overwhelmed | betsybeadhead

Overwhelmed by your Facebook news feed having a bit too much news about the world and not about your friends? Facebook is a way we can find out how our friends are doing. We can’t get that information on Google or the evening news. So why is it that so many people find it necessary to fill up the feed with everything but information about themselves? Why do they feel it is essential for them to educate and make others aware? And why is it that what they want to make us aware of is only bad news?

It can get a little overwhelming reading about all the bad that is going on in the world. Bees dying, poisons in food, conspiracy theories, mass murders – you name it, there are some people who are convinced that they have to share their fears with everyone. Think of it this way – this is just the same as coming to your house and dumping a load of garbage in your living room. They didn’t even knock on the front door and ask you if you wanted their garbage. They just barged on in.

But – how do you filter out those people yet still stay in touch? You could just “unfollow” and you’ll still be friends, but then it is hard to remember who to check up on. Sometimes they might share something personal. What with the decline in newspaper readership, Facebook is often how we find out that a friend’s parent or spouse has died, or that they are going to get married, or that they are going to have a child. So sometimes we need to see what they have to say.

Here’s how – create an “interest list”. Go to your home page, and then look on the right. Find “interests”, click “more” to the right of the word, and then click where it says “add interests”. Name a new list there. You can add friends on the right who feel it necessary to share every conspiracy theory, political rant, or social woe. Then go to each friend’s page and “unfollow”. You are still friends, and you can still see what they have to say when you go back to that interest list. But otherwise, your newsfeed will have only the stuff you can handle.

I dislike the telephone. I’d much rather get an email. Or a letter.

Getting a phone call is like a home invasion to me. It happens unexpectedly. I have to deal with it right then. There is no time to compose myself and make sure I say the right thing.

Emails are slower. I can deal with emails when I feel like it. Emails are like the slow cooker where phone calls are the microwave. But even with the microwave I get the choice to turn it on. The microwave doesn’t suddenly spew out food and say “It is time to eat now!”

Phone calls are like someone showing up at my home while I’m relaxing in my jammies and them saying ok, now it is time to go out to eat supper with your family and your coworkers, no time to get dressed, and we hope you get embarrassed. A lot.

How did I ever survive before email? I guess I didn’t know any better. That creeping, sinking feeling in my gut was just normal. I didn’t have a choice.

It is like life before antibiotics and immunizations. You just had a few (hundred) people die every year. Nothing you can do about it, so sorry. We didn’t have a choice, so we didn’t think about it.

I get tongue tied when I talk on the phone. I get my wires crossed. My point doesn’t go across, it goes sideways.

It is part of why I made a rule that my brother no longer call me. If he wanted to communicate, it had to be by letter. Well, part of that was because he would say I said something I didn’t, so with a letter I had proof I wasn’t going insane, but that is another story. Some of it was to make sure I said what I meant to say.

I had a coworker once who got really frustrated with me that I got tongue-tied. She said “But you have a degree in English!” Right. I do. I don’t have a degree in talking. I write. With writing I can think about what I want to say. Then I can go over it and make sure the words say what I think they say. But with speech I don’t have that luxury. It is right then, no waiting.

I don’t text. Not really. They are too much like phone calls. They are a lot like emails, but more immediate. I don’t get the point of texts when there is something already like them around that works. I turned off the texting on my phone because I don’t want it and it costs extra. People still try to text me anyway and sometimes it goes through. When it doesn’t, they get upset that I didn’t answer. Texts aren’t like emails in that way. At least when an email doesn’t go through you get a message saying so.

Let’s being back letters. They can be personalized. They can have pictures and doodads inside. They can have glitter too. And for the paranoid among us, letters aren’t that interesting to the bogeymen.