Funbook
I recently joined Facebook, something I’ve avoided doing for about a year. Being a writer, you’d think I would jump at the chance to write about myself. Wrong. I love the fiction I write and can work at it all day. When it comes to writing about myself, though, I struggle. Maybe because I don’t think of myself as having a very exciting life. I live on a forty-foot sailboat and rove the sea at will: yet I do it everyday, and the everyday can become boring no matter how interesting it sounds to someone looking from the outside. After fifteen years of it, I don’t find the sailing life unique. So, as you, faithful, yet so often unfilled reader know, I barely keep up with this blog—three posts in nine months is not “keeping up.” The daily blogging on Facebook just seemed like one more thing I wouldn’t use. And one more thing I’d feel guilty about not using. Wrong.
In my case, Facebook might as well be called Funbook, because that’s what it is: tons of fun. I’ve made contact with people from my past, present, maybe even my future—who knows? It’s a tiny window into everyday life from where I can spy on others just as they spy on me. The variety of posts and the scope of people’s lives touches me, makes me feel connected with a large community of people. I feel closer to my friends than before. It seems like, since I know what they’re doing over the course of the day, I know them better. Maybe that’s my own fantasy, and I’m still in the limerance phase of my Facebook experience, but I’m happy to live there for the nonce.
I don’t post on Facebook as often as many others. I’m not online all that often—especially now that I’m traveling on the boat—so there are gaps in my participation. Then when I get back online, another delay while I catch up to what’s going on in my friends’ world. But when I log into Facebook, I still feel in touch, in the loop. I like that.
So, you want to be my friend?
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