The dangers of Face Book

Boy, oh, boy, am I in for it now. I'm on face book.
I'm on face book and I've found it to be both addictive and fattening.

It's addictive because I find I keep wanting to check on what's been posted on my wall and my friends walls. I also need to go check on my farm on Farm ville and the one one Farm Town. Once on those sites I naturally want to go over to neighbors farms and help them out by either watering flowers, raking, weeding or even chasing gofers or crows.

Sigh. Those farms are much more fun than my real one. After all, I can rake a whole farm with just a couple of clicks of the mouse at most! No sweat involved. No blisters either.

Unfortunately, I don't have DSL, only dial up, so the down loads of the individual farms take forever, especially for the farms of those friends who already have a lot of stuff on their farms.

Then, there's face book. With all it's temptations to visit other walls to read what's been written there and to make comments or add my view to the discussion...as you may have guessed, this thing is fattening for exactly the same reasons. I'm setting there at the computer with only my hands and eye's moving.

This face book thing is especially dangerous for me as I have never been much of a talker but rather a writer. I'm much more comfortable with a key board than a live conversation. After all in a live conversation if I get stuck for a word the conversations flow just goes on past me while I fumble for a word I know that I know but which has temporarily slipped away. Typing, like this, I can pause, even hunt for the little bugger until I catch it, so that I can use it.

I can even pause to consider not only what's been written already but what I really want to write back. This is often not an option when actually speaking.

Now days no one likes for there to be any quite time between what is said, even when there are only two people talking. There have been times when folks have asked me something over the phone and I've had my thoughts interrupted, when they almost instantly ask... "Are you still there?"

True, that last may be as much a result of the cell phones habit of dropping calls as the requirement for incessant conversation, but I've had it happen to me on land lines as well.

It begins to make me wonder. This constant need for stimulation. This need to either be speaking or listening. This requirement for distraction that seems to pervade society now. What is up with that? What's wrong with just being quiet. With just sitting and thinking your very own thoughts or even just sitting and watching those thoughts flow past you like a river...Uh. huh.

I think I just answered my own question. Not everyone has heard of, much less gotten a little into meditation like me.

Some times I think the whole world just needs to take a nice big cleansing breath, set down, and focus on their breath going in and going out, for about five or ten minutes. But that is just my opinion.

If you wonder how far into the Zen thing I got you can check out my store at www.cafepress.com/bettyszenstuff . Have fun looking.