Taking a Break from Facebook 

Over the past few weeks, I have noticed that instead of writing or editing, I was spending way too much time on Facebook.

It started out, innocently enough, as a reward for writing the daily word count goal during my first ever attempt to write a draft of a novel within NaNoWriMo.

Soon after the beginning of December, after I patted myself on the back for winning NaNoWriMo, I would skip days of writing so that I could "edit" the draft of my NaNoWriMo novel.

When editing was not really going the way I wanted it to, I then rationalized that my writing muse was exhausted or that my day job was taking up all of my time or a myriad of other excuses to convince myself that it was okay not to be writing.

Instead of writing or editing, I would sit for hours and go through the motions of  mindless "Facebook-liking" of people and pages that I had not even really taken the time to get to know, let alone taking the time to even determine if I truly wanted to like or  follow them on Facebook.  It became automatic, robotic and a very bad habit within a matter of just a few short weeks. Soon, I was getting so many invitations to so many pages, I could not keep up with it all. I became overwhelmed.

Once I realized just how much time I was wasting each and every day, I made the ultimate, conscious decision to unpublish my Facebook author page and deactivate my Facebook account in a rather startling, "cold-turkey", "pull-the-bandage-off-quickly" fashion.

I felt a little guilty about it, so I left my hundreds of Facebook friends a post stating that I was deactivating my account for the holidays (possibly longer) and wished them a happy holiday season.  In response to this, only a handful of people responded to the post and a couple of people sent emails expressing their concern.  But they all understood my need to take a break from it.

I am not sure if this break from Facebook will be a permanent one or just for the holidays.  But, I can say  one thing is certain ...  I have been 100% more productive in life and in writing since I stopped using Facebook just a mere twenty-four hours ago.  I feel a bit more focused now and am living life outside of my writing cave and away from my laptop.

If you are a Facebook addict like I was becoming, why not give it a break for a bit?

Trust me, your Facebook friends will still be there when you re-activate your account.  In all honesty, you true friends will still keep in touch with you even if you are not of Facebook.

Happy Holidays to All of You!