Why I’m Taking a Break from Facebook

I love Facebook. I can spend hours just scrolling through all of the things that my friends post, sometimes liking them and sometimes commenting, but mostly scrolling. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem that it’s time very well spent, and although I help others develop their social media strategies, Facebook hasn’t done much to excel my career.

Part of that is due to my not using it as well as I could because I use it more for my own amusement than I often do for my business development. However, even when I do post things to promote whatever it is I’m doing at the moment, only a small portion of my friends and followers ever even see it. So while I have been averse to the idea of disengaging from Facebook because it allows me a platform to share what I’m up to, the truth is that it doesn’t seem to help all that much and seems to be much more of a time suck than an aid for my betterment.

The biggest challenge for me is that I feel I should be more of a creator than a consumer, and while I do occasionally write something witty in a comment or update on Facebook, I’ve been largely negligent in focusing my energy on creating, but rather, merely consuming other people’s content. Since I tend to find life much more fulfilling when I’m writing, playing music, performing, and producing, I think it’s a good time to focus my energy on those things rather than merely consuming what is shared through Facebook.

Of course, while I do love many of the smile-inducing trivialities that are shared through social media, much of it is merely a distraction, and I already have enough distractions in my life. So, in an effort to focus more on the possibilities that life actually has to offer me, I will not be using Facebook through the month of April, other than what I do for my clients.

The Cambridge Analytica details don’t have much to do with my decision. I recognized early on that any free service I use on the Internet is using me as the product, but since I don’t do much purchasing, I tend to ignore a lot of the advertising that might be focused at me. However, though I may not be much of a material consumer, consuming as much content as I do has proven to be a bit detrimental to my development, artistically and personally.

So, if you are one of the people who has enjoyed engaging with me on Facebook, and you feel that the content I produce is something that benefits you, I invite you to come engage on my platform here at SteveMc.xyz instead of at Mr. Zuckerberg’s. Here, I will be sharing chapters from my second book, The Rucksack Letters, about my year-and-a-half journey across America, my novel How to Survive an Estralarian Mind Meld, which is about aliens who want me to help turn Sarasota into a marketing mecca, chapters from my upcoming book Money, Sex, Power & Faith, essays on the writings of Will Rogers, and songs and poetry from The Cowboy Cabaret. I’ll also be producing and releasing videos, sharing things from my other books, and writing more original content.

I will be releasing my weekly newsletter though Facebook, and I hope you subscribe to keep up to date on what I’ve got going on and what I share. I may be back on Facebook in May, but I feel that I need to spend more time and energy on the projects that are important to me rather than all of the information and disinformation that the rest of the world finds important. I only have so much attention to spend every day, and I’d rather spend it in the flow of creativity.

I hope you come along for the ride.