Suffering from information overload …..

I have been a bit blog-reluctant as of late, which is unusual for me.  I can normally whip up a blog post easy peasy and then I feel good once I have pushed the ‘PUBLISH” button.  I blog as a form of relaxation and sometimes an emotional purge.

Lately I have just not felt like talking.

I have been looking at facebook/twitter and blogs and I am a overwhelmed by the amount of sharing.  The sheer volume of it.

I am feeling pressurised into posting on twitter.  You know to be with the in kids.

I appear to be way behind in instagrams photos, my  facebook status updates are just not remaining current, and my pinterest boards are in total disarray.

I am so busy trying to read everyone else’s shite I just do not have time to post mine.  Really does it matter that I went to the Spur for lunch – granted I did not put it on my facebooks status update, and god forbid I did not take a photo and add it to instagram ….. did it still happen – does it count?

I feel exhausted by the amount of information I am subjected to each day – it did not bother me before.  If someone listens to a song on YouTube I get to see the link – if someone has muesli for breakfast, I know about it.

I think I am suffering from information overload, or over share.  I like to know about what you are eating, wearing, who you love, how much you miss your dead relative, but I feel I am being bombarded. Reading Facebook is like opening a door a crack, and suddenly finding you have a starring role in Jumanji, and can’t get back.

I really enjoy logging on to facebook and seeing what people are up to.  But lately it is causing a twitch in my left eye.

I am not a big de-friender.  I am actually quite tolerant of people and their often idiotic exploits, contrary to popular belief.

I forgive people their stupid “LIKE this if you love your daughter/father/son/dentist/gynaecologist.” I try and get excited about yet another photo of dear Johnnie.  If someone posts a link, I politely go over and take a look see, just in case it is actually interesting.  I am a polite Facebooker.

Sadly I am usually disappointed. I have realised the only safe/interesting links to look at are posted by Julie Mostert.  Bless her, she links seldom, and when she does, they are good.  The rest, not so much.

There should be a link police. You link too much, or to too much crap, and they come over and shit on your lawn.  Something simple like that, to try to encourage people to be responsible relinkers/posters.

I had a facebook friend Erica* who was constantly updating her status on how far she ran, how little kilojoules she took in, and how fantastic it was to be alive. I took that for about a year, then this week I though agh fuck it. Do I really need to know how many repetitions you do at gym, and what your resting heart rate is? Actually no.  I defriended her arse.  Mainly because her exercise routine was making me feel bad as I gorged on my Cadbury’s Bubble Slab (the big one with the totally irrelevant resealable back….. seriously what is the point of that?)

I relooked at my facebook friends and thought to myself, as much as I might vaguely Lana*, do I really want to see every fucking movement her child makes? Actually no, so I defriended her – if I put all the photos she had posted together of her son, it would run as a movie.  I feel that I watched him develop each frickn day, because each day there is a minimum of 10 photos of her little guy.

Great for family living in Thailand, not so great for me.  I actually could not bear to look at another photograph of her tike.

I did hesitate over those defriend buttons for quite sometime — I felt a bit mean, but for fuck sake, surely enough is enough?  I only defriended two people, but I felt bad about it.

I have a twitter account, I think I have tweeted twice.

I pop in to twitter about once a fortnight, primarily to see if Ricky Gervais and Jimmy Carr have said anything interesting.

Twitter, much like Facebook and this onslaught of media, is like standing at a busy intersection with a 8 lane highway of speeding cars.  Everyone is hooting, screaming things out the window and driving 195 kilometers an hour.  I am sitting there in my 1982 Fiat indicating to get in to a lane, and I can’t get or take a gap.

I have realised that no one has noticed my indicator is on.  No one is giving me a gap to get in to the fast moving and very LOUD lanes.  I have been waiting so long and now I have started to wonder “do I really want to get on this super highway of information?”

Does it matter whether I post small snatches of my bowel movements in 144 characters?

At the moment I am in the “who gives a shit” lane – its slow and has an easy listening radio channel.

I have  had sponsors/PR companies and others asking me to punt their products on my blog.  Right now I really just don’t feel like it. I might say, if I felt special and it was me and a really nice sponsor, then maybe.

I realise the same sponsor/PR company has spammed 10 {mommy} bloggers and after I see the same product being punted on other blogs, I am like “you know I am feeling a bit like a media whore, and actually I really don’t want to punt your product…” They don’t call to discuss they email you a pile of information, and that is the extent to their communicating with you.

I am sure this sense of dissolution will pass, and I will get all excited about hearing how fantastic your weekend was, or how precious your child is, or how fantastic it is to be alive …. but maybe not right now.

I need a quiet corner without any internet noise.

*names have been changed

Posted by reluctantmom on October 8, 2012

https://reluctantmom.wordpress.com/2012/10/08/suffering-from-information-overload/