conflicted

have you tried out the new timeline feature on facebook?

i haven't. it doesn't matter. it will go live soon. but lately, i've been conflicted about facebook. i've been a member of facebook from way back. i believe i first started using it in 2004. seven years ago. it was great to see what old high school classmates were doing (woa, they have 3 kids!) and spy on old ex-flames, etc. now it seems more and more like a chore.

am i getting to old? does anyone else feel this way? all of the farmville, poking, mafia wars, two newsfeeds (two? why two?), changing my privacy settings every month (to keep things private) seems like too much crap.

in order to try and remedy this i went through a big spring cleaning on my facebook friend list. yes, i de-friended people. i'm not ashamed to admit it. just because i met you at a party or saw you in the hall way at school does not mean we are friends. i went through my entire friend list and kept people based on the following criteria:

1. are they family?
2. were we good friends in the past?
3. have we hung out besides at work or school?

basically, are we or have we ever been actual friends?

this weeded out a lot of white noise.  i'm sure there are many good people that i cut out of my facebook. but to be fair, if any of these people de-friended me i would not be offended either. i'm trying to make it easier to communicate with the people i do care about, in a last ditch effort to not quit facebook. has anyone else struggled with this?

sometimes i'm so tempted to quit facebook, but living half-way across the world really cuts into communication in general, so i'll probably stay aboard at least while we are here.

and then my sweet sister will upload new pictures of caitlin, or my best friend from high school will have a status update so funny that milk shoots out of my nose, or i get tagged in pics from a few years ago that i totally forgot about. and i think i might be on facebook for the rest of my life.