March in Jersey is like that obnoxious buffoon you try to avoid at your high school reunion because you know he’s just going to get drunk, complain that he was never popular, and then try to paw you while you’re dancing with him to “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” You circle the banquet room to stay away from him, but no matter where you turn, he’s there.
March is a tough weather month, but don’t despair, because the weekend weather looks delightful. We should all enjoy it before the weather turns south again for next week. I for one can’t wait for spring break sunshine, egads.
So yesterday I was taking care of some correspondence and smiling. Just thinking about some old friends I’ve recently reconnected with (more on that), about a few trips I have coming up. You know, smiling just for the hell of smiling.
Then I got a message from my marketing team. And I stopped smiling.
They sounded gruff. No choice, they said. No alternative. No other options. Grow the fuck up, Mary, they said. It’s time to go full-out with your business Facebook. We’ll handle it from our end, but it’s time to get relevant. Without it, we’re limited, and any book you try to sell or publish is limited.
(They didn’t tell me to “grow the fuck up,” but it was implied).
Fuck. But why Facebook? Why oh WHY does everything always lead to Facebook? I write five transparent soul-searching blog posts a week. I leave everything on the table, I wear my heart on my sleeve and it’s still not enough for publishers? (I loathe Mark Zuckerberg with a blinding white-hot rage. I mean it. I hate him. I think he ruined the planet).
And just like that, my day fizzled out like a dying firecracker at a lame picnic on the Fourth of July, and the quiet introverted existence I have worked so tirelessly to maintain went up in a puff of cherry-bomb smoke. Because as the Facebook gal started working on my business Facebook page, my computer began pinging and ponging with strange messages and invitations and requests from people I barely know.
“Are you freaking kidding me?” I asked her.
“Just ignore it,” she answered. “I’ll handle it from my end.”
Well, I thought, that’s a given. And the noises weren’t the point anyway. I wouldn’t devote a blog post to this subject if I didn’t think it was a worthy topic worth broaching.
The topic on the table is my very real disquiet over having to become “relevant” on Facebook. I like being irrelevant. You know that about me. The only thing I want to be relevant is my writing. So now I’m sitting here, thinking of texting all of my closest friends to ask them for their advice as to why am I so upset by this sudden influx of Facebook transparency. But I don’t have to text them, because I know what they would say:
Because you’re a bitch.
Because you’re not a fully-formed human being.
Because you’re allergic to the full spectrum of human emotion.
Because you hate socializing with other bi-peds.
Because you’re private. But not like the good kind-of private, more like the serial killer kind-of private.
Because you hold anyone who likes social media below contempt, and consider them inferior to you.
Because your intense self-involvement precludes you from being interested in anything that doesn’t directly involve you.
Wow, yeah, thanks.
So there are all of these messages and things on my computer. So now what do I do? How does it work? Do I answer messages? How do I answer the question, “Hi, Mary, nice to be friends with you, great profile, but have we ever met?”
Fuck’s sake.
“No,” I would answer after looking briefly at his profile. “But it looks like you married a girl who is friends with the daughter of the grandmother of one of my former supervisors from about 30 years ago, in a galaxy far far away. Want to meet up for a drink?”
Jk.
I have held out from joining Facebook for twenty years. I have held out against ridicule and frustration and intense peer and family pressure, societal pressure and dating pressure. There are things you can’t even do in the dating arena without Facebook, but I have pish-poshed it, and told myself it was for the higher good.
And now here I am, right where I have always said I would never be, and I’m livid about it. But what’s a writer to do?
Let me say that if you have received any notifications from “me,” you are welcome to accept or reject them, whatever you want. And thank you for bearing with me during this full-court press of social media- my team is not putting all of the Easter eggs in one Facebook basket, it would seem my profile is all over the place. Thank you if you are being besieged by it, and thank you if you love me enough to ignore it. But it precludes me to say that if you are interested in my Not It Girl Facebook, feel free to visit it. If you must. I appreciate that, as well.
Here’s logging out for the week. Some nookie talk next week, due to popular demand.