Facebook

My friend Sarah has decided to take a facebook hiatus. It's something I've been thinking about recently, and with her conversion, I'm more strongly considering this. Here are some of the pro's and con's:

Pro: less wasted time

Con: inability to connect with friends/family whom I rarely see/talk to

Pro: more time to study for the GRE

Con: loss of word twist against friends

Pro: less time feeling emotionally connected to people I have no true friendship with in real life

Con: overall social networking

Well, it looks like the cons would have it, however, my lack of discipline in this area tips the scale in favor of the pros.

Why is it that discipline in this area is so difficult? Why is it I can be extremely disciplined in some areas of my life and not in others? For example, I am a good budgeter, and usually adhere to my budget. In 2006, I made a 5 year budge (through 2011). Crazy, I know. But it's great, and I've been able to accomplish a lot of things, fiscally, and am fairly disciplined with my money. Additionally, I'm pretty disciplined when it comes to TV (which I watch rarely), exercise (which I do rather consistently), and food (gotta watch those partially hydrogenated items).

However, when it comes to the internet and particularly facebook, I have little to no discipline. I looked through my history and from April 9th until today, I've visited facebook 1169 times (on my mac). Now this includes changing between individuals profiles, photos, etc; however, that is still ridiculous. And this doesn't include the number of times I've visited on my pc (at work). Now I would love to say that I'd be disciplined enough to do a hiatus like Sarah, but I'm not sure it's possible.

For me, it's all or nothing. So I'm contemplating deactivating my account. Permanetly, you might ask? I'm not sure. It is a fabulous tool for social networking, but it has clearly taken up way too much of my time. If each time I visited facebook, those 1169 times, I spent only 30 seconds on it, I wasted roughly 10 hours of my life...in a month, less than a month.

Wow. Some serious decisions need to be made. ;)