Help! Facebook doesn't depress me!

I am an unapologetic fan of Facebook. I like knowing what my local and far away friends are up to. I enjoy seeing my younger friends post photos of their little ones. I appreciate the pet photos,  the status updates, and the majority of the comical or heart-tugging memes. It's just plain fun. And, like anything just plain fun that gets into the hands of a person with an addictive personality, I indulge in it far too often and for too large bites of time. But until I'm missing work or skipping meals in order to indulge my habit, I am going to assume I haven't crossed into the danger zone of Facebook addiction. Yet.

Facebook is a delightful sounding board for the terminally smart-alecky. I derive a great deal of pleasure out of posting humorously cranky mini-paragraphs about the relentlessly bone-chilling weather, or mock news stories ("Local beagle engages in unauthorized litter box feast; owner recoils in shock and horror"). 

I try to avoid inflicting my opinion on religious or political debates, although I will interject if I feel my comment is on target but not snarky. I am a liberal Democrat and a Christian/Buddhist hybrid, but many people I love and respect lean right and are solidly Christian. I have no desire to hurt anyone's feelings or insist that anyone see things my way (although who are we kidding, I'd love it if I could persuade them to).

I try not to post too much mushy love stuff about my significant other, in part because I do have some understanding of decorum, but also because I don't want to embarrass him. I don't want to embarrass myself, either. Love makes me gushy. And too much shared gush comes across as bragging. I don't want to brag. I have nothing to brag about. The fact that this intelligent, kind, funny, thoughtful, compassionate man came into my life is a cosmic gift, not any achievement of mine. And he is the most... Wait. I feel impending gush. Ahem. Let's move on.

I do not post where I am every time I sit down to lunch or walk in the park, as a lot of people do. If this sounds a tad snobby, let me tell you that one reason I don't is because all of my Facebook activity takes place under my own roof. I don't have a phone smart enough to deliver updates on my every move. And that's a good thing, as I doubt there's a person on this planet who gives a rat's hind end that I am picking up paper towels at ShopKo or scarfing down a fish plate at Big Boy.

According to someone's research - I have no idea whose - Facebook has become associated with incidents of depression in its regular users. Supposedly, reading about other people's family joys, business successes and exotic vacations can lead to envy, low self-esteem and bitterness on the part of the less fortunate Facebookites.

I recently read a story on Huffington Post about a woman who detached herself from social media and realized she is much happier for it. She no longer goes online via her cell phone when she can't sleep, scrolling through the posts of friends who are partying gleefully while she lies alone, pitifully alone, in her big lonely bed. She is getting over the compulsive urge to document her every move, and she is finding other ways to fill those chunks of time previously dominated by posting, tweeting, and Snapchatting. She reads books! She talks to people on the phone, or even face to face! She showers more than twice a month! All right, I made that last one up. The point is, she feels liberated. Not so liberated that she's abandoning her online life forever, but when she rejoins cyberland she'll be armed with a dose of perspective she didn't previously possess.

So I guess I've been doing Facebook all wrong. I don't feel depressed. I am not nauseated with envy. I don't wish I could have Mindy's or Bob's or Susan's or, well, anyone else's life besides my own. When I see photos of friends and relatives lounging on the beach in Hawaii or in their box seats at a Detroit Tigers game I don't think, "Dammit! That should be ME!" I simply note their enjoyment. Clearly, I am not reaping the full benefits of online life exposure. I am sadly lacking in sadness, anger, bitterness and resentment.

The credit for this goes, at least in part, to my recovery program. I have been told not to compare my insides with other people's outsides. Income, new cars, or multiple stamps on a passport do not equal peace of mind or satisfaction. Yes, I would love a new car, a trip to Jamaica, and a triple digit income. But the fact that I have none of those things doesn't eat at me. I am, for the most part, content. I am also sometimes cranky, ungrateful, and just plain miserable. Welcome to human-ness. 

