371st Friday Blog Roundup
One morning, I wake up and have this really funny story that would probably only be amusing to me, Josh, and these two other men that we know. So I log onto Facebook so I can write this man and tell him the story (knowing that he is going to crack up as much as we are), and I discover that at some point, he unfriended me. He also unfriended Josh. Though Josh is still connected to his husband. Which makes me think that we only offended one person in the couple (I was never connected to his husband on Facebook). Unless we didn’t offend him at all and this is all a tech glitch. Or a misunderstanding. Or a button inadvertently hit. Because the man has several thousand friends, so it can’t be that he’s paring back his account to just those who know his middle name. So it either has to be a mistake or I have to be an enormous bitch. It’s one or the other.
Except I can’t really ask. I mean, if it was a good friend, of course I could say something without looking too strange (though I might not). But for someone who is just an acquaintance who may even need help having his memory jogged since it has been five years since we last saw each other, I can’t really write him a needy email asking why we’re no longer Facebook friends. In those cases, you just need to slink away and wonder what the hell you did. Or didn’t do.
And these are the times when I hate Facebook. Because if it didn’t exist, I would have just emailed the man and told him the story, and we both would have had a chuckle over email. But Facebook took what should have been a mindless, amusing exchange and turned it into this great big drama of what-the-hell-did-I-say-to-make-him-unfriend-me. And now the story isn’t quite so funny anymore.
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And the winner of the #2 slot on the Creme de la Creme is…
Drum roll, please.
DSpence at Donating Hope, otherwise known as #71 (thank you, random number generator). Congratulations, DSpence.
When the list goes up on January 1st in the morning, it will have — give or take — 222 blogs on it. Doesn’t that sound delicious? You can still submit to the Creme de la Creme, but your post will not be on the list when it first goes up. It will be added during the month of January (the list it technically open for submissions until January 5th, though it will take me longer than that to write all the blurbs and get everything up).
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And now the blogs…
But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week as well as the week before. In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:
- “My Big Announcement” (Write Mind Open Heart)
- “This Damage Runs Deep, Real Deep” (Becoming Parents)
- “Why Writing a Book is Like a Dysfunctional Relationship” (My Fascinating Life)
- “Article ‘Looking for Closure in All the Wrong Places’” (The Road Less Travelled)
- “A Broken Compass” (Bodega Bliss)
- “Dark Passenger” (MissConception)
- “Raising Human Beings and Life Lessons from the Duggars” (Millions of Miles)
- “Holiday Blues” (From IF to When)
- “Emotions Choc-a-Bloc” (My Lady of the Lantern)
- “400 Words” (Outlandish Notions)
Okay, now my choices this week.
Stumbling Gracefully has a beautiful, raw post this week about what it really means to meet on that common ground. What she is mourning is the ease in which decisions are made. She writes, “I’m jealous that their relationship is strong enough to withstand the turbulence of two young children, that they have such confidence in their own foundation so as to entrust it with such an incredible and precious weight. I’m incredulous that their addition didn’t require negotiation or anger or anxiety or resentment.” It’s just such a powerful post.
A Little Blog about the Big Infertility has a post about the upcoming holidays. She gives her rating system, explaining where she usually emotionally spends the holidays and where she is on the continuum this year. Where do you rate on her scale?
No Kidding in NZ has a post about acceptance; what it means and what it doesn’t mean. She explains: “For me, acceptance means the ability to live our lives the best way we can, within the constraints of our lives. In other words, we can’t have kids (whether short term or permanently), but we can still have a good life, enjoy ourselves, and appreciate the parts of our life that we wouldn’t have if we have children. That latter part is the hard bit often. Acceptance doesn’t mean that we are rejoicing we don’t have children, and it doesn’t mean we didn’t really want them.” Go read the post in full.
Lastly, Hannah Wept and Sarah Laughed has a great post about what she learned about living and taking risks. It’s about how we try to hold onto control, and why we may sometimes want to let go and jump without knowing where we’ll land. She has decided to leave the safe path, the small path, and go big or go home. And it just made me smile to see someone grabbing at the brass ring.
