Why do I feel so liberated, now that I have deactivated my Facebook account

I deactivated my Facebook account, and quite oddly, I feel liberated. There is something wrong with that sentence; Facebook shouldn’t feel like a prison, but for me, it is. Why?

It’s still summer. I actually have no obligations. I’m putting no effort to find a job and my day has no structure: I sleep when I’m tired and I eat when I’m hungry. At times I’m guilty at my inertia, but other times, I indulged in the moment. I do try to incorporate some productivity to my daily schedule, like study for chemistry and read a book. But if I’m being honest with myself, I haven’t generated a significant amount of investment towards anything intellectually engaging. In addition, I’ve only hanged out with people my age once this summer: I’ve allowed my phone to hide and slumber underneath my bed for days without any form of urgency to reply to any messages.

I’d habitually log onto Facebook three times a day, and there really isn’t a point for me to be connected in the web at this moment. I have nothing interesting to share since I’m not traveling nor do I have gossip to spill. Facebook is supposedly a tool to update, a controlled window to share tidbits of one’s life and intimate thoughts. I have gain so many friends over the years, that I have become intimidated and cautious about the content I chose to share. I have become an obnoxious Facebook “liker” and a Facebook “lurker.” In effect, I’ve transformed my once Facebook update tool as a convenient tool for school — a second email. Now that it’s summer, there is no need to log onto Facebook for important study group events and assignment questions from my peers. I just end up wasting my time on the site.

And I suppose I can just let my Facebook account collect dust over the summer and have self-control to just ignore the site. However, I can’t. There’s something about manually choosing to deactivate my account by going to the account setting. It just feels official; it puts me to the realization that I have just snipped my string that connected me to the Facebook social network web — thus liberation.

This morning, the closest park near my apartment is alive with people and bright color. The sun is forgivingly gentle, and I felt happy living the moment in the real world. In a bit, after I publish this piece and clean up my room, I’m going to go out for a run.

Last night, I had spent seven hours last night in concentration painting numerous sketches, and felt satisfied of the finished products. I’ve always felt slightly depressed from staying up all-night, catching up on people with Facebook, but yesterday, the silence of the night and the dimness of the dark sky made painting at the late hour so relaxing.

I have 2 more months of summer, and I want to spend the next couple of weeks like this: in total oblivion on the updates from my friends. I have my close friends on my phone if they ever want to reach me and most of them have my email. But most importantly, I don’t need to know what the other 400 people are doing at the moment. There’s nothing wrong with people that want to know what their friends are doing; we are naturally bent on curiosity and human consumption. But Facebook can be insidious and unproductive for me. I’d ponder about other peoples’ worries and fill up my boredom time by voluntarily catching up with people by stalking there page. I have a few friends traveling in Europe who have captured interesting photos, which makes the newsfeed more enjoyable. But I can always quickly glance at all stream of photos when school starts again and I decide to deactivate my account. For the most part, I’m convinced that t’s a more genuine experience in catching up with people the moment I reunite with them in the fall.

I still want to learn how to play the piano. I have a list of books I still want to read. I plan on taking a couple of more art lessons online and try to make something beautiful for my mom and my Dad’s birthday. There’s the olympics to watch. My driver’s license test. Scholarships to fill out. My chemistry notebook is no where near done. I want to run. I want to write some short stories. I’m going to improve my little cousins’ reading skills this summer. More garden visits with my grandparents.

Normally people deactivate Facebook to focus on upcoming finals. I have a quite opposite situation — all the time in the world — but the focus from the result of excluding myself from social networking sites will allow me to start working on the goals and projects I want to work on.

Little hermit, crawl out of your place and let the sun kiss your face

Though it’s near dawn,

I’m welcomed by the trivial beauties of this moment

I love the cool breeze from the open door

I love the sound of my dad’s snore

the warmth from my laptop as I blissfuly waste time’s day by surfing on the internet

How is that I only love florescent lighting during the night?

Facebook quotes

Fall& winter quarter favorite quotes I posted on my Facebook

These are just some of my favorite quotes. I change the “favorite quotations” section on Facebook very frequently. I think a lot of what I select reflects what I’m going through. I just want to post it on wordpress so I can archive this, and read it again on some random day when I have free time. 

“The best teacher is experience and not through someone’s distorted point of view.” ~ On the Road

“Give a man a reputation as an early riser, and that man can sleep till noon.” – Mark Twain

“Adults constantly raise the bar on smart children, precisely because they’re able to handle it. The children get overwhelmed by the tasks in front of them and gradually lose the sort of openness and sense of accomplishment they innately have. When they’re treated like that, children start to crawl inside a shell and keep everything inside. It takes a lot of time and effort to get them to open up again. Kids’ hearts are malleable, but once they gel it’s hard to get them back the way they were.” 
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“People worry about kids playing with guns, and teenagers watching violent videos; we are scared that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands – literally thousands – of songs about broken hearts and rejection and pain and misery and loss.” 
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“The trouble with my generation is that we all think we’re fucking geniuses. Making something isn’t good enough for us, and neither is selling something, or teaching something, or even just doing something; we have to be something.” 
― Nick Hornby, A Long Way Down

Beginning of Spring quarter favorite quotes I posted on my Facebook

“if you hang around a barber shop long enough, sooner or later, you’re going to get a haircut.” – Denzel Washington

 

“The best teaching in the world is watching the masters at work” – Michael Jackson

 

One of Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 tips on how to write a great story: Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

 

 

Dunking your head to the ground like some scared ostrich is a waste of time. Face the challenges ahead with an illusion of sturdiness until genuine confidence takes over. – one of my note to self during winter quarter when I had anxiety to complete something and just kept running away from my problems

 

Because this is still one of my favorite lyrics. 

