Breaking up is hard to do

Relax...Jay and I are fine. No other one person is involved. Just me and about 519 of my "closest" friends. Oh Facebook, what have you done to me?

I really poo-poo'd Facebook at first. Thinking it was a passing fad of college-age kids. My brother being in college at the time, I had some insight into it even when it was closed to anyone OTHER than college kids. And, as a person who had just left a career in marketing, I was intrigued by the game-changer FB could be on the quickly emerging area of "social marketing". And then two experiences intersected leaving me falling in obsessive compulsive love with Facebook.

1. I was a very recent stay-at-home mom with a newborn in an new area of town. This really limits social interaction especially since my first year resembled something out of Groundhog Day. Wake, feed, change, play, repeat. Those bundles of joy are cute but rank pretty low on interaction.

2. Curiosity meets boredom meets technology. Result: Facebook addict. It started out harmless enough. I made an account, followed the directions and then POOF....my past began pouring in name by name, connection by connection. Who got married? Who got fat? Who's ruling the world? All the sudden I had little surprises of information to pepper my day just waiting to be found at one single site.

But here's the problem. Now, I wake up and do the following:
1. Start the coffee
2. Open my computer
3. Check my email, followed closely by chron.com, People.com and Facebook.com

AND I DON'T STOP CHECKING IT ALL DAY!

I mean, really, what would happen if I didn't know that Debbie was going to Caley's soccer game or that Heather's Zumba class was super hard this evening? Probably nothing since I haven't seen or thought of either person since I graduated high school in 1994!

Then, there's the issue of Facebook etiquette. Ok, so now that I "know" my "friend's" birthday is today, am I obliged to post a happy birthday note on their wall? Or, feel badly if I didn't? If it were my actual friend, of course! But, if I don't know if we'd recognize each other in public yet we're FB friends...then, what's the rule?

Truthfully, I don't think I'll be able to make a clean break from FB. At least not at this moment in my life. I do enjoy seeing photos of my friends. Actual friends, that due to the direction of our lives or the miles between us, I simply don't see often enough. Ditto for my family in Costa Rica. Facebook has provided an amazing way to be instantly in each other's daily lives in a way even email could not.

I've always SUCKED at break-ups. (In fact, I'm going to take this moment and thank Mark Zuckerberg for not inventing Facebook until I was safely out of college and, even more importantly, my 20s.) I can't imagine trying to go through an actual break-up with someone and then having to essentially break up with their life, connections, etc. on FB. Trust me when I tell you, this would not have been my forte.

I wish I could be like my friend, Courtney, that just closed her account and never looked back. I'm an information junkie. I don't think I can go that route - yet. I will take FB off my phone and committ to no status updates for awhile. It seems so trivial yet, in my mind this will take FB and I from a committed relationship to casually dating.

Afterall, breaking up is hard to do.