Summer UNPLUGGED

Like many others, I have a Facebook account. Like email, Facebook has become a daily stop on the Internet. Facebook allows me to be nosy, without being intrusive. I can brag a bit about what we are doing here at our house, or even talk a bit about how my day is going. Most of it is redundant. Many of my facebook friends are my real life friends, and so Facebook has become an interesting redundancy in my life. It keeps me at the computer for longer than I would like, and prevents me from doing the things around here that should be of higher importance.

Facebook has become an issue at our house recently. With reports of privacy concerns, my husband, an IT technician and thus a worthy source, has questioned the true mission of this Internet company. As a family, we are naturalists, (striving) survivalists, and homesteaders. We like simple quiet things. We strive to keep unnecessary things from crowding our lives so that, in the end, our lives will become more abundant with the things that truly grant us peace and happiness.

For these reasons, we no longer feel Facebook fits in with our life goals. It no longer provides a reasonable intrusion. Facebook has become a near addiction to many and so tomorrow, Quit Facebook Day (May 31) we are deleting our accounts. 25,000 other people are doing it as well.

This turn of events has also caused me to question other forms of intrusion that keeps me from my life goals. We are not minimalists in the sense that we don't have a phone or a vehicle. We appreciate modern technologies for what they are, and embrace the modern world as mostly beneficial, however we also see how certain technologies are not beneficial or even desired. Modern women would baulk at the thought of spending an entire 10 hour day to completing the wash as pioneer women did over 100 years ago. Who has the time? How would we get anything else done if we had to spend so much time on one task? For all the time saving devices we posses nowadays, we seem to have less and less time. Are modern technologies really saving us time? or are we kidding ourselves? Technology has become a crutch in many ways. It prevents us from being who we truly are and living the lives we were meant to live.

I am looking forward to an UNPLUGGED summer. As a family we will watch far less television. We will be on the internet less. We will be enjoying real life, rather that an artificial one found on social networking sites and the internet. I can not wait to feel free.