Sifting through the Blur...

Ah, the start of change…its like spring.  Wait..I think spring skipped up this year, no kidding.

I am writing this post, since there has been a change in my digital life that needed to happen.  I’m proud of it, so far.

A few days ago, I saw a tweet that linked to this site: The distraction-free iPhone.  It’s a good article, but it outlined one thing for me which I call time-vampiring.

Let me begin with this: If you know me, I have probably joked about having CDO (Its OCD, but alphabetical, as it should be).  There are certain traits of CDO that I am certain I have, and I think they are mostly beneficial.  These are attention to details.  Like spacing of things, measurements, and division of things evenly.  Also im a stickler for software updates, and new things that do one more thing better, my mind convinces itself is the be-all and end-all.  But there are also some bad traits.  My main one is the consumption of information.  Apple news is a very bad habit of mine, I’m a die-hard Apple fanboy, and between frequenting news sites, refreshing twitter accounts, rss readers, etc, I am trying to control it.  What I find very frustrating, is that my control at work is very good, but some days its staggers.

So after reading that article, I got from it one thing ‘Control my feeds’  Take the option away, and save time.  Im going to pick on Instagram.  I signed up with them when it was hip to do it (was it ever?) and loved the fact I could take a pic, and send it to Flickr (where I save everything, paid for, etc) Twitter (some followers) and Facebook all at the same time.  Then I petered out, sending it directly to Facebook instead.  So I found myself using instagram to ‘follow’ some people.  The odd part is, that I also followed the same people on twitter and Facebook.  So in an average day, I was seeing the picture at least 3 times.  If it was a joke, I would see almost a dozen times.  How is this effective?  Over the last few weeks I find it get on my nerves, and hastily shut down the program in a mini-protest.  Only to open twitter after work, or in the morning, and start the process over again.  And then it was Facebook’s turn.  So last night I checked what is involved in shutting down my instagram page, pretty easy.  No big deal, put it on my to-do list.

This morning my wife mentions to me that I ‘liked’ on Facebook a playboy playmate.  Real mature James.  Problem was it was 10am, I was deep in bar codes (it’s a work thing) and havent touched Facebook at all since the night before.  Thinking she is luring me to a comment and she is trying to raise my blood pressure, I hastily bring up Facebook at work (something I try really hard not to do).  Facebook presents me with a notification saying it has detected suspicious activity, and I have the option of continuing, after answering some security questions to ensure im not the activity it detected.  I installed an app on a website last week to allow me to see a website, that used my Facebook login info, so I was sure I knew what was the culprit, but at this point I was just pissed off.  I answered the questions, gained access to my account, and then deactivated the entire account….done.
Feeling infinitely better, I decided to follow through with Instagram.  2 Clicks later..done.

I spent the rest of the work day, not being bothered by my iPhone giving me status updates on the ‘close friends’ that I had on Facebook (family members, good friends, etc).  I wasnt tempted to see if anyone commented on a picture or status update I said yesterday.  Very liberating.

So…about 12 hours later…how do I feel about it.  Good so far.  Downsides include trying to pickup some communications that started there, albeit twitter or (heaven-forbid) email.  Trying to find either has taken a bit of time, but for the ones I have, its more picked up where the conversation left off.

Wait…Twitter?  That is cheating.  You may think so, but I find twitter is a broader spectrum of people/companies/websites.  I can create lists of people to follow to sort through it all.  I am not at the mercy of what/who Facebook decides I should see on my news feeds.  No game requests, etc.  Its clean and its popular.  I can get tech news, photography news, or just people-news as I see fit, depending on what I have time for, and when.  It just seems to give me what I need at the moment, control, no BS.

A friend of mine tells me he gives me 48 hours before I reinstate the account.  Facebook lets you pickup where you left off and away it goes.  No option that I know of to take that temptation away, but so far, im okay with that.  I fear I might have to do that to get ahold of someone there where I cannot otherwise, and then deactivate it again, but I hope not.

So what changes?  Well, I plan on using my blog (gasp!) more, pictures, etc will be here.  Will my wife post links on her Facebook?  Maybe.  I havent talked about it.  Twitter will link stuff here, and I have a few things on the horizon that will keep me busy, yet on task.  More details here soon….so in the meantime, here is an image that should hit a nerve.