Using Facebook as a barometer for one's personal happiness is a sketchy enterprise. Kind of like comparing your life with that of some happy sitcom family. I want to measure my happiness on my own scale. Bills paid? Check. Employed? Check. Sobriety, family, pets all in place? Check.

Now if you'll excuse me, I just thought of a hilarious status update I want to post. 

Tick

So I've been trying out this new thing where I work to meet all of my obligations, do what I say I'll do when I say I'll do it, and do things even when I don't wa-a-a-nt to.

I think it's called... wait, wait, give me a minute. I think it's called maturity.

Don't worry, I haven't gone completely on the rails. I still love cartoons, blowing bubbles, and jokes heavy on the crass. But turning 50 has sharpened my hearing. I can hear the clock of mortality ticking so much more clearly than before, and it is chanting, do it now, do it now, do it NOW.

Example: Last week was the week the city did its annual spring brush and branch pickup. For me, this effort amounts to thinking about picking up the fallen branches in my back yard, reasoning that I still have plenty of time to take care of it, then being amazed that the pickup day has come and gone and my yard is still filled with branchery.

Not this year.

When I came home from work one night last week I saw several of my neighbors diligently clipping hedges, gathering branches, and piling it all in tidy curbside mounds. Oh, I thought. The city must be doing the pickup tomorrow. Oh, well. My yard doesn't look so bad. Too late now.

I was greeted at the door by my Indy dog. It didn't take a dog whisperer to read the expression on his face: "Walk tonight? Walk tonight, Mom? Pleeeeaaase, walk tonight!"

"I'll take you in a little while, Indy,"  I said. 

Shortly thereafter my son and my brother-in-law arrived to help me go pick up a used bed frame I'd bought for my older daughter, who's moved back home for awhile.

"Mom, I need a new cell phone," my son announced. "Mine's dying."

When I hesitated, Dan added, "I'll pay you back when I get paid." 

We picked up the bed (my sole physical contribution was to open and close doors) and got it back to my house. I thanked Dan and my brother-in-law, said goodbye to each, ignored the sinkful of dirty dishes and flopped on the sofa to watch TV. When Indy danced over to me I rubbed his fluffy gray head and said, "Sorry, bud, Mom's too tired to go tonight."

Then I heard it: tick, tick, tick. Now. Now. Now.

I jumped up and headed for the kitchen. 

As I washed the dishes I thought about the economics of parenting. My daughter needed a bed. I bought one without thinking twice. My son needed a phone. I dragged my feet about it.

I was bombarded with memories of times when my two daughters' needs were met and my son got short shrift. Dan was a quiet kid, never asking for much and always appreciative of what he did get. And while my girls were never demanding and also always appreciative, they were more verbal. And because they were girls, I understood their needs more easily. Or so I told myself. 

The reality was, Dan was the back seat kid. Not because I loved him any less, but because it was easy to not see what he needed - especially if you were preoccupied, and not seeing made life easier.

Tick. Tick. Tick. I finished the dishes, ran to the store, bought a box of microwave popcorn and a bottle of Coke, two of Dan's favorites, and left them at his doorstep. I called him and told him my revelation. I told him I'd buy him that new phone. I apologized for all the times he felt "less than." He didn't say much, but he was, as always, appreciative. 

Then I gathered armful after armful of dead, dried branches from my back yard and hauled them to the curb.

By then it was almost dark. I ducked back into the house, rounded up Indy, and we bounced through the neighborhood in the twilight.

The words mortality clock have a ring of doomsday to them, don't they? But that isn't how I think of this demanding internal timepiece. For me it's a hand at my back pushing me to accomplish what I can while I still can. I don't plan on dying tomorrow, but I can't guarantee I won't, either. All I have is today, this moment, right now. That's always true of everyone, but for a lifelong procrastinating look-the-other-wayer, turning 50 has made it more than true: it's made it real. And how grateful I am for that tick, tick, tick.