Life Without Facebook

I've been away from Facebook now since last Thursday evening.  That's almost 5 full days...

So what have the negatives and positives been thus far?

Well it's definitely been a very positive experience for me.   I've been writing up a storm.   I wrote 4000 words of my novel in progress on Sunday alone.  I doubt if I'd have done that if I'd been tempted to log into Facebook on the weekend.  I estimate since deactivating my account, I've clocked up around 10,000 words.  That's around a 1/6th of the first draft of most of my novels.  Imagine how quickly I could write if I carry on like this?  My productivity could soar through to the heavens!

I've also been reading a lot more too and have read one complete novel and I am in the midst of reading another.

I've also been enjoying reading and contributing more at romance writers' forums and reading articles about writing romance, online, etc.  Better than watching arguments arise on people's walls and in groups on Facebook!

My only vice is still logging into the Interpals website occasionally to speak to the quirky characters there, but I might even abandon that soon.

I'm not constantly leaving what I was doing to check in at The Book any more.

Am I feeling happier?  Yes, I think I am.

I think too if you leave a social media website that has been a big part of your life, then when you leave it even for a short while [as I did a couple of years ago] you rapidly discover who your real friends are.  Those who have other ways to contact you, will!  They'll email, phone or text you, or even as in one case, write you a letter!

All the others who don't seek you out are mere acquaintances.   If you don't have their contact details, you've chosen not to ask.  Others who do want to keep in touch but don't have contact details for you, will ask those that do.

They will CHOOSE to seek you out.

After all, for someone like me whose name is plastered all over the Internet....[my articles and stories have been published online since 1999 so I'm a bit of an Internet Whore] I'm not too difficult to find.  My email address will be there somewhere in amongst my articles on various websites or on my personal blogs/websites.

A Google search for my name throws up around 254,000 results.  Most of the 'Lynette Rees's' are me.  There's a Lynette Rees in Australia who's a successful photographer and there's one who is some sort of quilter, one is a poet, another some sort of researcher on TV, another a lawyer.  There was even one who was a belly dancer back in the old days when I first got online!  But the majority of the hits are for 'Lynette Rees the girl from Merthyr who happens to be a writer'.

Sometimes I wonder if the photographer from Australia minds we have the same name as it must be annoying for her to see the writer from Wales taking over most of the pages at Google.  But I had an online presence way back when....so I got there first I suppose.

So what have the negatives been being away from Facebook?  None really.  The only thing I miss is posting songs from You Tube and discussing them like some Hippy Internet DJ!  I do miss some of the people though, but like I said, I'm easy to contact and I have told two friends to pass on my email address should anyone want it as we share lots of mutual friends on Facebook.

I wonder if I'll be speaking this way next week and still think it's better to be away from it all?  Will I be straining at the leash to get back to Facebook or will I not give a jot?

Watch this space...