cracking that addiction.

I always swore I would never have one of these. I’m not married. I don’t have babies. I’m not abroad in some exotic country. I don’t have a thrilling career. I’m in college. I live in Provo. I do the same thing every day. Who cares?

Well I’ll tell you what. I’ve learned lately that everyone has addictions, whether they be big ones or just little guilty pleasures. When you decide to quit an addiction, I’m talking cold-turkey, cut-it-out-of-your-life, drop-kick it to Texas (like Mac always used to say to us), you normally try to find something else to keep your mind off it till the withdrawals go away. For example, a couple of years ago, Mary and I gave up bread. You find something to use as a substitute… like multigrain/whole-wheat tortillas. Raise your hand if you’ve ever had an organic peanut butter and sugar-free jelly sandwich on a multigrain tortilla. I have one every day. Mo likes to make gagging noises when she sees me making one, but I smile like I know a secret that nobody else does… they’re delicious! Anyway. I recently decided to give up facebook because I was spending too much time on it, and it was getting to be a little painful. To those of you who are married and long ago bid good riddance to the horrors of single life, you may not quite comprehend how heart-wrenching the world of facebook can be sometimes, but let me tell you, it’s a killer. But for some reason, everyone who “gives up” facebook goes through the same “12-step program."

1. Proclaim to the world, “I’m deleting my facebook.”

2. Spend another 20 minutes on it.

3. Proudly proceed to the “settings” page and choose Deactivate.

4. Stop and think hard about this action, because facebook brings up a page that asks the pressing question, “Are you sure you want to deactivate your facebook?” and includes pictures of various facebook friends with a note above each one that says, this girl will miss you, that guy will miss you, So-and-so will miss you, yadda yadda yadda.

5. After a long pause and moment of self-reflection, you convince yourself that so-and-so won’t REALLY miss you, and you scroll further down the page to select your reason for deactivating. Facebook provides you with different options to choose in regards to WHY you want to kick them to the curb (because really, who in their right mind can live without facebook?) and then tries to persuade you to stay according to the reason you choose. Por ejemplo,

“I don’t know how to use facebook.” -Well we at facebook have numerous tutorials to help you understand how it works, and if that’s not enough, I’m sure you could ask one of your 475 friends to help you out; approximately 400 of which you haven’t seen in years and could probably care less about.

“I don’t feel safe on facebook” –Here are all the reasons why facebook is safe and we doubt anyone is stalking you and this is how you can make your profile more secure to be sure that no one ever stalks you, et cetera.

“I spend too much time on facebook” –You can opt to receive less notifications about what everyone else is doing on facebook to perhaps give you less incentive to get on facebook and more incentive to participate in REAL life.

After reading through these options and selecting each one to see what the gods of facebook have to say for themselves, you choose the most desirable option: “This is temporary. I’ll be back.” after which facebook politely reminds you that you can reactivate your facebook anytime by simply logging into your account. Correct me if I’m wrong but does that or does that not negate the whole “deleting your facebook” idea in the first place? Now I’m not trying to be judgmental or too cynical, (remember this is coming from the girl who just described that entire process without even looking at facebook, whoopsies, I’ve “deleted” mine so many times I have it memorized), and I actually DO like facebook, but my point is that this concept of “deleting” facebook reiterates the idea that if you don’t have something else to occupy yourself with, those God-awful withdrawals- the intensified boredom, the nagging feeling that you’re missing out on something (even though updates are sent automatically to your gmail account and you’re staring at your empty inbox), the way your fingertips magically fly to type out f-a-c-e-b-o-o-k-.-c-o-m in your sleep… if you don’t have a distraction, you’ll jump back on the train and all your hard work will have been for nothing. No one can just quit something cold-turkey without something else to substitute. Mary tried to get me to quit Friends once- unsuccessful. And I just tried that with sugar (Hil, I'm dyiiiin).

I suppose this little rant was leading up to my reason for making a blog. I’ve never pegged myself as very creative, but lately I’ve had all these creative juices boiling about in my bod and sometimes I think one of the reasons I get on facebook (besides having absolutely nothing to do with my day or night) is to see other people’s creativity, which basically consists of pictures and videos because facebook doesn’t demand very much creative energy. Thus, I have surrendered to the blogging world; family’s blogs, friends’ blogs, a lot of random stranger’s blogs, blogs created for different purposes like photography, design, fashion, local sights and events – many solely for creativity. I recently discovered soulpancake and fell in love with it. And it’s not even a blog.

Thus, to you readers (which will most likely consist of my mom, and Mary), I have created this little place for me to write, to create, [para practicar mi español], to share my opinions (lately I have discovered that I do have actual opinions about more than what my favorite episode of friends is or why coke is sooo much better than pepsi), and to hopefully inspire at least one teeny tiny individual in some way shape or form just once. And, fingers crossed, not put anyone to sleep.