Writing Facebook

Facebook is a dream come true for someone like me. All my life, I have been kind of narrating myself in my head. I have one friend who confessed to me once that she does this too. I suppose it’s a writer thing, although I’m pretty sure that not all writers do it. But now we have a program that encourages us to share this self-narration with everyone we know! An audience--for all the little pieces of writing that constantly float through my head--wow. Who could ask for anything more??

When Aunt Maggie, also a writer, was dying, I sent what I didn’t know at the time would be my last email to her. In it, I mentioned Facebook. I said that I found myself crafting the status messages like little poems. I’m sure I am not the only literary-minded Facebooker who sometimes deletes her own content because it’s not well written enough. I love status messages. Even when they’re not really poetry, they often are interesting little snatches of life as we know it. (Go to your own profile page and read back through some of your old ones, and see what comes back to you.... Notice what you noticed at the time, and what you notice now... if you dare.)

Maybe our images of ourselves through Facebook are impossibly distorted. I think about all the different levels of privacy and self-disclosure that people are comfortable with. But I wonder, does our Fb behavior pretty much mirror how we are anyway? I am careful with my Fb postings--I do have a sense of privacy, and I don’t really want to embarrass others (well, occasionally I give in to the temptation to embarrass Laura, but that is just so damn easy). I am also careful not to “friend” just anybody who comes along. Even people I really do know, never mind the fake ones. I like Facebook because it really does connect me with people I care about. Writing has always done that for me, although like lots of people, I have always written letters and even emails in fits and starts, long broken-up lines of communication with old friends, extended family--always feeling the struggle to keep up with everyone I do truly care about.

I’m not sayin’ that Facebook is perfect, and I have perfect sympathy for all my friends who say “NO WAY”--as well as for the ones (like my brother Tim and his wife, hey I miss you on there!) who start and then drop off. It can be a time suck. I admit it. There are days when I like it too much. But all in all, in the balance, as I look at my life as the New Year approaches, I think that Facebook has enriched my life. As a writer, as a friend--even as a mother. And hell, it’s FUN. We could all use more of that, right?

I spent today in airports and planes en route to Vermont, in a state of Internet deprivation, still narrating my life in my head as I have always done, but now I have the reflex of crafting status messages out of this mundane material. I can see why people post messages from their mobile phones. (Uh-oh.) Have fun out there, and happy new year.

P.S. Oh by the way--the first free airport wifi I found all day was here in Burlington. Vermont ROCKS.