Day 2 without Facebook: Feeling pretty good!

So I've been 2 days without Facebook and I'm not totally sure, but I think I'm starting to get withdrawal symptoms. I guess that, in all, it goes to show the addictive nature of the website; how the social interaction, minus the physical exertion or stress, and the sheer ease of technological access to other people, really does create its own stresses and exertions. Having eliminated the need or desire to let others know what I'm doing, or indeed having the need or desire to know what others are doing, I feel both lightened and burdened at once. I don't mind having lost access to all my photographs and YouTube links stored on my profile, or the applications that I signed into using their universal log-in service. I don't even really mind having to sign up for new services such as, say, Disqus for newspaper commentary.

And yet, I do feel a strange longing for the quasi-society I had built around me. I appreciated not having to introduce people to my likes and dislikes, having to discuss or argue for points of view or opinions held. I liked knowing what was going on with my friends thousands of miles away: my friends at university, people in my class, past workers who I kept some contact with, and even just old friends from my youth that had moved on to greener pastures. I do miss the excitement of adding a strange 'suggested friend' from the side panel, never knowing if I'd known them in real life or not. I miss receiving the news straight to my News Feed, from all the online and offline publications I followed religiously. I do miss the frequently micro- and macro-blogging from companies, corporations and trending fashions that I'd taken to. I miss the occasional advertisements and sales, the vouchers and discounts and promotions. I really miss the updates of major life events in family and friends' lives, like weddings or funerals or births, that I now lose out on because of my chosen exile, my dissociation with online society...

So I turned to this blog, something I've never really given my full attention before. I've posted on it a few times, mostly story ideas and characterisations I've attempted to publicise, such as about my business or the letters I've never sent. So what should I do now with my new freedom, and the impetus to rediscover physical, emotional society? Can I survive a day that isn't socially facilitated by technology? By the internet? Well I've made it two days, and in those two days I've been outside more, my sleeping pattern is radically altered, and although I do feel the quiet hum in the back of my head to look up what's going on with people, the hum is dull and growing silent...

Here's to a new life, I guess...

P.S. It is pretty great that I haven't seen one advert for a gay cruise since I quit!!