the fish epic

When I upgraded my phone to the HTC Dream with Android and I was constantly checking email, facebook, identica/twitter, SMS, gtalk and so on as frequently as I fidget, I realised I’d hit rock-bottom.

When I’m at work, at home, or even on the road, I have lots of distractions. I think about things that I did in the day, about things I have still to do. I got to know this as a good thing, called “multi-tasking.” I learnt that the feeling of being in multiple places at a time is a good thing, because I was “getting more done.”

Folks over at Zen Habits refer to this as “mind clutter.” Like post-its on my monitor and blinking LEDs on my phone, mind clutter distracts and gets in the way of the really important things, like getting work done.

The first thing I dropped were Facebook games. I’m actually pretty embarrassed about how much time I wasted in those horribly simple, yet time-consuming flash games. The awful feeling of withdrawal for a few days afterward made it clear that it was an addiction. It wasn’t easy but it was an easy choice.

From that vantage point, the next step was pretty clear.

Already I wasn’t checking facebook too often. I ignore most requests and check events only infrequently. Most of the content in my profile come from my identi.ca hookup and this selfsame blog. Why duplicate all this information, even if it is automatic? That just seems not very… minimalist of me.

My decision to axe facebook from my life came a few days after I started organising my most recent dinner party as a facebook event. I ground my teeth and bore with it for a couple more weeks but TODAY. I. AM. FREE.

I realised that feeling torn apart by everything I “have” to do wasn’t really a good thing at all — I rarely did all those things, so for each incomplete item I feel a little guilty, and yet my life remains quite good and wholesome. Clearly, I didn’t need to do them and I certainly don’t need to feel guilty about anything. My expectations for what I can do were just unnecessarily high, so I should lower them, and just… do less. But what I do do, I ensure it is the best I can do. That has implications on my work of course, but most importantly it means I will offer only the best to my personal relationships. And that precludes the cheap, crass, impersonal facebook. That means that, though my facebook account remains active, I will no longer be checking it unless someone is trying to get in touch with me.

Goal “Quit Facebook” is complete!