the quirky brunette: Sunday Summary | Mid-(OK, LATE-) Monthly Missive // Goodbye, my friend* ...

* Don't worry, this isn't actually goodbye, it's a lyric and it'll all make sense later, probably.

Dear FOQ

Yes, yes, I know, the whole mid-monthly missive thing has gone a bit to pot of late.

All I'll say is that my work-life balance needs redressing otherwise I will continue to have absolutely nothing to write home about. Literally. Bit tricky to blog with no content, amiright?

First of all, though, I want to wish Ma QB a very happy Mother's Day; she has very few demands for her day besides a bit of peace and quiet. I respect that.

---

Anyway, two weeks ago I did manage to leave the proverbial mainland (in the company of Alan and Brian, and then Allann...) for a lovely, relaxed weekend with Cousin Jo, during which we broke the back of Season Three of Queer Eye (can we just have a moment for Jonathan's whimsical new facial foliage...?).

Interesting choice there but still, YAS QUEEN.

We drank and ate spectacularly well...

{Sarabi cat, making sure Brian doesn't get too lashed on the veh VEH nice vintage}

{Pizza piggehs | It was Comic Relief night, ergo the schnozzes}

and also managed a short walk round the lake on Sunday morning but hail then happened so we hastened home, all the way home, Home Cottage in fact, for Sunday lunch.

Since then I have been doing too much of the hustle and not enough of the peopling (aside from a splendid brunch with my Lovelies, also undocumented, and a wonderful early dinner with my Foyles Goyls, again, with no photographic evidence because there was too much catching up to do).

I have very little other to report, apart from a revelation or two that I'll share with you later.

This month, I have been mostly...

Reading 📚

Moranifesto

So good. So good. The balance of articles selected for this collection ranges from the humorous to the profound, and the passionate and intelligent.

It only upsets me a tiny bit that Ms Moran, born 1975, is so much more accomplished than Ms Quirky Brunette, born 1978.

But, eh, different people, different lives. Comparison is pointless.

I'm now reading:

Do it like a Woman ...and change the world

which I should have read a long time ago. It's superb. (Let's just have a throwback moment to 2015.)

Watching 👀

All the things.

This, my friends, is the problem with working too much.

You get home, too late and too drained to socialise or 'people' on any level; the telly goes on and in between the fatigued weeping and wailing and excessive weekday evening imbibement of Terry's Chocolate Orange, all you can do is zone out. And that's another evening sucked into oblivion.

Derry Girls

If you were a teenager in the mid-nineties this is such a brilliant series.

If you weren't, it's still brilliant.

Pretty Little Liars

Because I meant to look for Big Little Lies and got confused. Ended up with Gossip Girl meets I Know What You Did Last Summer.

I've parked it for a short while but have been enjoying it more than I should. All the girls are as brittle-thin as twigs and could use a good, hearty burger once in a while but it's an intriguing watch nonetheless.

First Man

Watched in the company of Cousin Jo and Jim.

Surprisingly, surprisingly good regardless of any historical liberties that may have been taken.

Ryan "Hey Girl" Gosling is a little bit brilliant as an abrupt, seemingly unshakeable Neil Armstrong, and the take-off sequences are so terrifying and claustrophobic you begin to appreciate what a colossal risk every astronaut takes.

The Goldbergs

I just love it. Love it. Not sure what it is, the witty repartee, the 80s nostalgia, the basis on the creator's real life... the fact it makes me laugh out loud... All of the above?

---

Right. That's quite enough of that.

I have also been ...

Spring-cleaning my Facebook

or, as I'm now calling it:

On Friday night, I went for much-needed drinks and life evaluation with young Megan, my workmate.

As is the case with many of my younger workmates, we're in very different places in our lives by some sheer glitch of chronological freakery, but that's OK. We can still do the socialising.

{Me on the left, there...}

I'm in a place at the moment where I feel I can dispense a tiny bit of wisdom over an order of fries, from a place of ol' age, experience and constant emotional evolution (I will say my maturity hasn't quite caught up, but that's another thing for another time).

We talked for a while about social media, specifically about Fakebook.

I'm in a very strange relationship with Fakebook at present. Which one would gather by the fact I'm referring to it as Fakebook (occasionally Farcebook).

I spend plenty of time on there still (it whiles away a commute quite nicely) but this time is mostly spent cruising through the Friends of Alan 🐷 page; it feels like safe territory, a friendly escape from the current political omnishambles.

The Alans are pure. They're fun. The FOA are creative and clever.

A reprieve from the weird ol' real world. Whatever that is any more.

