HighCastle of Geek

​A blog/journal about my life and the stuff I like. Popular subjects include music, guitars, gear, books, movies, video games, technology, humor.

More frequent blogging here

I took a brief hiatus from Facebook. In a periodic reassessment of my life's priorities (a process I engage in every few months to years), I've found that FB for the most part was not adding much of value to my life. At its best, it provides an easy portal to engage in actual conversations with people who share similar interests or otherwise are friends/family. It seems for me that the overwhelming amount of time I spend on there is just reading through a bunch of meaningless posts, getting the same "news" regurgitated by various pages/people, and at best getting a random "like" for anything original I post. Unfortunately, there is still the occasional nugget of valuable information (I wouldn't have found out about King Crimson coming to Dallas until too late without FB) and I'm subscribed to a student group through Berklee where there are occasional important notices.

When I first started posting "original" content (including covers), it was nice to have at least a small audience from which to receive feedback. I greatly appreciated the friends and family who would indulge these efforts because I know I'm the worst about wanting to watch or listen to something if I'm not in the mood. 

The problem became that over time, FB becomes this self perpetuating process where you feel validated by the completely trivial "likes" you receive, even if they only reflect a mouse click. How much effort does a mouse click take? I know I'm pretty generous in giving them if someone posts anything I find remotely entertaining. I'm not complaining about the people on FB, everyone has their own lives and honestly probably don't even see the majority of stuff that any one individual is posting. 

So, all that to say this is where I'll be posting more of my occasional ramblings. I had been using FB for that and it was a nice convenient means to quickly document a thought or picture that others could comment or interact on, although that was rare. I'll still use FB but I'm learning to divest myself from any expectation of feedback or outcome. It may eventually be an artist portal for my various creative works in the future, and in that case I may setup a separate page.