Pretty Much Overcome

So...I have been dried out mostly of my MySpace addiction. Now it is just something I check everyday, like Salon.com, and NYT and gmail and WSJ and Yelp.com and other random shit I have in my del.icio.us bookmarks. I may look at it for a while, check out what my friends are doing on the east coast, look at the postings and done. Why has something that was so bad for me for so long now not mean much to me?

1) I am not using it as a tool for procastination anymore.

2) I am not bored at work out of my mind, looking endlessly for something, anything to amuse myself and my friends in the process

3) I simply have TOO much time now, being unemployed and such that it is not as exciting or debaucherous.

Since moving out here to AZ, where I have no real trail or web of people others would know as point of reference, so the old "do you have a myspace account" has been working for me, as much as one can. I mean, I know from countless web experiences that you never know how you will like someone until you really meet them. There are so many people I know that I cannot exactly pinpoint why I like them so much, what it is that makes me want to talk to them, find them appealing, etc. It is not something you can determine from a few lines, photos, music choices, quirky humour. So many people you love-you really may not have much of the "key points" in common-music, books, news, backgrounds, class, travel experience, what one wants to wear or eat or drink, do for leisure, family issues, humour..well, honestly humour is non-negotiable. If one doesn't find the same things funny you do-well, what the fuck is the point of that friendship? Know when to be serious, know when to crack the fuck up, right?

Okay, this diatribe has become extremely long-winded, hasn't it?

Anyway.

Me and Myspace. Our high point is gone, but I still enjoy you in...moderation.

Anxieties about getting off

So tomorrow I don't log on to MySpace for a week Monday morning to Sunday at midnight. It will be interesting to see if I really care at all-but all ready I lost like 45 minutes to that damn site just wandering around it. I kind of can't wait to get away from it.

Frittering?

The fact I am so busy and pressed for time and caffineated seems to have enabled me to wean more off of MySpace-now I just kind of check in quickly, look at comments and bulletins, and then get out. I am excited to see if I can get out of MySpace-and how many people will actually have read the blog as well! There is just no tme to wander around the MySpace space..and it just seems so silly, but how I feel about people not putting me on their top 8 and all that bullshit-or when someone has...esp. when I consider who ISN'T on myspace who would be number one, two, etc. That is just a wrong way to think of people, of friends, as numbers, as ranks (a rather masculine way of thinking of friends, don't you thinki?)

Yes...getting better

I am really starting to let go of the virtual world-too many pitfalls, too many people knowing my business, better just to go back to the email world and simply calling or emailing friends about things I want to do with them. Much better than the virtual one.

Starting to feel I overdosed on it and used it as a crutch. Plus too damn busy now.

From April 24 through April 30th, I will NOT visit MySpace or Friendster simply because of the Adbusters campaign to stop watching TV week. Since I already DON'T watch TV, I thought of something else I could eliminate that wastes time and it was (big surprise) MySpace and Friendster. Plus, people can actually see on the site that I didn't log on.

Now there are definitely ways to cheat (such as typing in your weblink without logging on and viewing your profile) without the date being affected, but I will try my best not to do it. If I can't NOT log onto MySpace after ONE week, I am disabling my profile and that is THAT. I also want to renew the art of letter writing and art instead, so that when I go to Arizona it won't be a crutch for me to fall back on.

Log in, Log the Fuck Out

I logged in right when I got to work, but then logged out within five minutes.

I am starting to feel creepy about the whole social network. It feels too much like high school, in the starting to be bad way.

I think I am weaning myself off of it!

Whats the use...

I waited until 1pm today to view it, edited my profile, added a friend, read a message where a friend admonished me for not putting her in my top 8...but then saying she still loved me. GODDAMMIT. Is there any point in avoiding it? Maybe a more reasonable goal is simply to limit the time spent per each myspace visit rather than saying no Myspace whatsoever. I also have limited friendster pretty well..I just wish the people I knew from friendster would just be available on myspace so i could eliminate that visit as well....

I woke up!

I woke up and had no shame reaching for my laptop like a fix, like a cigarette, I reached over and opened up the little white plastic coffin and logged right on to that damn website. I am beginning to feel resentment towards this site. I am beginning to resent having to think of my friends of top 8s, and when I think of my friends instead of their laughing faces I think of their profile picture...

TV rots the brain which is why I don't watch it at all anymore, but the internet is just as bad in some ways, and when the repeated image of someones profiles resonates with you all the time, it is just not right. When people quote what you write in your profile instead of a conversation you have had with them..I am starting to look at my friends and picture their profiles, like a little Total Recall style science fiction...everyone has a digital symbiotic self tied to them in an invisible umbilical cord ( a la Donnie Darko) that comes up when I see them. I am looking at and talking with a friend but imagining them playing ping-pong or at a concert or at a park...in an experience I never had with them. I am double visioning representation and reality.

CRACK

God, I just wasted 25 minutes on this stupid ass thing! FUCK ME!

Totally OFF the wagon..with improvements

So I was able to wait until 10:30 to log on.

BUT, I decided one way to pare it down was just be friends with people I wanted to be friends with. I am also changing my blogs so that you can only read certain ones if you are a friend of mine. I want it to be slightly realer than it has been for me. Sure, I may be burning bridges and making a bigger deal of certain social situations than necessary, but in the end, why should I allow access to my life to people who arent out for my best interests when I have so many friends I love?

Cheating

- A student was looking at their myspace profile and I begged them to look at my profile at 1:30pm today, so I could see if anyone posted comments on there.

- I checked my bust email to see if there had been any new comments or emails and saw that there were new messages so checked it- that was around 3:30.

- Went to Liz's and checked it around 8:00

- At 2:30am, at the mere mention of myspace had to look even though I looked at the bust email account and there was no new activity-but had to connect to Nic!

-2:45am just had to look at Friendster for absolutely no reason

VERDICT: I suck.