Addicted: Living With My Dark Master

I know when it started. Sure, I'd had flirted with it a few times, but never seriously and I never needed to have it. It seemed to me that one had to be kind of stupid, and somehow desperate, to let it get that far. And then I went home to Chicago for a month last Christmas and life would never be the same.

See, spending any time in Chicago during winter is, for me these days at least, even more difficult than listening to Britney Spears sing acapella, trying to find any truth in what Rush Limbaugh says, or mining a Rob Schneider movie for laughs. For a visitor in winter there is no shortage of downtime spent inside due to the brutal cold (particularly unbearable if one has spent the last several years in tropical Hong Kong) and the ensuing boredom can get pretty maddening. There is a finite amount of television or Playstation 2 a person can engage in before looking for something else to pass the time and lift the ennui.

Enter my downfall, stage left.

At first I only used it sparingly. Just a guilty pleasure every now and again over the Christmas holidays. Then I brought my shiny, new albatross back to Hong Kong with me. I even used it on the plane home.

Once back in the Kong, I was still telling myself that I had it under control. I used it more often. Never at work of course. I didn't need it, I kept telling myself- as if saying it over and over again would make it so. It was something I could do when I wanted and stop doing when I wanted. I had it well under control and there was no way in hell I was going to end up like those other people.

And then one day I began to realize that things had gone too far. I'd been losing sleep because of it. I found myself doing it rather than facing pressing life problems that needed my attention. I began to get more secretive about doing it.

And then the cravings started. Not very intense at first, but insistent nevertheless. Soon I was using it in the middle of the night. In the morning before work. During work. Even this very blog suffered. It's been a long time since my last entry, no?

So, I'm going to do this publicly so that there are others who will hold me accountable: from now on I steadfastly refuse to be a slave to.......

Facebook!

There will be no more games where I run my own Farm! No more more reading about what a casual acquaintance of mine I last saw in 1983 needs to buy at the store! No more looking at a list of books that my tailor read! No more assuming that anyone wants to know what I've read! No more updating the world at large on what I'm going to make for dinner! No more pokes! No more hugs! No more pieces of flair! No more rounds of non-existent drinks! No more surveys or Top 5 Favorite Things or Graffiti or 30-Random-Things-Nobody-Knows-About-Me or "John Smith Just Became a Fan of...NOT DYING!"......AAAUUUGGHHH!!! I WANT MY LIFE BAAAAAAAAACK!!!

Ahhhh. Okay, I feel better now. That was cathartic.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go share my new manifesto with the 118 Facebook friends I've cultivated.

Well, what did you expect? I mean, I can't just quit cold turkey...