FREEDOM!! snipping away at what doesnt work!

So I have officially deactivated my Facebook account as well as cut off my cable!!!. Why? well let me go into detail.....

For the larger part of 2008 I have felt as though I was surviving and not really living. I would wake up, work, pay the bills, wash, sleep and repeat. The time in between where I could be making use of my reawakened inspiration to create was wasted in front of the television and becoming addicted to checking my facebook updates.

Living on the opposite coast from my family and friends in a small town with an even smaller list of recreational activities to do in the bad weather has been tough. I viewed Facebook as my lifeline a way to keep in touch and keep relationships strong despite the distance. But despite the many features added to make things easier to share with your friends and family, over time I found relationships feeling cold. NOT to imply that my family and friends were being cold!!! But it is always human nature to find the easiest way to accomplish a task and being human I fell into the Facebook trap. What trap you may ask???

The outsider looking in trap!. Pre-Facebook I would have to put in the effort of writing out a long email to update people of the ongoing events happening in my life I would take the time to enquire about their news and updates and in return receive a long heartfelt response. The days of Facebook have made it so easy for me to just pop onto a persons profile glance at a few updates and messages and feel that I had been adequately updated on their life, so much so that the personal effort to maintain contact as I had before seemed irrelevant.

But over time I realised......other than a half paragraph response to an update every so often I had not had very much REAL contact with the people in my life that are very important to me. When was the last time I had a heart to heart with a friend? when was the last time I bothered to phone? when was the last time I had taken the time to let people in my life know more about whats going on than a quick one sentence update every few days. Rather than making it easier to keep in touch with people Facebook only made it easier for me to maintain an illusion of human contact. The people in my life that I am glad to know deserve better!!! I should HAVE to put in an effort to keep them around, because they are worth it, that's what real friends do isn't it? Its time to be a better friend... No more just calling it in.

I am trying this year to become a better person, not that I was a bad person before, not that I feel my personality is horribly flawed. I enjoy sarcasm and bitching that's not going to change its who I am and what my life experiences have made me :). But I am learning to see the humor and irony in the things that used to only just enrage me. I am willing to forgive hurts bestowed on me by others BUT I'm not stupid enough to forget them. Is every relationship in life salvageable? No!!! Some people are just toxic and will only ever suck the life out of you, but just acknowledge it didn't work out and walk away. There is no reason to harbour fantasies of revenge or wish them ill for years (as I am prone to do).

I am a pagan, my spirituality is very closely linked to the earth. I used to have flawless unwavering faith, I could feel the life force and divine presence in everything with little to no effort. For a few months It was almost as though my cord to that life force was snipped away, I had disconnected from my beliefs,I spent so much time on superficial things that I had lost touch with a big part of me. I need to make time to find that inner peace again to rebuild the bridge between me and my faith and find a way to incorporate it into my life seamlessly again.

Its time to start a more genuine life. Do instead of dream, LIVE instead of exist and remember what its like to be a part of the natural world rather than slip into the role of another gear in the consumerism machine, filling my days with technology and material things to fill the void that today's society has created in people. I choose to fill that void with humanity, going back to our roots. Plant some flowers feel the earth, Do some art, enjoy more time with my family....maybe take up an instrument.....

Snip away what doesn't work and make some room for what does!!!