About Face(book)

My first day post-layoff, I signed up for Facebook. All my peeps were on it. Frankly, I didn't know how they found the time to sign up, never mind actually correspond on it.
But that first day, I had the time, finally. It was a good thing. I registered and asked a bunch of people to be my friends. I made a lot of friends and my day was punctuated with messages from people at the newspaper and from college. This was a good thing. At work, I fielded emails all day long; this was not a good thing. But the steady stream of email at home lent a sort of normalcy to that first day.
It's a very seductive thing, Facebook. It's easy to spend a great deal of time on it, chatting and looking for people. Fortunately, I had a great deal of work to tend to, so I avoided the trap of constant communication. However, the intermittent connections have been very good. Every day or two, I'm in touch with my former co-worker who also took the buyout. It's been good to stay in touch with how these first days are going.
I'm a bit Ludditeish on Facebook. I don't know all the etiquette & am not hip at all to the games and what-not that are available. I'm not great about replying to all the queries, mostly because I don't want to talk to everyone about how things went down at the newspaper and about my plans for the future. They're just curious, you know. I only want to talk to people who are really invested in how things are going. Selfish, in a self-preservation kind of way.
A short time ago, a friend from the Way Back Machine found me on Facebook. Turns out, he made a similar leap from his job last year. Good to know. He also told me about a person who is doing very interesting quilting work. She lived very close to me until recently, but has moved across the country. Facebook makes it possible for me to get in touch with her and to find out more about her work.
It has also been very good getting back in touch with my friend. It also helps me get back in touch with myself and what it was I loved Way Back When, when I was first shaping my future, before I was sidetracked into making a living.