On Mindful Monday, my readers and I practice the art of pausing, TRYING to be still, or considering, ever so briefly, the big picture. We’re hoping this soul time will provide enough peace of mind to get us through the week!
Something transpired in the last two days that I’m almost too embarrassed to write about, and, considering I’ve published all the details of my sex life … well, it’s bad.
It’s Facebook.
I joined.
Two days ago. After I swore to myself this summer I would never do such a thing.
And I haven’t been able to sleep since.
I’ve totaled five hours in two nights.
As soon as my eyes close, I envision friend after friend that I need to befriend or else something horrible will happen. The friend with more friends will take over Beyond Blue! Because everyone likes her better! Duh! She has more friends! Unless I steal her friends …. when she’s not online!
It’s high school all over again. But uglier, because now you have all your worlds colliding: friends with colleagues, ex-bosses with in-laws, ex-boyfriends with sisters, former colleagues with babysitters! It’s one big orgy on the internet. No rules. No boundaries. Tell me what you’re thinking. Don’t hold back. Okay, I won’t.
Within an hour of signing up, I was so click happy I thought I had a tick in my right index finger, or I was a slot-machine junkie that couldn’t break the habit of seeing what I get next time. I clicked all the friends of friends, and then their friends. I mean, my God! There are important folks here–senior writers at Time Magazine (he accepted!), Anne Rice (she accepted!), NYT journalists! (still pending)–here, right at your finger tip! And THEY DON’T HAVE ASSISTANTS TO WEED YOU OUT! Here in this magical kingdom–where we have concealed conversations that those non-Facebook folks aren’t privy to–there is no assistant with attitude who wants to know EXACTLY what you are calling about and how you know Mr. Smith. Nope, in this secret world where people can network and laugh and find babysitters, you have a shot at becoming a friend of a big cheese, and once he is in your friend file, you can go after his elite friends who will see that their buddy befriended you so you must not be crazy (ha!) and will accept your friendship invitation. It’s like the pyramid model for networking.
I must have clicked over 500 invitations the first day on Facebook, and only one lady played hard to get. She wrote: “Hi Therese, Just gut a note from you and I see you and I have some Beliefnet friends in common. Do we know each other? I’ve been getting some spam through Facebook, so just wanted to be safe.”
I responded: “Hey. Nope. I don’t think we know each other. We had friends in common, and I just started my account today, so I was a little click happy … if you know what I mean. You looked nice. How’s that for pathetic?”

By the end of the day, my very first day of Facebook, I had 50 friends! Of course I spent four hours acquiring them. I slept three hours that night, during which I dreamt that I attended a wedding where I was being introduced to all the friends of one of my friends, and his relatives and in-laws. “So nice to meet you.”
The second day wasn’t so pretty.
At lunch, after I had spent a good two hours at the magical kingdom, Eric came home to me in tears.
“It’s Facebook, isn’t it?” he asked. “Like I couldn’t see this coming.” He pulls out a can of black bean soup and explains his theory on why Facebook and my brain can’t be friends.
“These sites weren’t made for people like you. Facebook combines every one of your addictions and pulls you into a world that will destroy you if you’re not careful. Do you really have to know what the roommate of the girl who lived down the hall from you ate for breakfast this morning and how she popped a zit on the way to work? How can you benefit from that knowledge?”
I got some toilet paper and sniffed. Then I called my friend Priscilla, whom I met online.
“I don’t think I can do Facebook anymore,” I said, sniffing. “It’s too overwhelming for me. I turn into a rat. And I chase the rat in front of me even though she doesn’t know where the hell she’s going. But I chase her anyway because she has 422 friends, and her blog is syndicated on The Huffington Post, so she must be successful.”
Priscilla laughed. “All right. Let’s look at this. ….It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. You just need a system that will allow you to get what you need done–networking, publicizing–and to keep out all the chatter that’s going to have you back at Johns Hopkins psych unit. So grab a pencil and write this down where you can see it: Facebook is not an interactive, social adventure for me. It’s a professional organization to get media contacts and possible work down the road. It is not a place where I solve other people’s problems. It’s not a place to feed my soul and get all those affirmations I crave. It is not a place to develop my self-esteem.

I’ve written this down. I get it. But for the moment, I’m still a rat. Chasing another rat with more friends.
To read more Beyond Blue, go to www.beliefnet.com/beyondblue, and to get to Group Beyond Blue, a support group at Beliefnet Community, click here.