Category: social media

:12/30:

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This past week we have hunkered down and avoided going outside if at all possible.

Yes, I am getting a bit of cabin fever, but at lease I am hunkered down in my own home.

My heart is just hurting for all my fellow Californians who have lost their homes, loved ones, workplaces, businesses, pets, and lives to the fires.

I have avoided going to the news sites to read anything or see any video about the fires. The one time I did so was to be greeted by the grizzly image of a dead deer.

However, I have broken my social media ban to check on people I know. I have quietly gone on Instagram and Twitter to make sure they are OK. Unfortunately, some of those people have lost everything.

Around the homestead, we have let any outside work go undone. We can rake leaves and pick up chestnuts later. The garden won’t suffer any for being mulched a couple of weeks after we had planned. Our lungs are much more important to us. The only real outside time we spent was doctoring one of our chickens. Chewy got attacked by some sort of canine, but Helios and Sol, our roosters fended the predator off and herded the all the girls back to the barn.

I am taking the time to knit like crazy on D’s Chicane sweater. I bought the yarn for him back when B was a few weeks old, so it’s….thirteen years past due. Thanks to the smoke, I have only half a sleeve left, and then I can wet block all the pieces and sew it together.Then it’s just a matter of sewing on the zipper. It can’t be that hard, right?

I’m also taking advantage of the enforced seclusion to put together a curriculum of sorts. No, not for the kids. This one is for me. I went into the garage and dug through our still-packed book boxes to get all the homesteading books I have bought over the years. There are many! Most of them I have read or leafed through, but this winter I am really going to study them.

This is exactly what I need to get me through my long cold winter days: knitting, books and a warm cuppa coffee/tea/apple cider/mulled wine….mmmmm, mulled wine. A kitten sleeping on my lap doesn’t hurt.

 

:happy new year and going social media free:

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If you saw me on Instagram last month, I announced my decision to leave social media for this year. I had already done this permanently for Facebook, but this time I mean Pinterest, Twitter, and Instagram.

This time my reasons are not the same as my Facebook decision. In fact, I they are the opposite. I loooooooove Instagram and Pinterest. So much so, I lose hours a day “just checking” my accounts. I won’t mean to do so, but when I pull myself out of the pretty-induced IG void, I find my to do list has become a little pile of smoldering ashes.

So this year I am unplugging from the electronic temptations for a year to see if I really can do more.

Last night I posted one last goodbye post, and then I deleted the apps from my iPad and my iPhone before I went to bed.

Twenty seventeen proved to be a year of growth for me.

I want even more of that in the coming year.

The only social media I am keeping is YouTube, and that is because I learn a ton of stuff on there (and I watch it while doing the dishes!)

So, here is to a more creative/active/present/kick ass year!

I will be on here a lot more, and in the coming days I will be sharing some of my plans for all this free time I now have.

Are you doing or not doing anything special for 2018?

:why I left facebook…forever:

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They say some relationships are glorious uplifting affairs. They make you a better person and enrich your life. This is not that kind of relationship.

I actually got the idea to write this post shortly after I deleted my Facebook account at the beginning of March, but I’m glad I didn’t. Trust me, it would have been a much angrier post. This is something that’s been a long time coming.

A long time.

In years past, I have taken Facebook breaks. Some have lasted a few days, some weeks, the last one was actually six months. On the last one, knowing I was going to be gone for a while, I did an announcement and then did a temporary shut down of my account.

This time was different. This time there was no announcement. This time it’s permanent.

The past two years have changed my interactions on FB from talking to distant friends and acquaintances to a source of contention and rage-induces headaches. Yes, I am talking about politics. No, I am not running away from politics. My FB friends list was full of people in all areas of the political spectrum: conservatives, liberals, libertarians, anarchists, everything! I never had a problem with that. I do not have a problem (most of the time) with dissenting political opinions. I do have a problem with rudeness, ignorance, “alternative facts,” and trolling.

And that, dear friends, is what FB had devolved to.

And I was done.

Done.

So I shut down my account permanently. No announcement. No goodbyes.

I was just gone.

And it felt amazing.

My relationship with FB had become toxic. My husband would come home to find me crying and angry at something which happened on-line. He doesn’t even have a FB account. He urged me to get rid of mine. He was right.

I am still on social media, primarily Instagram and also Pinterest.

But my life is so much better without Facebook.