The roundup to the Roundup: The problem with Facebook. The winner of the second slot! And lots of great posts to read. So what did you find this week? Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between December 9th and December 16th) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week? Read the original open thread post here.
21 comments
Agree totally that Facebook is a minefield. When struggling to conceive my second child after an early miscarriage, I ‘hid’ a friend who was posting all about her pregnancy. When I went to ‘unhide’ her some time later, she had unfriended me. I was fine with that as I never explained why I hid her and maybe she noticed my lack of comments.
Yesterday I received a Christmas card signed from her, her husband, her two children… “and Mark.” Mark? Did she get a dog? Who’s Mark?
Wait, are we so out of touch she had another baby and I didn’t even know?
Before Facebook I would have got straight in touch and found out all about it. But now she could have kept me posted via FB and chose not too it feels strange. Can’t believe it took Facebook to tell me this but we aren’t really friends anymore.
I loved the thoughtful, contemplative mood of this post:
http://sharah.wordpress.com/2011/12/15/tick-tock/
Ah, Facebook. What a double-edged sword.
I read an interesting take on FB hell this week:
“The brain thinks status is crucial to its survival because tens of thousands of years ago it was status that decided whether you got to stay in the tribe, who (or if) you could marry, and generally how secure and happy you were.
These days somebody unfollowing you on Twitter can be seen by your brain as a decrease in status, as can be being turned down for a date or losing an online role playing game. As such your brain can create a dopamine crash, and that’s why those things tend not to feel good.”
http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1zUvvT
All I can say is, I hear you. FB kind of ruined my Thanksgiving. Without FB, it would have just been the usual mildly neurotic BS. FB elevated family nonsense to a whole new realm I never dreamed possible (I suppose ~with my help~ … you could argue that I could … just not care. I know. Snort.)
Sigh.
XXOO
I found out my ex had remarried through FB. We apparently had one friend in common and he was a suggestion. While I wasn’t going to friend him, I couldn’t resist looking at the profile. He was married months ago, about 2 days from our former anniversary. It made me sad that he didn’t tell me himself (we still speak on occasion). There’s also been time my extended family gets mad, because they saw on someone’s status that I visited my hometown but I didn’t see them. It gets pretty ridiculous after a while. I can’t help but hate the drama FB creates
Oh great, Pale. It’s good to know I’m missing part of my brain. 😉
I just classify that sort of thing under “Huh. That’s weird. Whatever.” and get on with my life. Because I’m clearly missing part of my brain.
I had something for the second helping, but I can’t remember what it was. Obviously, I’m missing more than one part of my brain.
Thank you for the second helpings – I found 2 to pass on to my twitter group. 🙂
FB is…yup, a minefield. And high school. It makes it so we never leave high school. Family drama being posted about vaguely (or not at all vaguely), friend drama, things being said that we normally never would, fights that should never have happened – all because we have a medium between us and that/those other person/people. I am amused as all hell when people get all huffy and delete me – it’s like “really, people? Do you think you could behave as someone in their 30’s should? Didn’t we leave high school drama behind 15 years ago?”
On the other hand, FB allows me to get updates from people that I might not ordinarily get. I get to see my friends raving (and ranting!) about their spouses and children. I get to hear the cute stories about their children that I might not hear otherwise. And I get to share these same things with others. I can tell them the fabulous things my husband does, the new thing my son is doing – things I wouldn’t send an email about, but taking a few seconds to post a video or update a status, I can do that. FROM MY PHONE!
Facebook DOES let you send messages to people you aren’t friends with . . . it might be an interesting social experiment to send him a message that way and see if he responds??
A few months ago, I took a facebook break. It was when I ovulated for the first time in 2 years, and the pain was so bad I didn’t want to do anything for 2 weeks straight. My MIL called my husband and said, “Is R ok? I always know how she’s doing via her FB…but since I’ve seen no activity, I’m worried.” Like, hello? FB isn’t my life! It’s weird how much of our lives become entangled in that program!
http://missohkay.wordpress.com/2011/12/10/dear-mrs-duggar/
I loved this post, I made a little note to send it to you and have been waiting ALL week. 🙂
I’d like to nominate Bodega Bliss, who has written some tremendously powerful posts lately. This one is vivid and sad. http://bodegabliss.wordpress.com/2011/12/14/festive-with-whine/#entry And it also prompted a discussion in the comments that’s definitely worth reading.
