March back into Facebook!

Well, my February FaceBreak ends the day after tomorrow. Final data tallies are a little alarming – First off, the Chrome browser has a “most visited” list of 8 of the websites you visit most. I’ve used Chrome for about a year and a half, and Facebook has been consistently the top ranked site in that time. Like I said before, I logged onto Facebook 20+ times before ten a.m.! What was very surprising was that Facebook was finally overtaken as my most popular site on the 23^rd of February (by my email, which is logged 10+ times per day itself!) I’ll say that again: It took 23 days of NO ACCESS AT ALL to Facebook to level it out with my email that gets checked 10 times a day. I was astonished. Facebook never fell below 2nd.

As expected, Twitter climbed the “most” chart, all the way to #6 or so within a month, but I don’t get as much out of it for some reason. Side note: For some reason when I signed up to Twitter, I started following Paris Hilton, and over the month February I learned that I fucking hate her. Every post is like this: “Belief will get you down roads that stop the non-believers – by so and so” or “success comes to those that work when the others give up – by whomever” or some other spew like that. Paris apparently has forgotten that without her Grandpa’s money, even her family-money-teat-sucking father could not have gotten Paris to the point of being able to show her tits and get a reality show; she simply would have been the #227,345 nearly ignored slut on the internet. If I whipped out my junk and flashed it around I’d be ticketed or worse, but if I had a rich grandpa and thus dad, I’d get a TV show, more money, and apparently a new perfume line. But I’ve digressed...back to data now.

My writing production, the thing that prompted me to begin the FaceBreak in the first place to see if I could increase my pages per day, increased 228% over the month. I’m not attributing this purely to the absence of Facebook; I set new goals for myself as well, and I tried to develop a more solid daily writing routine. Whatever the antecedent was, I’ll take it.

Communication was a plus and a minus; I received more phone calls than I have in years, however, I abhor phone conversations so that was good and bad, and what I did learn was that people were reading my FB posts online and getting updates on my life, but they were not responding or posting online, emailing or calling me. My absence online made them call.

I feel that I learned less during my FaceBreak. Without all of the links to things that caught my attention on Facebook, and thus ate all of my time, wasting time on the web consisted mainly of Reddit and dumb videos on YouTube with the occasional link from the BBC or something.

My Spotify use increased, probably as a result of my writing. I did not keep data on this, but I know it rose because my ears are ringing.

Lastly, I read three books this month (Looking for Alaska deserves to be on the NYT bestseller list; it is a young adult book that is very readable by adults, and I cannot say enough about the quality of writing or the story line – well beyond my skills!). Two ebooks and a genuine book book that had paper and everything! That number is up from less than one book a month on average. I don’t have hard data because I always have two or three books that I am reading as well as a few I’m writing at any one time.

So, that is the summary. While I did miss it, I believe in data and decisions based on it, so on March 1, I’m sure I’ll go online to catch up, but I’m also sure that I don’t need it, and I am certainly not an “addict” because by the second week I had forgotten it existed (except when everything else on the planet links to it for some reason...then I caught glimpses of what is in store for me in a couple of days. See you there! (but, not as much...)