The Week Facebook Stood Still (TWFSS)

This afternoon, I updated my Facebook status approximately once every hour during the time that I was (a) conscious and (b) at home.

That's so incredibly sad.

I didn't leave my computer. I wasn't doing anything. I was just spewing my thoughts to the whole wide world, rather like what I'm doing at the moment. They weren't silly thoughts, for the most part, but they were passive. It made me realize exactly how much of my life has been eclipsed by social media. I didn't like the feeling.

Several days ago, I realized something. My writing productivity plummeted in 2007. I know this. Previously, I had blamed the decline on college. I was in South Carolina. I had a social life to maintain. I didn't have time to putter around in my own head like I'd done in high school when I was a complete outcast (and relatively happy that way). But for the past year, I've been back in North Carolina. I have no social life here. Whatsoever. If I'm lucky, I leave my house once a week for something that isn't work or school related. Usually it's even less often than that. To say "I don't get out much" is a ridiculous understatement. This is pretty much where I was in high school, or as close as I can simulate while still (a) keeping my job and (b) living with my dogs.

So it wasn't college. What else changed in 2007?

I joined Facebook.

And I started to wonder -- is that where all my words went? Have I started stalking Facebook feeds instead of fantasy worlds? It seems more than probable.

So for the next week, I've disabled my ability to access Facebook. I posted a message to say that I'd be away, and I set StayFocusd (an anti-procrastination app for Chrome) to block Facebook for the next 168 hours.

I don't have a wordcount goal for how much I'd like to accomplish in my internet sabbatical. This is more of an experiment than an attempt to spur myself to some creative goal. It's not that I want to complete X by the time I enable Facebook again, but rather, that I want to see what will have been completed when StayFocusd gives me my social media fix again at 10:30pm next Wednesday.

It's been an hour. Not even. In that time, I've written this blog post and around 1,000 words on my outline for The Empty People. I'm trying to write a detailed, blow-by-blow outline of TEP in freewriting style. It's not about eloquence, but I want to be able to see the whole story from beginning to end in one concrete place. I think that could be easily divided into the phases I was aiming for earlier, and those will comfortably help me finish this beast. I'm feeling Yosseval again. Finn still needs to be more human. You can't have an antagonist who reads like an irresponsible frat boy. Or at least, that doesn't suit this properly.

That's a really good analogy for Finn, though. Finn and Sodaine -- the irresponsible frat boys who are going to be running the kingdom in ten years.

The NaNo urge is flaring up again. I blame the weather. Every time the air starts to get a little crisp, every time that brief kiss of autumn dances closer, my fingers itch for the keyboard and my mind turns toward fiction. It's remarkably predictable. You could set your calendar by it. The NaNo countdown today said 40 days remaining. Cue annual late-September panic. So I'm going to try to bash my way through to the end of plotting The Empty People by writing this freewriting outline. I'd like to be done by the time October starts. Then I want to start establishing some serious writer habits. Not the "I'll write when I have time" bullshit that I normally spout, but a real schedule. I'd like to write at least a thousand words a day in October, then move up to NaNo quota once November starts. That seems very reasonable.

I read the blog of an author the other day. Judging by what I gleaned from her blog writing, she's mediocre at best. That's fine -- mediocre and published is still better than me. I looked at the wordcounts she was pulling in, and it seemed silly, almost. Less than a thousand words a day, most of the time. But she's published. She took the slow-and-steady path, and damned if she didn't win the race. So I tell myself that this year, I'm not necessarily going to be slow, but I want to try to learn how to be steady.

I didn't think the Facebook urge would strike as quickly as it did. 200 words into my summary of TEP, I could feel my alt+tab fingers getting trigger-happy. What would I tell Facebook about the paragraph I just wrote? Did they need to know that I was starting to outline the whole novel? I stopped myself from minimizing the window at least twenty times in that thousand words. Once every fifty words. Using average sentences, that's around once every paragraph.

My god, I'm pathetic.

I'm allowed to have this blog, which I fully expect no one will read. It's here for Posterity And Things, not for mere mortals. Or something pretentious like that. I'm allowed to use Skype. I'm allowed to do pretty much anything, actually, except access Facebook. And I'm going to try to avoid getting my media fix via forums, because I hadn't been doing that before this experiment started. I don't want to jump from one manifestation to another -- I want to see what happens when I quit social media cold turkey for seven days.

NOW it has been a full hour. Total words written: 1787. 100 words above NaNo quota in an hour. The first hour. JUST the first hour.

I have no idea what my emotions are going to be like at the end of this week. Will I be frantic to get back to my social media, to throw myself back into the fold? Will I feel relieved, vindicated, victorious to have completed some massive RL undertaking while my Facebook feed was idle? Will I even want to go back?

What if I don't want to go back? What if, after a week without Facebook, I don't want to use social media anymore? None of my friends live near me. My social anxiety is particularly picky about phones. How would I comfortably keep up with the people in my life if I didn't have Facebook?

I wouldn't.

"And would that be such a bad thing?" the quiet little voice asks. "In normal circumstances, you would have parted ways by now. You've been without them in the real sense for at least a year now. Why hold on? Why cling to the illusion?"

I'm not entirely certain I like that train of thought. Also, I have to wake up at 5:00am to get to work on time tomorrow, and I'm trying to limit my caffeine intake. It's 11:30. It'll be midnight at least before I'm able to get to sleep. Resting would probably be wise.

Standing on the precipice of this, I can't decide if I'm excited or dreading it. Either way, I expect to learn something about myself, and that's what life is about, right?

I expect you'll be seeing a lot more of me this week.