Facebook vs Blog vs Applications vs 1965 Miles Davis

If you want a soundtrack, here's some moody jazz. I think it sounds like what's been happening between my ears since February 22nd, when the conference turned to shit, then the magazine arrived damaged, then the big conference disappointed, then the rejections came rolling in. Result of MFA/PhD application season: three MFA waitlists. There are both better and worse results than this. Somehow this result refuses to elate.

Not much to celebrate these days.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zpn2JdkTv78




So I closed my Facebook account. Here's why.

1) I did it for the likes. Not for the informed debate. Not for the exchange of ideas. Not for the lolz. I visited Facebook hoping to see the little red flags above the little globe icon.

2) I was posting things so my friends would like them. Preaching to the choir, severely. This serves little purpose than rallying a base (the base of Hitzel fans, perhaps? Do I have fans? Do I have a base? Maybe on Facebook, which is strange. A base is different than friends. A Facebook friend is different than a talk-for-hours friend.), or ego-stroking. Methinks the latter.

3) I didn't make articulate points when I did post. Mostly quick reposts from other peoples' pages of things I liked. So I wasn't using it to communicate. I was using it to make a vanity site.

4) It ate up a lot of my time. I graduate in six weeks. I may never have any homework to do ever again after May 4th or 11th or whenever that is. I should do it now. I have six weeks to revise a bunch of shitty (pretentious, according to one professor) poems into something people will want to read.

5) I still feel like I have to be closeted about being trans on Facebook. So fuck it. If I'm presenting a false self, even digitally, that's just more of the same garbage I tried to leave behind when I resolved to come out as a birthday present to myself, almost a year ago.

6) I kept the account alive to communicate with friends I don't see much anymore. This I will truly miss. But there are other ways. This blog, perhaps.

So I'm resigning my digital-world self to this sphere for a while. Probably not going to be updating much until I graduate. But at least here, if I do, maybe I can flesh out a thought, avoid the vain mundane posts where I gripe about inanities, say something more complex than "like."

One of the last posts here involved me potentially making an FAQ about transsexuality. That'll be the next thing I do. For now, I have to do things that aren't worth detailing so that I can eventually do more consequential things. Wish me luck.