A, if you’re missing something, it’s like a sixth toe. Good riddance. I just need you to move in next door and make fun of me whenever I let this **** bother me. I read your post about FB a while back and I was like … Oh! ~There~ it is! That’s the attitude I was missing. Unfortunately, my grip is slippery at best. FB and I are “on a break.” 😉 (It’s actually probably a great Buddhist teaching tool?).
Of course if it didn’t have such a tremedous upside along with all the things that get under everyone’s skin … we wouldn’t be so obsessed with it. Just like the devil wouldn’t be so effective if he wasn’t so good at tempting people.
FB definitely is multi-faceted. I’ve hidden friends (way too much baby info at the time), I’ve unfriended people (online people where I don’t play anymore) and I just try to stay away from FB more. It does not need to be my life. Yet, it is nice to keep up to date with some friends who I would normally not be in contact with.
This unfriending stuff has happened to me a couple times. I usually just re-friend the person. I don’t mind being the bigger person and asking to be friends again. If they really don’t want to be friends then, I’ll at least have confirmation and can either move on or ask them about it. Plus it’s fun to make people uncomfortable sometimes. “Ugh, I just unfriended her and she wants to be friends again. What do I do?” 😉
Echoing what Jen said above, I am going to ‘hide’ a gloating fertile friend who posted her coy picture holding a string of ultrasound pictures at 7 wks pregnant to announce her good news to the masses. And now it is daily recounts of why her pregnancy sucks and she is only in week 8. I canNOT take it.
Two posts that took my breath away (for different reasons) are Mission Motherhood’s post Reflections on Pregnancy and Loss, talking about how emotionally difficult her pregnancy with her son was.
http://ababy4al.blogspot.com/2011/12/reflections-on-pregnancy-and-loss.html
And With Every Heartbeat’s post Fall on your Knees about realizing that she may never get to experience all the joys of a full term pregnancy.
http://infertilemyrtleme.blogspot.com/2011/12/fall-on-your-knees.html
Ah, Facebook…I love you, I hate you, I love you.
Please send some love + light over to Meg at No Oven for the Bun who could really use some support…after great beta numbers, the u/s with her gestational carrier showed no baby. 🙁 Esp hard this holiday time…
http://noovenforthebun.blogspot.com/2011/12/black-christmas.html
I couldn’t agree more about FB..it’s like a dysfunctional relationship for me. On one hand the people I really need/ want to keep in touch with it gives me a great way to do that…on the other…well you know. I don’t post a lot and when I do I’m normally celebrating someone else. (but that makes me happy)
Loved all the posts this week…each one heartwarming and thoughtful. I love that yoou share them with us every week.
Thanks so much for including my post on the second helpings list. (Raising Human Beings…) I consider it a huge honor since I’ve been a big fan of your blog for a long time 🙂 Thanks again!
I’ve also been unfriended as well and it’s a bit baffling and hurtful in a weird way. I suddenly feel like the kid who’s eating lunch alone. Amazing how we can still feel that way as grown ups.
This is in violation of the rules, since the post was written the 17th, but with the holidays next week, I’m not sure I’ll remember then. Anna at This was Supposed to be My Symphony has an amazing post about choosing to be happy. It’s incredibly insightful, honest, and true. It’s one of the posts that addresses something you’ve thought before but never put into words.
http://supposedtobemysymphony.wordpress.com/2011/12/17/choosing/
Seriously, FB is such a good thing but also has upsetting statuses and I get wrapped up in its rules too often. For example, last night we did a holiday dinner and I invited a coworker friend and his wife, whom I hadn’t met yet. After they left, I friend requested her and since she hasn’t accepted yet, I’m worried that she didn’t have a good time. Yes, that’s my anxiety speaking, but FB is there to make it worse!
Thanks so much for mentioning my post on the Roundup! I’m honoured.
And Facebook … like blogging, like life, we don’t know when we’ve offended someone, when we’re reading too much into something, when we’re being too insensitive, when people are loving us but not actually letting us know. It’s a mystery!