I've Gone and Done it Again

Well, that was short-lived.

I revived my Facebook account for all of (hardly any time at all) after being gone since November of last year, it seems, and already I was annoyed with it again. In a momentary lapse of (judgement, inhibition, or recollection maybe?) I thought it would be a good way for me to keep in touch with my Vandy students over the summer whilst updating Belmont "friends" or at least acquaintances, many of whom did not know Cliff and I were engaged, on what life looks like for me right now.

But as soon as it was back, all of the horrible feelings of too much convenience came flooding in and I just couldn't handle it. If I want to keep in touch with my students, I will make more of an effort apart from relying on quippy comments left on walls to make them feel like they're important to me - and I won't rely on quippy comments from them, either, to make me feel validated as an advisor and a friend (or professional one day, since at schools like Vanderbilt it's common for staff to have Facebook profiles and use them in lots of ways that are sometimes efficient and sometimes just altogether amusing).

To some degree, I have felt a lot of freedom in my anonymity in regards to who I am in relationship to my educational and social networks. I hate, sometimes, that I can't broadcast to the whole world that I am engaged and that life is good and kind of maintain an image with all those who I know in grad school and knew in college, high school, middle school, and even elementary school but I also hate that some part of me seeks to feel important because of what people know about me.

Sometimes I get caught up in that and lose sight of actually just being me. There's some sort of status thing I struggle with when it comes to Facebook, probably because most of the time I felt like I was trying to prove I was as important as I needed to feel like I was - in my studies and leadership roles, and most detrimental of all - in my relationships and spiritual life.

What only some people know about me is that a good portion of my social life prior to college existed on the Internet - chatrooms, instant messengers, myspace, xanga, livejournal, discussion boards, you name it. I mean sure, I had all my friends in my youth group and school - but I relied a lot on making myself "better" (i.e. cooler, more popular, more interesting) through my online identity. It created some neat opportunities for me (like actually making real friends that started out as online friends and doing things for pretty awesome bands), so I can't say it was all bad - but I don't like how hard I tried to be someone I wasn't.

This blog here is really one of the first places I've ever been (mostly) truly... me.
And I'm keeping it that way.

So, all that to say - if you happened to catch my brief reappearance and began to wonder whether I was completely ridiculous when I was gone again so soon - maybe you won't be so confused now.

Farewell, Facebook.