So. I am deactivating my Facebook for about a week. Here is my reasoning:

There has certainly not been a week during which my profile did not exist. Even if I did not log in, my online identity was always visible. So for five continuous years, my identity has existed on this random website that was started by an even more random former Harvard student.

Often times we do not realize what role something plays in our life until we are forced to no longer have that in our life (this works with people too). Thus, I have decided to proactively eliminate Facebook from my life in order to analyze the role it plays in my daily routine.

I will “not exist” in the Facebook world for a week. I will delete anything related to Facebook and will deactivate my account (Facebook allows you to do so and to come back).

I will write at least a few sentences everyday for the next week about how not having a Facebook account is affecting my daily routine.

I realize that to many people out there this all seems silly because they either do not have a Facebook account or only log in every few weeks to check it. I acknowledge that you cannot relate to this and respect that, but I also know that many others out there can relate completely because Facebook has become as ritualistic a part of their lives as brushing their teeth and eating.

Many who do have a Facebook may also think that I am over-dramatizing this one week experiment for the sake of the blog.

I disagree.

I do not hate Facebook. I actually appreciate it very much and love that it allows me to connect with friends from all over the world and show off my art.

What I do hate are my habits when associated with Facebook. I believe that I have become too dependent on it and that I have illogically created a ‘need’ to check Facebook everyday and to update my friends with pointless statuses about things.

I hope to understand this ‘need’ and to manage it better after this one week experiment. I expect that I will survive just fine without Facebook and that I will still have a social life. I want to use Facebook as a tool and I want to control Facebook. I do not want Facebook to use me as a tool and to control me.

It'll be a much needed experiment. Everyone can agree how different I am when it comes to Facebook and how many of the things I do are now measured by "How many likes this will get"

As an artist and a human I need to stop depending so much on Facebook and approval from other people. It has totally warped my sense of reality and it's something I need to work on. My dependency on it is not healthy and there are other things I could be doing this break then spending it on Facebook.