Facebook is a problem

Facebook is going to kill me.

No, it’s not actually sucking up too much of my time. Sure, I like to check what my friends have posted 2 or 3 times a day, but I’m not one to linger there. While I might take a quick quiz if I have a few seconds to spare, I’ve never played any of the super fun addictive games Facebook offers. Facebook itself is not the problem.

What’s going to kill me is how Facebook bleeds into the rest of my life.

I keep myself busy. Oh, I realize that saying “I’m busy” is equivalent to saying “I live in 2010,” but I consciously chop out of my life anything that isn’t a top priority. Once I went to a quilt shop to buy some quilting books. “These are for my wife,” I said because I was starving for something to say, “I used to do some quilting, but I don’t have time anymore.” The sales clerk replied, “You’d have more time if you didn’t watch television.” I might’ve said something at that point, but she launched herself into an anti-television diatribe that morphed into some new topic before I was able to find any chink in the monologue. In afterthought, where I am a master of clever replies, I should’ve said, “I know it’s a waste, but I can’t bring myself to give up that half hour of TV I watch each year.”

Keeping away from TV is good for me for another reason: I am cursed with a hunger for trying out all the newest things. What I don’t know about, I can’t leap enthusiastically into.

As a Scout leader, it’s a great thing to be fascinated by the newest ideas. Or the old ideas that are new to me. Every time I see a great new skit, award ceremony, craft, opening ceremony, etc., I burn to try it out myself. That keeps my scouts (cubs and girls) interested because I’m never going to try the same thing twice… or at least not without adding some new twist.

The bad news is that I can only hold so much in my hands. There’s only so much time in each day.

When my oldest son was just over a year old, we took him to his first Easter egg hunt. The course had been set up by college students and each child was allowed to find some number of candy-filled plastic eggs. Because we were overprotective first-time parents and the terrain seemed a bit rough for our toddling little lad, my wife carried the basket for his eggs. Little F found one egg and was very happy. He insisted on holding the egg rather than putting it in the basket. Then he found a second egg. With one egg clutched in each hand, he was done and we couldn’t convince him otherwise. His hands were full; he didn’t need anything more.

I wish I could be more like that. I’m not a glutton for nearly any physical object… but I am for ideas. That’s probably why I’m in the middle of about 20 books right now.

Have me hunt for plastic eggs stuffed full of ideas and new experiences and I’m the kid with his basket, arms, and pockets full of eggs, repeatedly stooping to pick up the eggs that he dropped when trying to grab the ones he just found. If I end up punished in Hades like Sisyphus, that will be my task.

So Facebook is going to kill me because I see all the interesting things my friends are doing, and I want to do them, too. I want to read that book, listen to that music, or cook that food. I want to learn Muay Thai. I want to register with a site where I can track my reading. I want to visit Texas. I want to see that new baby animal at the zoo, volunteer my time with that group, take that Scouting training, attend a reunion, grow those plants in my garden, play that strategy game, fence with the group on Mondays, take my kids to that performance, spend more time writing fiction, train for a triatholon. I want to blog my thoughts and experiences of all these things. Facebook is a whole world of plastic eggs stuffed with ideas and new experiences… and, what’s even more tempting, people I know are trying these things. If I do them, too, I can share the experience.

And so I need more time. Lots more time. Not the measly extra few hours a day you can get by giving up eating and sleeping entirely, but an order of magnitude more time. I need 240 hours each day. Yeah, I think that’ll hold me for the next few months… probably.

Facebook is either going kill me, or finally motivate me to perfect that time machine I’ve been tinkering with in the basement.