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A Blog Falls in a Forest

Facebook is a great way to drive readership of the ol’ blog.  It took my regular 35 readers up to 100+ sets of eyeballs. One hundred readers makes a blog worth writing.

Another way to drive up readership is to blog every day. Trust me. An irregular, sometimes blog is an unread, no-times blog.

Yeah. [>>squirm<<]

As my agent and I huddled on a new project and rewrites, I dialed down my blogging while I waited to see where it was really going to go. I’d been burned before by The Vanishing Agent. My heart was guarded. My bravado mouth (and finger proxies) were kept in check.  Instead of blogging every scrap of anything that crossed my consciousness, I kept kicking ideas around until I had enough similar note scraps that I could sew into a theme.

And I self-edited, a lot. A lot. You piss off enough people with blog posts and that will happen. Funny, you go out of your way not to name people, but that doesn’t stop them from freaking out when you describe what they did or what they said. It’s not funny, but it’s funny. I’ve never named my agent in the blog either. Seemed best to make trolls work for their trolling if they wanted to cause friction between me and my agent. I don’t need any help with that, thank you.

There’s a short list of people I love who are not my Facebook friends anymore. These are dear, childhood and college friends who either jumped the Socialist shark or defriended me for not agreeing with their politics.

And you know what? It’s sad, but it’s for the best. We all want to find our tribe, and when you’re subverting the values of my tribe, you’re going to be happier somewhere else and I’m going to be happier when you’re gone. And vice versa.

Still and yet… Facebook was killing my soul and I was addicted to it. It was time to detox, so I deleted my account. I have done this before, so there is zero significance to my deleting my Facebook account. Facebook keeps it all packaged up, waiting for your return like a heroin dealer. “Oh, you’ll be back, Shawn. You’ll be back.”

Maybe. Probably.

October was my designated month to work on cleaning up my soul anyway. Ease up on the self-medicating late night cocktails. Walk the dog more. Spend more time sitting at a restaurant with My Beautiful Wife with my PHONE IN MY POCKET. Sheesh, that’s the worst. When did we start letting one another get away with that? That is bullshit.

Facebook: Deleted!

[PHONE RINGS]

ME: “Hello?”

MOM: “What did you think of those pictures?”

ME: “What pictures?”

MOM: “The ones of the snake I killed, smartass!”

ME: “You killed a snake?”

MOM: “I tagged you in the Facebook post, but I’m not sure if I did it right.”

ME: “Oh! Well, I deleted my Facebook account.”

MOM: “I put your name at the top, but I don’t know if that’s how you do it.”

ME: “I deleted my Facebook account.”

MOM: “I don’t know how to do all that tagging stuff. I think I’m just supposed to put your name at the top. Right? Isn’t that how it works?”

ME: “Mom, I deleted my Facebook account.”

MOM: “You’ll shit bricks when you see how big that snake was. How’s your wife doing?”

Sigh.

So, being Facebook-addicted and not having Facebook, what does Shawn do?  He opens his dusty Twitter account, as if Twitter is methadone to Facebook addiction. Nope, it’s not methadone. It’s an eight ball. If I thought Facebook was killing my soul, why did I think the more-anonymous, more-evil, more caustic Twitter was going to be a balm?  Blech. I hate humanity, right now.

But down here in the bunker where nobody can see me and the spotlight of the blog cannot penetrate?  I’m not killing drifters. I’m not plotting revenge on those who have wronged me. I’m not distilling Kryptonite into a projectile. I’m working. I’m creating, and I’m making.

As long as I’m making I still have another card yet to play. And play I will.


2 comments

  • Dane Tyler

    October 1, 2015 at 6:56 pm

    Well, if this sort of indicates you’re working on a new book, then GREAT! I’m all for it. O’ course, to make the cover of Published Author magazine, as you hope, you’ll likely need a Facebook page. And Twitter account. And, y’know, to use them. Until you achieve Stephen King I-don’t-do-social-media status. Which won’t be long, I’m sure.

    In the meanwhile, it’s nice to hear you’re all right. And I hope I wasn’t one of the ones you’d rather see gone, but if so, Vaya con Dios, amigo.

    If you blog more, that’ll be a plus in my book. I won’t even comment if you don’t want to hear from me.

  • Vanessa

    October 2, 2015 at 12:21 am

    In a lot of ways, FB reminds me of the old AOL chat rooms, except your entire timeline is the chat room and you. can’t. leave. That makes it really hard to maintain the “personal space” barrier that’s really so important to good relationships. Good fences and neighbors and all that, and FB takes the fences away. It’s no wonder it’s contributed to the ending of so many relationships.

    And it’s certainly not a good place for introverts like me, either, lol. 🙂

    Keep making – that’s a positive thing, and will take you much farther along on your road to rejuvenating your soul than FB could ever dream. 🙂