How Many Days (Hours?) Until I Go Stark Raving Mad?

Dear LilyOnTheLam.Com Readers:

From time to time over the past year and a half, I have conducted some experiments in deprivation.  Last year, I sold my car and went two and a half months without a car while my new convertible was being built.  What did I learn?  I learned that summer in Tampa is a sucky time to be walking everywhere - especially when you start sweating at the drop of a hat like me.  I also learned that a great deal of my life is within a four mile radius and I should use my car less and walk more.  

Then after I received my new car, I decided to get rid of my cable TV.  Which sadly impacts my day to day life a lot more than not having a car.  Goodbye DVR, goodbye basic cable and hello more money back in my pocket.  I took advantage of Netflix and free Hulu (not paid Hulu Plus).  I watched "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" on their websites.  I watched 14 seasons of "Dallas" and nearly went insane from that.  

I watched a lot of documentaries for free on Hulu.  I also bought a couple season passes to shows I just could not live without from iTunes (I'm talking about you, Sons of Anarchy!  I named my cat Chibs after you.  Kurt Sutter should name a character after me!)  But for the bulk of my BRAVO TV reality shows, I went to the gym and worked out and watched them there for free.  Despite all the avenues in which I was still watching television, overall I was spending less time watching TV and spent a lot less money.  

I went six months without cable TV until a little HBO movie premiered, called "Behind the Candelabra."  Yes, my desire to see Michael Douglas as Liberace greatly outweighed my desire to keep up my "No Cable Ban."  And then after I saw the movie, I was weak (weak, I say!) and kept my cable subscription.  A move I am not proud of and I am "this close" to surrendering the DVR box and the cable once again.

But since I have yet to rid myself of the TV monkey on my back, I decided to address another "time suck" - Facebook.  A couple months ago I decided to do a Facebook ban to try to regain some of my life spent staring mindlessly at a computer.  I spend enough time in front of a computer for work as it is!  But it was too easy to check Facebook on my laptop and on my iPhone.  I got sucked back in after about a week and a half.  I knew more drastic measures were needed.

Deactivation time for my Facebook account.

(Cue sinister music here!)  

I still have Twitter, a Candy Crush game app (not linked to Facebook) on my iPad and this website so I am not giving up the social media addiction all together - but I felt I needed to cut the ties with Facebook ... at least for now.  (Hello deactivation versus delete feature!  Oh Facebook, how well you know your addicts.)

Facebook has become my primary interface of communication with many friends around the world, so hopefully they will understand and seek me out via good old email.  I will miss the cat memes ("15 Best Cat Memes Ever") and pictures of my friends' kids acting silly, but hopefully I can stay strong and devote the extra time in my day to curing cancer or watching more TV ... 

I'm interested to see how long I can last before I break down and reactivate my Facebook account and scream "Friends, friends- I'm back!  Send me some Candy Crush lives and your political ranting posts!" 

One of the down sides is that I suspect some Facebook friends will jump to the conclusion that I unfriended them.  Of course this actually could work to my advantage - if I receive a text saying "Hey did you unfriend me on Facebook?"  I could reply: "YES AND YOU KNOW WHY I DID IT!"  May provide a wealth of information in response.  "Oh noooo!  You found out that I kidnapped all your cats and replaced them with robots with hidden cameras!  Oh noooo!  You found out we hosted a party and watched the hidden camera video of you lip-syncing in your underwear!  Oh noooo!"

Damn robot placing friends!  A woman needs her privacy!

I read the article "Facebook Is Bad For You - and Giving Up Using It Will Make You Happier."  It seemed really heavy-handed and I wanted to say "Come on, it's not THAT bad."   

Time will only tell if deactivating Facebook is a good thing or if this is the move that sends me on a downward spiral into madness!  

So stay tuned LilyOnTheLam.Com readers as I try yet another deprivation experiment.  Will I become happier for being off Facebook or will my blog posts evolve into an endless repetitive stream of the sentence "All work and no Facebook makes Lily a dull girl"?  Run Shelley Duvall, run!