By the way, thank you to everyone - mostly ACI people - who posted happy birthday on my wall this year in March. I had just gotten facebook and didn't know how to use it to message back. I didn't realize till later they were actually wall posts and not messages. I haven't gotten into the habit of posting happy birthday on people's walls, but I did appreciate it and was really surprised! This post is dedicated to you.
In somewhat of a microcosm, facebook is a parable for my life. If life is mainly about social communication, then facebook is an excellent example.
What I'm talking about is the give/take, give/take stream that facebook as a vehicle elaborately provides. Your level of online social participation is dependent on what you give and get. How involved you are changes, as does how much people involve you in their facebook accounts.
For me, sharing is highly mood dependent. Good mood, good will, I want to share. Bad mood, depression, and I close up. My posting on facebook is a reflection of my mood.
Of course, my facebook life is just my real life since I'm just reporting to you whats been going on, but with some more entertainment focus. Its not just a persona since its online - I definitely see people's personality in their posts - the guy who's into his car posts about his car, the girl who's into deeper things about life posts little images saying 'life is what you make it' with a picture of a person with outstretched arms on a beach, or whatever.
So I noticed the very real trend of my cycling mood getting better and then worsening, occur in my facebook life.
For some background, initially I was uncomfortable with facebook because I was just really self aware, as if someone would zero in on my posts and judge me. So, I felt stiff in writing posts and sharing to the world and I believed I shouldn't view people's pictures unless I knew them well. So, my facebook social life was somewhat limited. But, I was trying to expand my social life and for homework had to post a few comments and then a status. I spent a little time on facebook, and it was kind of cool, the mostly passive observing people's posts or entertainment features.
But I wasn't really involved in it and mostly didn't go on it.
Then my facebook activity changed alot this month, when I moved home/to my grandmothers, and all of a sudden was totally lifted of that self consciousness around my posts. I could just browse without my self judgements around viewing peoples' posts online versus the ideal that we'd actually just get to know each other by hanging out in person. My ideals seriously get me down, and that is talked about in another post. I felt more anonymous since I wasn't literally in the social sphere in Sacramento, and that kind of eased me. Anyways, I had a lot of time to spend on the computer, and facebook felt a lot more available to me since some of my judgements disappeared.
I started spending more time on facebook, and got comfortable on it, and starting here, September 2013, I can corollate my mood with my facebook posts. I started posting more and then in no time, I was all over facebook in my large amount of open time with caregiving, and it was really fun for me. I was newly getting to appreciate the fun of so much easy entertainment and learning what people were up to that they posted online. I was also excitedly viewing my page because I was getting updates - people had 'liked' my posts! So I felt even more comfortable and shared more. Then I was getting comments and then was thinking about all these things I could say that people would see, and then I'd get more comments.
My facebook life was upwards spiraling. My social life was increasing because all these people I know were getting to learn about me, and me about them, and I was conversing online. It was really great to learn from the visible proof of people liking my comments that people were reading my posts and paying attention to me, and that helped me, too. I was spending more time on other sites too, like Pinterest and was further being amused and sharing.
Then I was going into a funk since tension with my grandmother was stressing me out and I lacked an outlet. Just as easily as I was enjoying facebook and feeling more connected, my mood cycled back down. What happened on facebook? I got more withdrawn and had more of a struggle utilizing the site, feeling less free to write up status updates. I don't want to post about problems between me and my grandmother, like her saying 'Marissa, why is the water [in the pitcher] out?' and my response of 'well I drank some, that's probably how it happened', instead of me either owning up to forgetting to refill it or being asked nicely by my grandmother to refill it since its low, which would be so much better. But that's exactly what was on my mind; I was getting more stressed with this interpersonal conflict, and I wasn't sharing.
When I was all excitable I was sending links out of humorous things. Versus then when I was doing worse I closed up. Who knows if anyone noticed, that I'd been posting a lot and then didn't post for a few days? I don't know if you could tell, but I can see it in retrospect.
So instead of finding an outlet, I got more bottled up and some comment like the one above just kept gnawing at me. I felt more reclusive in my online presence, not wanting to share what was going on, and certainly not with everybody, so judgements were coming into play, too. Posting less, I got less messages, less updates, and I saw less reason to log on so often to view others' posts or to post myself. When I went on I was less involved and less excited, and more passively looking rather than commenting.
Then since my mood was dropping, I felt forgotten and facebook started to have an annoying quality. I didn't care to view people's updates since they were just doing their own thing, it didn't have anything to do with me. The disconnect was growing, and I was spending less time online and more time in my distressing thoughts. And since I need other people, my needs were going unmet. So I was spiraling downward, and its hard to help yourself when you don't feel worthy. I didn't even get a nice distraction from my mood from facebook, so my issues were constantly all fully present and accounted for, and my mood kept sinking.
When I gave (posted), I got so much back, like tenfold. And then when I stopped reaching out to others, others stopped reaching out or responding to me, too. You could even put numbers to it, my social interaction gauged by the little red boxed number of updates icon on the top of my facebook page. My happiness. The numbers go up and down and my status - my mood, changes with it.
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