It has now been 15 days since I deactivated my Facebook and Twitter accounts as an experiment to see if I could reduce the amount of time and energy I wasted online. After a fortnight of no Facebook I find that I have returned to my older habits of reading books and writing. It turns out that Facebook had been stealing so much of my time that I read little else. Before Facebook I used to read a couple of books per week. During the now-ended Facebook phase of my life my book reading ground to a near stop, I was lucky to get through one book a month!
I must say that I do not miss anything about Facebook. Not the announcements of glorious victory in various games, not the incessant "cute" cat pictures, not the bombastic political posts from left and right wings both, and yes, I'm guilty of those myself, I vow not to pollute this blog with them in the future. I don't miss the lame jokes, the myriad "blessings from God" posts nor the "new age" crap that filled in the gaps between the rest. Facebook was a time sink I am better off without. I know some people are able to have a Facebook account and only look at it now and then but I have one of those weak addictive personalities and I was checking Facebook every hour at least, usually even more often than that, looking for that rush that comes when someone "likes" a post and searching the news for provocative items I could post about to get a rise out of my "friends." Friends? I barely knew most of these people!
In the last two weeks I've read "The Tribune, a Novel of Ancient Rome" by Patrick Larkin, which was wonderful. I give it my "Larry says you should read this imprimatur." It is narrated by a Roman tribune who encounters several important characters from the New Testament and is a murder mystery as well. It's very well written and worth the time to read it.
I also read "Taking Flight" by Adrian Magnusun, which receives my one level up from should read and gets my "must read imprimatur." It's about a man slowly declining into senility with Alzheimer's disease and a 13 year old boy who travels cross country with him as they both seek to escape from restrictive lives of different sorts. They find a bond in a mutual love of birds. This is one of those books I had trouble finishing, mostly because it's so hard to read with tears in my eyes.
Finally I read "The Discovery of Socket Greeny" by Tony Bertauski, which receives only my read it if you want to it's a fun sci-fi read approval, no imprimatur on this one :-)
In between these books I've read in the Bible and Book of Concord daily, also large sections of Mere Christianity by CS Lewis and a couple of months worth of the Analog Sci-Fi magazine.
So, Facebook was sucking my time and energy that I could have spent reading real books but no more. I know some people might think that reading books all the time is a waste of time comparable to wasting time looking at Facebook, but they are wrong, in my most humble opinion.
I must say that I do not miss anything about Facebook. Not the announcements of glorious victory in various games, not the incessant "cute" cat pictures, not the bombastic political posts from left and right wings both, and yes, I'm guilty of those myself, I vow not to pollute this blog with them in the future. I don't miss the lame jokes, the myriad "blessings from God" posts nor the "new age" crap that filled in the gaps between the rest. Facebook was a time sink I am better off without. I know some people are able to have a Facebook account and only look at it now and then but I have one of those weak addictive personalities and I was checking Facebook every hour at least, usually even more often than that, looking for that rush that comes when someone "likes" a post and searching the news for provocative items I could post about to get a rise out of my "friends." Friends? I barely knew most of these people!
In the last two weeks I've read "The Tribune, a Novel of Ancient Rome" by Patrick Larkin, which was wonderful. I give it my "Larry says you should read this imprimatur." It is narrated by a Roman tribune who encounters several important characters from the New Testament and is a murder mystery as well. It's very well written and worth the time to read it.
I also read "Taking Flight" by Adrian Magnusun, which receives my one level up from should read and gets my "must read imprimatur." It's about a man slowly declining into senility with Alzheimer's disease and a 13 year old boy who travels cross country with him as they both seek to escape from restrictive lives of different sorts. They find a bond in a mutual love of birds. This is one of those books I had trouble finishing, mostly because it's so hard to read with tears in my eyes.
Finally I read "The Discovery of Socket Greeny" by Tony Bertauski, which receives only my read it if you want to it's a fun sci-fi read approval, no imprimatur on this one :-)
In between these books I've read in the Bible and Book of Concord daily, also large sections of Mere Christianity by CS Lewis and a couple of months worth of the Analog Sci-Fi magazine.
So, Facebook was sucking my time and energy that I could have spent reading real books but no more. I know some people might think that reading books all the time is a waste of time comparable to wasting time looking at Facebook, but they are wrong, in my most humble opinion.
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