Goodbye For Now, Facebook

I recently decided to deactivate my Facebook account, and it was suggested that I return to blogging (I was never good at it, FYI) in order to keep up with friends and family while limiting my exposure to what bothers me on my newsfeed.  In the interest of furthering discussion on the impact of social media on our daily lives, I'll go ahead and get personal and tell you why I'm leaving. Feel free to discuss in the comments.

We would love nothing more than to have a family...except maybe to win the lottery.  Then we could pay to adopt a herd of kids and take them around the world with us in a fancy RV.  That'd be pretty cool.  But, after almost to a year, we aren't any closer. Nobody likes to talk about this, but maybe more people should. After all, we don't want Idiocracy to happen.  Someone has to breed us out of it.

After nearly a year, every pregnancy and birth announcement on Facebook feels like a punch in the gut.  And I get the need to post those happy updates, really.  I felt the same way about engagement and wedding posts once upon a time, and when my time came, I posted anyway.  But they can still be difficult reminders of what's not happening for you, and not in the same way that posts about promotions and awards are.  After all, those things are about hard work.  There is some measure of control.  Getting married and having babies is about luck.  Know how I found a husband?  I got lucky.  Know how babies get made?  Ask Google or your parents.  I'm keeping it PG-13 here. But seriously, even if you do everything right, you still don't have control. For me, this is yet another reminder of the fact that my body doesn't really do anything well.  It's a dumb body.  We have issues. So basically, I can't handle the daily pregnancy and birth announcements.  Not right now.  And I'm not exaggerating when I say daily, people.  And it's not like I can just unfollow people-these announcements are always kind of a surprise, you know?  I don't have cameras in peoples' houses.

To be clear, people who are posting these things: I have no expectation that you will censor your posts based on how they might make other people feel.  That's ridiculous.  But, I also can't 100% control my emotional reaction to your posts.  And, as I'd rather be happy for you than resent you, I'm controlling what I can and limiting my exposure to what's bothering me.  Seems fair enough. 

As for us, it's completely weird that I posted about trying to have kids.  But, like I said, maybe people need to talk about it more. And by "talk about it", I don't mean give us your fertility advice.  We haven't been told we're hopelessly infertile or anything; as a matter of fact, we haven't been told anything except "well, sometimes it takes a year, come back when it's been a year."   But that still doesn't mean I can handle any more pinterest-inspired pregnancy photo shoots on my newsfeed. Nothing personal, guys.  Post away.  And I will enjoy my Facebook-free life for awhile.