Signing off

Heading home!!!

This week we "celebrate" the 10 year anniversary of Facebook.  I've been a member for five years and this week was an eye opener for me.

Way back in December when I found out I was coming to the Mayo Clinic I told Irv we needed to keep it quiet except for a few family members and friends.  We had one agenda for making the trip to Rochester--get the most medical care in a week's time to hopefully find an answer.  It wasn't a vacation or site seeing trip, it was a business trip.  Most everyone didn't know the dates we were coming until a week or two before.  I broke my own silence and either posted something on this blog or on Facebook that quickly let the whole world know.  I soon regretted that decision.

I posted a status update and before I knew it was getting comments from people that I had no clue who they were.  The friends I have on Facebook are my real friends, I don't friend people just to increase my friend count.  Apparently my friends liked, shared, or commented on my status which opened it up to their friends, their friend's friends, and so on.  Before I knew it I was getting comments from people I have never met.  Then came the comments about the comments.  Please understand that I sincerely appreciate the prayers and good wishes that came my way.  However, the exposure to strangers made me feel very weird because I am a private person.  It was all my own fault because I didn't limit my status updates to only my friends.  I know better.

I've learned a valuable lesson.  Social media has no limits.  I've learned more about Facebook this week as I adjusted my privacy settings and learned how to limit who can see my posts.  

So, I've decided to make February a social media free month.  I'm going to stay away from Facebook or maybe become one of those "stalkers" who reads everything on Facebook, but rarely or never makes a comments.  My blog will be limited to stories that are not very personal such as Skywatch Friday.  Updates about how I'm doing after my trip to Rochester will be delivered personally to those who need to know.  What a novel idea--actually talking to your friends and family to deliver news.

So starting right now I am signing off.

Happy February!

Comments

Yogi♪♪♪ said…
Sorry you had a bad experience on facebook. I learned a long time ago about the privacy settings and classifying people into different categories who get different information and such. I make a lot of political posts that annoy people and they like to "sharpshoot" me so I either unfriend them or put them in a place where I don't hear from them, and they don't get anything from me.

Social Media is strange. I updated my profile on LinkedIn last week and somehow it got translated as I got a promotion so I am getting literally swamped with people congratulating me on my "promotion." Very irritating.

Another blog meme you might want to try would be Our World Tuesday at http://ourworldtuesdaymeme.blogspot.com/. It is a little more open ended but I think you might like contributing to it.
February 6, 2014 at 5:24 AM
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