in the flooded muck and ruins after the hurricane, would return to their homes or hotel rooms and log onto Facebook whenever they got a chance, before sending in their work electronically via the internet for me to review. Must-must-must keep tabs on Facebook, might miss something going on in the universe otherwise! I know I would get a lot more work done if not for Facebook, not to mention household chores and other drudgery; but then the days and nights would be a lot more boring too. All work and no play is pretty dull, and Facebook is my play time. Admittedly, I play a lot more than I should some days. Don't we all?
How ironic that it is Facebook, which frequently annoys me to no end and makes me crazy often, is also my window on the world that enables me to network with fellow genealogists, as well as to keep in touch with friends and relatives across the country. Working from home, I don't get the office interaction during my workday that most people do. I don't keep regular office hours; I do my work whenever it needs to get done and that may be at midnight or at 3am. The same goes for my genealogy research and work that I put into updating my online family tree and publishing family history books. We also live in a rather isolated area not very near any of our family or close friends. No matter what time of day or night, I always know my Facebook friends are out there online, in all parts of the world, ready for a chat or an exchange of postings-likes-comments or yes even venting and ranting. Even my Farmville and Farmtown friends are always there ready to send me "gifts", or work on my virtual farm if needed, though THANKFULLY I have 12-Stepped my way to freedom from THAT addiction (with only brief relapses here and there).
Facebook has enabled me not just to socialize with people in a virtual environment that I may never have otherwise had the pleasure of making contact with, but also to network with others who share my interest and passion in genealoogy, and to learn from them and be inspired by them. I have made new friends online through Facebook that have become real friends from meeting them at genealogy conferences. I've also met new "Sister On The Fly" friends on Facebook that live across the country from me, that are friends on Facebook for now but may become real friends in the future when we meetup down the Sister-trail at an SOTF campout or adventure. I've met new "Tin Can Tourist" friends on Facebook who share my interest in vintage trailer camping and RV travel. I have found out about new things to improve my lifestyle and enlighten myself with almost daily from my Facebook friends, everything from recipes and cooking tips, home decorating, fashion, politics, to books to read, websites to check out for my genealogy research, webinars to sign up for to learn new skills in genealogy as well as other areas, and so many other things. Facebook is a great tool for sharing and communicating, and yes even for learning. It enables us to share in the human experience through participating in the joys and triumphs of our Facebook friends around the world, as well as to lend our support in times of sorrow and loss. I just hope they don't screw it up by changing it TOO much, like the old saying goes: "If it ain't boke, don't fix it!". They CAN tweak a good thing too much so that it is no longer a good thing. Let's just hope they don't go that far. My own little world has changed pretty dramatically because of Facebook, and most of that is a positive change. I bet most of us feel that way, despite the minor annoyances and the feeling we get at times that this virtual networking thing called Facebook is taking over our lives.
Now they are telling us that more Big Changes are headed down the pike on Facebook. It was not enough that they scrambled our page formats and our newsfeeds, now we must prepare ourselves for the Next Big Thing...TIMELINES! That is to be rolled out soon, and I am already making plans to just stay in bed that day, pull the covers over my head, and avoid all the drama and stress of dealing with that major change for as long as possible! Hopefully by the time I log on, all of my Facebook friends will have vented and cried and whined and then worked out all the kinks and bugs so I won't have to figure it out. I will be smart this time and let THEM work through it first (thanks in advance, friends). I have a feeling though, that from a genealogist's perspective this new "Timelines" thing they are heralding just might turn out to be a pretty cool tool to have on our Facebooks.
And to think that only a couple of years ago I did not even know about Facebook. Now I can hardly imagine a life without it. It is a valuable tool; yes it can be a time waster if we let it be (and it is very easy to let it), but I can honestly say that the value it adds to my life outweighs the headaches. Please Mr. Zuckerberg, Boy Wonder, don't be fixing your invention too much! Don't ruin a good thing. It is a fine line you are walking.
Meantime, I have been so inspired by reading other blog post links shared on Facebook by my fellow genea-blogger family historians, as well as other travel enthusiasts and cruise-fan friends, that I have resolved to be more disciplined about writing in this blog a little more frequently. I started this blog to be an ongoing journal of my genealogy pursuits and discoveries. My Facebook page has actually become an ongoing journal of that as well. With the emergence of the new Timelines feature on Facebook coming soon, perhaps Blogs will become obsolete and Facebook will become more like our personal Blogs and less like a Twitter newsfeed of random comments? Only time will tell. What will our future descendants think about all of this, and will my great-grandchildren (as yet unborn) still be using this thing called Facebook? 20 years ago I did not have a cell phone or internet, and 3 years ago I did not have Facebook. So much has changed in the span of only one generation. Maybe my future descendants will get a kick out of reading this blog and learning about great-great-granny's primitive lifestyle with amusements such as Facebook. How they may laugh at our collective silliness, and especially at our emotional attachment to and outrage over this thing called Facebook. How I wish that my ancestors had recorded journals of some of the life experiences and world changes they lived through, so that I could read their first-hand accounts of them now. Things that they may have considered mundane or insignificant in their daily lives, along with the more momentous things; but all things that I would find fascinating to read about now from their persepctive
And last but not least, thanks to my Facebook friend Skip Murry for posting and sharing all of these colorful illustrations of just how we ALL felt that momentous day when Zuckerberg and his crew dared to mess with OUR Facebook! Never mind that it is Zuckerberg's invention to tweak as he wants to, and one that we all get to use for free (so far)....just how dare he!! We are like angry children when a playmate has broken our favorite toy...."MINE- don't touch!". Can we live with more changes? Well, I guess we will find out. Soon.