I had a revelation about FB, and my own use thereof for the last twelve years, and that revelation manifested itself repeatedly in this gif of "Queen" Cristina Yang (of Grey's Anatomy):

as I flicked through some old, and frankly embarrassing, posts.

Nobody cares, QB, that in 2008 you were listening to some 80s Richard Marx while cleaning your flat.

Nobody cares, QB, that in 2011 you had a craving for Jaffa Cakes.

Nobody cares, QB, that in 2014 you had to catch a bus home from Croydon, because, trains.

Literally:

It got to a point where every incarnation of QB on FB until about... December 2017 (and even then it was touch and go) just made me want to unfriend myself.

Yo, QB, word up:

So, I took a huge metaphorical red pen of Editorial Excellence to twelve years of QB-on-FB nonsense. And with a flourish of the metaphorical pen I began to delete post after post of my inane, pointless ramblings.

And I felt so, so much better for it.

To the point whereby I thought, actually, there's something in this.

Let me say this, friends: we are beholden to nobody on social media.

Nobody.

Modern culture has led us down this path but we're under no obligation to share our every movement or thought with the world as we go.

In fact, in some instances, it's healthier if we don't.

Fakebook, or any other similar social media platform, should not be where we lay ourselves bare.

Regardless of your intentions, there's almost always a subtext to what you post, and it isn't always obvious to anyone coming in afresh what that subtext is. Ultimately everything gets misinterpreted.

Recently, when I come to a point whereby I'm frustrated by a situation (like having to wait an hour for a train home from work), I find myself drafting a FB post, then deleting it before posting, when my internal Yang rears her wise little head:

Of course, this does mean I end up venting on WhatsApp to my nearest and dearest, and for that I can only apologise but thank you for occupying me nonetheless.

If I find myself venting on WhatsApp to Natalie, for instance, it's because I know that she will care, and I don't need to appeal to 330+ other Facebook friends to take time out of their days to react to me having another train-related rant-off.

It's not the forum. And it's taken me far too long to work that out.

My point is, then, not so much that nobody cares full stop; au contraire, mon cher: but that oversharing and overposting run the risk of diluting the impact of what you do want to say to the world, what you do want to put out there.

Right now, I'm using Fakebook purely for Alan things (all on a private group), or to share cute videos of animals, noteworthy articles on music, heinous puns or apposite posts about coffee.

(And to tag Natalie in Love Layla posts that make us both laugh and say, this is soooo you/me/us because we know each other too well not to identify and share the love.)

But I'm cutting way back on the train updates. (I got a little too 'known' for those for a while; it's frickin' sad when that happens.) Trains are crap. That's never going to change. And the more I go on about it, the more of an absolute tool I become.

I hereby present my:

Four Steps to Successful(ish) Fakebook Spring Cleaning

Disclaimer: I'm not saying you must do this; absolutely not. These are purely guidelines I've set myself, based on how I feel about the whole Farcebook/Fakebook set up at the moment.

However, if you find them useful, or advisory, by all means, do the things. But do all of them.

Commit.

You might feel better for it.

1) Delete your posting history.

Depending how long you've been on FB and how frequently you posted in the past, this may take some time.

But FB has actually made it more doable.

a) Go to your profile.
b) Under Timeline, select "Grid view".

c) To delete your own posts and updates, go to "Posted by > You" in the left column.

If you can remember when you joined FB and indeed if you want to start that far back, select your first year of posting (or your most recent: I've worked forwards as that's just how I roll).

d) Select Manage posts, and click on all the posts that year that you want to delete. I've had to do these six at a time, month by month, because that's just how slow my browser/FB is. Your browser may be a little more forgiving.

Select Delete Posts. (If this option is greyed out, you may share privileges on a particular post with someone else – an album, for instance; you can hide these posts, if you prefer, if you can't delete them outright.)

e) Be brave.

2) Streamline your Friends list.

This is the hardest part.

You do not have to unfriend people outright if you're going through something of a lull with them in the real world; you do still have the option to unfollow their posts if you're finding broadcasts of their life a little challenging for whatever reason.

I came to the decision to take that one step further and do some disconnecting when a particular person posted a curt remark on my request for advice on hiding the myriad paid ads that were popping up on FB, to the point whereby FB was nothing *but* ads for a short while.

I worked it out, more or less: go through your settings, delete all your alleged interests and preferences. Hide and feed back on anything that still pops up to drill it in to the FaceBots that you're not interested.

Basically, the individual's response was, "hey, you don't pay for FB so ads are the price you do pay, suck it up".

