Tag Archives: facebook

Mar14

Spring e-Cleaning

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clean

I’ve been thinking about some of the things that bog me down during the day. My computer is one of them! Ok, my computer is pretty much the only big one. There is so much online that wastes my time.

Some of these time wasters are:

  • Email that I have to wade through. As of yesterday, there were thousands of messages in my email inbox, about 300 unread ones.
  • Facebook- be it groups I don’t participate in, pages I “liked” to claim coupons or enter contests, and people who really have too much drama in their lives and I really don’t need to know about the every detail of their day or their fight with so-and-so.
  • Twitter notifications, even though I’ve not done much on Twitter in the few years I’ve had an account.
  • Followings on Pinterest. I *love* Pinterest, and I’ve used it to better our home and life in certain ways

But Spring is nearing and before I tackle the madness in my house, I’ve started to clean up my little portion of the internet!

  • I’ve weeded out my email. I no longer have 3,000 or so emails in my inbox or 300 unread emails. There are now less than 150 emails in my box (most of which contain some level of importance) and less than 20 I’ve not read. I no longer have folders and folders of unread mail either. They’re all gone!
  • I’ve unsubscribed to roughly 50 different mailings I would get on a daily or weekly basis. If I don’t visit the website within a week or two, why bother continuing my email subscription?  And can I just say, LivingSocial and Groupon are the two worst offenders of email spam! They have so many sub-category email groups. I don’t need Groupon goods or LivingSocial escapes. One email a day from their company is more than enough, not ten!
  • Facebook has been trimmed too. Over the course of the past few weeks, I’ve deleted roughly 200 friends. Maybe that sounds mean, but I’ll explain my reasoning. I’ve been a part of the Facebook world since the beginning of 2005, and thus accumulated a number of friends from all areas of my life. If I’ve not talked with the person in the last five to ten years, are we really “friends” or do we just stalk each others news-feed?  If the person hasn’t been active on Facebook in years, why are we still “friends”? If you have more drama in your life than a tv soap opera, do I really need to be subjected to it on a daily (or hourly) basis? Nah! Cleaning out my “friends” list has been so freeing!
  • Twitter. Oh Twitter. I really don’t like you and have never really used you. In fact, my account has now been deleted. One less thing to worry with or to clog my email and iPhone
  • Pinterest followings. I don’t follow a ton of people on Pinterest. But there is a reason for that. Not that I don’t like my ~1500 followers, because believe me, I do! The problem is, when I start following a lot of people, I can EASILY find my ADHD kicking into high gear. Instead, I’ve pared down the list of people I follow to a small handful (less than 30). It makes life a little more simple for me. And, I can easily click-through my friends and followers when time allows (not often here lately) to see their pins.

Cleaning up my little slice of internet pie is making things so much more breezy! Instead of having to delete 50-100 emails a day and respond to maybe 1 or 2, now I can respond to 1 or 2, and delete 4 or 5! And, less drama on Facebook is always welcomed!

Sep2

Cancer, Why I am Frustrated, and a Challenge

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Last year many ladies were posting colors as their Facebook status. So much so that the news talked about it. I’m sure men and women who didn’t get the message were curious as to why there were was a rainbow of colors clogging their news feed. It happened to be the color of bra they were currently wearing. Somehow this was supposed to bring attention to breast cancer. I get the link- bras support breasts.

Then it was “I like it on the ___”, which often made people sound…well…. I won’t go there. But it wasn’t about sex (which is what people were led to believe if they weren’t in the know). It was about the location of where they liked to keep their purse. The link to bringing attention to breast cancer? Yeah…thats tough, because I can’t seem to find one.

Recently it was your shoe size but to add inches to the end (I wear a shoe size 9, so I would have written 9 inches). Again, this was somehow supposed to bring attention to breast cancer.

And now it goes a little something like this “I am __ weeks and craving __”. All is based on a chart of your birthday. This not only fails to bring attention to breast cancer, it makes some people sound trashy. I’m sorry, but its true. Do you really want your 13-year-old daughter participating?

So here we are, one month away from Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and we’re bringing attention to breast cancer in all the wrong ways. You may not know this about me, but each day at work we diagnose women and men of all ages with breast cancer. I’ve tested tissue samples of young teenage women who have been positive for breast cancer. It’s not just a disease that strikes older women. Its women of ALL ages and men too!

Breast cancer is a heartbreaking disease! I’ve known so many women who have battled, some who have won and some who have not. Joe’s aunt passed away from breast cancer, leaving behind two kids, a husband, four sisters, and many family members. My next door neighbor growing up battled breast cancer. A number of women in the church I grew up in battled breast cancer. My sorority sister lost her mom when she was a little girl from breast cancer. My coworker beat breast cancer. A young woman I’ve met through infertility struggles is scheduled to have a double mastectomy soon because, if she fortunate enough to get pregnant, her likelihood for getting breast cancer is extremely high due to genetics and the increased hormone levels pregnancy brings on.  Shall I continue on?

Then there is the link of breast cancer to the status game. Something someone is my infertility forum posted that needs to be known- “11,000 women under the age of 40 are diagnosed each year with breast cancer and many are treated with chemo. For these women, nearly 80% are left infertile as a result. The same is true for men with breast cancer treated with chemo. How does posting a fake pregnancy announcement honor these women who may never experience that?”

It frustrates me that we’re bringing attention to all the wrong things. For people with breast cancer, vague status messages about random things doesn’t tell their story. It doesn’t help them, encourage them,  or even cure them. For people with infertility, fake pregnancy announcements really hurts. Try spending years attempting to have a baby and others think it’s no big deal.

Instead of us participating in these, for lack of better word, stupid games through Facebook, why don’t we all post the name of someone who has battled breast cancer and impacted our lives. And challenge your friends to do so too. Think of the news worthy movement that could be started. We’re remembering those who have fought, those that won, and especially those who we’ve lost. If we start posting important things, statistics, or links to donate to research (such as Susan G. Komen), we can actually make a difference.