My back locked up on me this morning and ruined my day. Hopefully, it's just the day. It's feeling a bit better now, but these things can linger. It's so frustrating. I wasn't even doing anything strenuous. I was getting ready to wrestle Lil' S2, so I got down on my knees, and out of nowhere it felt like somebody put my lats in a vise. They suddenly tightened up and dropped me to my belly in agony. I spent most the rest of the day lying flat on my back in bed. S suggested I go to the doctor, but I hate that in normal conditions, let alone in the midst of a pandemic. Plus, I've been to the doctor many times in the past 20 years about my back, and they almost never tell me anything I don't already know and couldn't do on my own. Well, sometimes they give me pain meds, but I don't need those right now. I'm hoping it's just a blip of an injury. My chronic back problems have gotten much better in the last few years, and it would be incredibly disheartening if I started having regular incapacitating flare-ups again.
In other news, I'm joining the "movement" and leaving Facebook. It's something I've been meaning to do for a long time, but just haven't. I don't know why... inertia, I guess. Posting stuff on social media, in general, gives me anxiety. It's fine if it's something totally banal, like a link to a crossword puzzle I constructed or pictures from a family vacation, but if it's anything with any actual substance then I just find it to be an awful forum for discussion. There were too many times, in the early days, when I found myself in comment-battles with people I barely knew, whose opinions meant nothing to me, and it's like... why? For who, for what? Nothing was ever solved; nobody ever changed their mind; I would get upset. Those are the common elements of every Facebook "debate" I've ever had. Some people thrive off that type of argument -- they enjoy it (and that's cool) -- but not me.
So, I stopped posting anything slightly "controversial" on Facebook, but then it just started feeling so frivolous. And that's fine, once in a while, but everything about Facebook is geared to ensure it's not just a once-in-a-while thing. It's programmed, using expensively-crafted, proprietary algorithms, to keep you on as long as possible. It sucks you in ("Likes" are literally mini dopamine hits), and if you get off for too long, you get punished. If I don't post for a while, the next post I put up gets relatively little reaction. It seems as if you have to post a lot to get people to see your posts.
Even given all that, I still would probably keep my Facebook account, if not for all the Cambridge Analytics data-misuse stuff, and the unwillingness to do much, if anything, to stop the spread of misinformation. I wrote about this two years ago, and it's only gotten worse since then. It's something I can't in good-conscience be even a small part of anymore. There are some things I genuinely like about Facebook, and there are some people I'm really happy I reconnected with on it. But at some point the many negatives overwhelmed the few positives. It happened a while ago; this is long overdue.
I'm not forgoing social media completely. I'm keeping my Twitter account. I rarely tweet (anxiety remember), but I've been lurking a lot lately. We all know Twitter has problems of it own, but at least it makes me laugh more than Facebook does. The other day I read a thread of people posting the funniest things they've even seen on Twitter, and it had me rolling. Here's one of my favorites:
Savage.
Until next time...
In other news, I'm joining the "movement" and leaving Facebook. It's something I've been meaning to do for a long time, but just haven't. I don't know why... inertia, I guess. Posting stuff on social media, in general, gives me anxiety. It's fine if it's something totally banal, like a link to a crossword puzzle I constructed or pictures from a family vacation, but if it's anything with any actual substance then I just find it to be an awful forum for discussion. There were too many times, in the early days, when I found myself in comment-battles with people I barely knew, whose opinions meant nothing to me, and it's like... why? For who, for what? Nothing was ever solved; nobody ever changed their mind; I would get upset. Those are the common elements of every Facebook "debate" I've ever had. Some people thrive off that type of argument -- they enjoy it (and that's cool) -- but not me.
So, I stopped posting anything slightly "controversial" on Facebook, but then it just started feeling so frivolous. And that's fine, once in a while, but everything about Facebook is geared to ensure it's not just a once-in-a-while thing. It's programmed, using expensively-crafted, proprietary algorithms, to keep you on as long as possible. It sucks you in ("Likes" are literally mini dopamine hits), and if you get off for too long, you get punished. If I don't post for a while, the next post I put up gets relatively little reaction. It seems as if you have to post a lot to get people to see your posts.
Even given all that, I still would probably keep my Facebook account, if not for all the Cambridge Analytics data-misuse stuff, and the unwillingness to do much, if anything, to stop the spread of misinformation. I wrote about this two years ago, and it's only gotten worse since then. It's something I can't in good-conscience be even a small part of anymore. There are some things I genuinely like about Facebook, and there are some people I'm really happy I reconnected with on it. But at some point the many negatives overwhelmed the few positives. It happened a while ago; this is long overdue.
I'm not forgoing social media completely. I'm keeping my Twitter account. I rarely tweet (anxiety remember), but I've been lurking a lot lately. We all know Twitter has problems of it own, but at least it makes me laugh more than Facebook does. The other day I read a thread of people posting the funniest things they've even seen on Twitter, and it had me rolling. Here's one of my favorites:
Savage.
Until next time...
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