Chopping Down the Facebook Tree

I am kinda rolling myself back to 1998.

Yes, 1998. You know the internet time of 1998. A time when the internet meant mostly dial-up, and the best you could do in social media was make a hideous webpage, or create an America Online Homepage. A time when Facebook was but a glimmer in our eyes.

Today, I deactivated my personal Facebook account.

Source

(Don’t worry, Swim Bike Mom on Facebook shall live on and on and on. And don’t be crazy, Pinterest, Twitter and the like shall continue until someone wrenches them away from my grasp.)

But as far as the personal account, I can’t even describe the ridiculous garbage that I was tired of reading and digesting every day. From people I wasn’t even sure I knew. You know what I’m talking about… you’ve got these people too.

The problem with Facebook is the countless, randomly organized categories of people with whom I was sharing pictures of my kids, boasts of my races and shouts about my moods. To demonstrate the catagories, I present you with:

The Personal Facebook Tree:friends
“friends”
frenemies
family friends
friends of friends friends of family friendsex-boy/girlfriends/spousesfamily and friends of ex-boy/girlfriends/spousesfamily
“other family”
family you don’t like
family you shouldn’t like
family you don’t know at allpeople who you wish were actually in your familyco-workers
co-workers you likeco-workers you don’t likeco-workers who you aren’t sure you really knowco-workers who you aren’t sure actually still work at the jobfamily of co-workers whose actual co-worker is not actually on Facebookclassmatesclassmates from collegeclassmates from high schoolclassmates from your miserable days in advance degree landspouses and friends of classmates from all of your classmates, living and deceasedpeople you met at a work/chuch/community functionother strange people you kinda knowpeople you clearly don’t knowcommon interest peopleweirdos and freakscommunity people
church peoplehobby people

My Facebook Tree was starting to look a little crazy, and not just that, it was causing me a ridiculous amount of stress – more stress than putting on a wetsuit with a body freshly wiped down with molasses.

And for what? Because I thought if someone commented something ominious on their page that it was about me due to the analysis of context clues and my prior interactions with this person…. but I wasn’t completely sure? Or was I sure? Or maybe it was possible it was about me, sort of? And if it was, well, then that hurt my feelings, but I had no intention of doing anything about any of it. (And no, Mountain Goat, this does NOT have to do with your comment about No Kids at the Vortex!)

Whew.

So last night, I decided that I couldn’t do it anymore. Yes, I am keeping the Swim Bike Mom page alive on Facebook for a zillion reasons, but mostly because the average sized SBM tree makes sense:

The Swim Bike Mom Facebook Treefun peoplepeople with goalspeople who love triathlonpeople with other similar interestsbikingswimming running our buns offpeople who love to talk about triathlon people who love to read about triathlonpeople who like to encourage others in the sport of triathlonmy real friends who accept me even though I wear spandex…. alotpeople in my family who love me enough to read my triathlon adventuresThe Expert

To me, the Swim Bike Mom Facebook Tree makes alot more sense than that crazy personal tree that grew so big ….I had to chop it down because there’s no room in the forest for something that insane.

Getting rid of my personal page is one less thing,— and more of me making time to do what I love: blogging, encouraging others to tri, chatting about my kids, triathlon in general, and training…. without worrying about other dram-o-ramas floating on my news feed by someone who may or may not be a friend. So yay. I am always available via email and through the zillion other social avenues.