Fish out of water.

When I open my bleary eyes to the glaring beam of sunlight assailing my room every morning, I don't greet the day with an intention to wile away the finite minutes of my precious life reading status updates.  I don't roll over sleepily self-absorbed with my future plans and mutter, "yes, please, facebook."  I don't.  I wouldn't.  I refuse.

Candidly, I don't care about most of the status messages I read.  They either don't apply to anything in which I'm marginally interested or they're written by someone with whom I have only a tangential relationship.  Maybe you interned for me years ago?  Maybe you and I sat through Con Law together?  We've probably never shared an afternoon in the sun, our beers warming in the sun.

And yet.

These days, I awake to the light with the fanciful ambition to write 3000 good words by nightfall.  Okay, I may bargain, I'll take 2500, a blog post and a few emails.  And I'll make chocolates.  I roll toward the empty but still warm space to my left and gaze out the window for a moment of gratitude that I no longer have to hop into uncomfortable pants and scurry into an office to hear voicemails of scared, worried, disgruntled, abused, or anxious clients.  I fold back the covers, stuff my feet into de rigueur sheepskin boots and launch myself down the stairs for tea.  Mornings: they are so ripe with prospect.  When I open the door to the ocean air, I'm certain I could knock out my entire word count by noon.  I could.

But then, I don't.  When my machine lights up, I don't jump into my business the way I used to jump into the business of others in efficient six minute intervals; instead, I cannonball into the shallow pool of banal updates on facebook and I wade around like an attention deficit child playing Marco Polo.  Inevitably, I forget if I'm looking for friends or avoiding them and I settle on some stupid update in surrender.  Megan is "a fish out of water." As I scroll up and down, refreshing for the most recent bit of posted prattle, I wonder, "is this the best we can do?" and "what the fuck am I doing with my life?"  And then I decide to like something, because that's a nice thing to do, I guess.

In general, with few exceptions, facebook doesn't offer me a smite of inspiration or a hint of pivotal information.  I've learned that co-workers would rather be elsewhere, that old acquaintances have children I will never meet and that Pee Wee Herman is far too prolific a poster.  There are those few redemptive qualities that merit mention: it's easy to remember birthdays and to sneak around in lives I wouldn't dare to enter.  I also like to peruse the photo albums of strangers; so much hammy fun seems to brew when people aren't sitting in front of facebook.  But I don't always feel right in celebrating these perks.  I'd rather see people on their birthdays, hug them, offer them a chocolate.  I'd rather not trespass on alien lands without an express invitation.  Really.

So, why do I keep going back?  Facebook offers persistent distraction, aggravating repetition, vapid nonsensical banter of unknowns and a sad realization that my online friends all seem to access the same media sources for their posts-- the same damn sources I'll eventually wander toward after confirming that none of my friends is winning a Nobel Prize or about to show up at my door.  I don't really want to do it anymore.  And I'm pretty sure it wouldn't matter if I didn't, at least not to the facebook "community."  They wouldn't notice and I would free up some time.  I want to get to 3000 words by noon and spend the afternoon doing all the things that truly warrant photo albums and postcard-length messages.  

Resolved: I'm taking a break.  You know where to find me.  I wonder how long I can last.