“How fickle my heart and how woozy my eyes

I struggle to find any truth in your lies

And now my heart stumbles on things I don’t know

My weakness I feel I must finally show

 

Lend me your hand and we’ll conquer them all

But lend me your heart and I’ll just let you fall

Lend me your eyes I can change what you see

But your soul you must keep, totally free”- song: Awake my soul by the Mumford and Sons

 

“The concept of portraying evil and then destroying it – I know this is considered mainstream, but I think it is rotten. This idea that whenever something evil happens someone particular can be blamed and punished for it, in life and in politics is hopeless.” – Hayao Miyazaki

End of spring quarter & beginning of Summer quotes, the ones I currently have up on my Facebook

“Believe in yourself. You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you stop to look fear in the face. You must do that which you think you cannot do.” – Eleanor Roosevelt 

“I’m a greater believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.”
-Thomas Jefferson

“We are faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words ‘Too Late’.” 
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget.” 
― Arundhati Roy

“She sat listening to the music. It was a symphony of triumph. The notes flowed up, they spoke of rising and they were the rising itself, they were the essence and the form of upward motion, they seemed to embody every human act and thought that had ascent as its motive. It was a sunburst of sound, breaking out of hiding and spreading open. It had the freedom of release and the tension of purpose. It swept space clean, and left nothing but the joy of an unobstructed effort. Only a faint echo within the sounds spoke of that from which the music had escaped, but spoke in laughing astonishment at the discovery that there was no ugliness or pain, and there never had to be. It was the song of an immense deliverance.” 
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

and lastly

“Be the leaf” – meelo

One of my favorite poems that captures the essence of summer so beautifully

Girl Riding a Horse in a Field of Sunflowers

BY DAVID ALLEN EVANS

Sitting perfectly upright,

contented and pensive,

she holds in one hand,

loosely, the reins of summer:

the green of trees and bushes;

the blue of lake water;

the red of her jacket

and open collar; the brown

of her pinned-up hair,

and her horse, deep

in the yellow of sunflowers.

When she stops to rest,

summer rests.

When she decides to leave,

there goes summer

over the hill.

nothing but swinging and swinging

Golf practice has started in the beginning of August, and it’s already October. It’s a fun sport, it really is, but at times, I just wish my golf bag was like a witch broom, and I can just hover above the ground. I know, it’s lazy and it’s going to undermine the tradition of golf – but. Point. Your. Finger. Towards. The invention of the golf cart. What’s the difference? More like convenience. Imagine, you’re playing, and you’re feet hurts, what to do? Just take your golf bag off your shoulder, press the switch, and hover above the ground as it takes you to your ball.

Though this wish is only provisional. I’d think about the idea for 20 seconds, and then change my mind. Walking is a healthy excersice. I’m just prone to long for a hovering golf bag because I play my golf matches with only 5 hours of sleep sometimes.

Though, what if there’s an invention that would automatically protects your body like a shield, but  in a dome-like form,  after the shouting of “four.” Now that would save lives.

Hello world!

“Three major stabs in the lower back, minor cuts near the neck area, and two missing fingers; I think they were chopped off.” Investigator 1’s face was stoic, but he was diligent in his occupation.  The victim’s family watches from the back, adding a morose atmosphere to the room through their remorseful weeping. Investigator 2’s paces throughout the room, thinking, mitigating the gloomy room with a vibe of productiveness: Who is the killer?

A series of examinations of the body was done meticulously, until investigator 2 discovers a diminutive device in the back of the neck. The mother presumptuously runs toward her son’s body and takes it away from the investigators, examining the discovery herself.  Voila. “I knew this investment will pay off.” A boon in such a bane moment. “When my son was born, my friend, who is an inventor, made a device that would help tenacious parents track down the murderer of their child if, of course, such an event would happen.  I scoffed at the idea, but I thought it was better safe then never. I’m of uttermost disgusted and angry, but I’m glad I’ll be able to check who killed my child. Who knows? That killer might have a list of victims.” The investigators did not stop the mother from proceeding the process — they didn’t even know how the device work — or the fact that it existed.

The mother continues, “This covet chip was inserted in my son’s neck when he was two year old, and when he was old enough to talk, I taught him how to use it. All he had to do was press a certain area in his neck and say the name of the killer. “Everybody surrounds the wretched body and the passionate mother. A brave soul breaks the silence — the sister of the victim speaks, “So… why don’t we try if it actually works?” The mother pulls out the device from the wound, gets a stick, and press the button, just like how her friend instructed 11 years ago.

…

Inhaling,  everyone prepares for a name. Exhaling, everyone comes in closer.

“Timothy Crone”.

Mixed feelings arouses from the recording of the Victim’s recording.

[ Invention: Covet Recording Device, inserted in the neck for recording purposes. ]