Yep, she actually used the expression "suck it up".

It might seem a trivial thing to unfriend someone for but when you consider that in the past she has shot me down for supporting No More Page Three, suggested I take more 'interesting' photographs in New York (of people: er, how about no? I *like* buildings, I went to New York largely for the buildings, so please step off) and picked a minor fight with another friend on my feed, again about feminism, it was high time to say:

One does not need that negativity in one's life even if it's intended as a joke.

After that, I gained momentum.

There's still a way to go, but I made good headway.

Remember, again, that you owe nothing to anyone on social media.

Sometimes on the groups I follow, or on an artist, writer, singer's personal page, someone will be affronted by a post. To wit, a fabricated example:

"i used 2 like ur music but ur politics suck. u shud stick 2 singing and keep ur opinions 2 urself. unfollowing"

To which a delicious abundance of people will bid them farewell with a cutting barb that I particularly enjoy in these situations:

"This isn't an airport. You don't have to announce your departure."

But seriously, you don't.

You can choose to leave a Facebook Friendship quietly and gracefully, like an introvert at a networking event, and bid an "Irish goodbye".

You don't need to leave breadcrumbs in your wake. It's OK. You still exist in the real world; you can still be found there.

Anyway, I digress.

I devised my own set of rules for my 'culling' session:

a) Spare the family members.
b) Do a Marie Kondo and, in your head, 'thank' the friend for their contribution to your life. If you haven't interacted online with that person for years, then quietly disconnect with them in the online world. If they're meant to be in your life they will rematerialise in the real world.
c) Remember the associations. I deleted a few people from school, as – while we're much older and wiser now, and I would hope, more, well, schooled in how to behave – the association with those people, in my mind, was still heavily grounded in a negative event. And if you can't forget the event in question some 28 years after, then you probably never will and there's no point in stewing on that all the time you're still seeing their posts.
d) Don't be tempted to announce to the survivors via the medium of status update that "if you can read this you survived my cull"; I mean, I know, lucky you, this does mean unfettered access to my wit and ceaseless supply of coffee-related memes, and of course who wouldn't be grateful for that? But still. There's no need.

3) Remember Yang.

What I'm about to say may be a little controversial and a little ouchy but in many senses is advice I'm giving myself so, read into that what you will and apply it to your own FB life if you think it may be necessary.

a) When you're posting, think, who am I posting to? Why am I posting?

I used to post through, well, let's face it, loneliness.

And while I'm still here, livin' the single-girl life twelve years after I was lured onto FB, the need to post out of any need to 'connect' has, I'm pleased to say, gradually dissipated.

I do, of course, have to check myself sometimes:

i) draft post
ii) read post
iii) think Yang
iv) delete post and find a more suitable forum for thoughts (sorry, friends, WhatsApp it is).

At the present time I am struggling to see the point of posting at all.

I cringe when I look back at old posts. Who were they for? Who did they benefit? Did they even benefit anyone but me?

Did the people I'm connected with really need to know "Beth is... eating curly fries in the Barn, Tunbridge Wells, with my girls" two years ago, for example?

No, no, they did not; the girls I was there with knew they were there, knew I was there, heck, they probably even bought me the fries.

It was a different story, I suppose, when I was using FB to check in for safety purposes on long walks, but even those posts have gone the way of my public 2011 yearnings for Jaffa Cakes. Deleted.

Think Yang.

Of course, you do have the option to restrict your audience to exclude Auntie Morag if you're openly asking your family members across the globe what Auntie Morag might like for her 80th birthday.

In addition, I have a Close Friends list comprised of people I trust enough to tolerate my Jaffa-Cake/Terry's Chocolate Orange-craving-related minutiae/occasional but less frequent train rants.

But even those posts will go through the shredder come New Year.

4) Live a little more offline.

I say this purely because of the comment I made at the beginning of this blog post. The work-life balance is swinging firmly in favour of work at present. Don't get me wrong, I love my job. At this time, however, I do seem to be expending my energy on it at the expense of very much else.

(Except maybe Alan things.)

So I've actually done little of note that I haven't mentioned here, and nothing I feel the great need to share on FB either. It just means that when I do have the chance to meet up with people in the real world, our exchanges aren't prefaced by, "Oh, you probably saw this on Facebook...".

Conversely, while I treasure the thousands of photos taken on great nights out, stored on my external hard drive for safe-keeping, I equally, and in fact, increasingly treasure the times for which I have no record except for the memory of good, proper, actual conversation and connection in the real world.

Link Love 🔗💓

Serious/sensible 😐