Day 580 OUT OF Beijing: The Great Purge of 2015.

 

 

Jill has about 900 friends on Facebook.  I have 2,710.

I had 2.710.  I am now down to just over 1,000.

I decided, last weekend, to do the great purge of 2015.

I’ve been reading a book titled You Are not so smart by David McRaney.

It primarily deals with cognitive distortions and why we think we know or believe something when, in reality, we tend to either be primed by something or we make up reasons to justify our beliefs.

We even make up stories and memories to prove our own beliefs and this can be fairly easily manipulated.

At one point in the book, he writes about how we can only really focus on a certain amount of stories/people at one time and any more than that we lose concentration and the themes of what they are telling us.

Since Jill and I are working on our new site, our books about life and how you want to live it, and how to minimize your things to maximize your life, I wanted to minimize my friends list to have more control over who I interact with each day.

I also set a goal of only being on Facebook for 30 minutes a day for the month of January and seeing how it affected my mood and my ability to reach important goals that we need to get done for our new site to go live and our books to be published.

We need to work on the covers for our books and our bios for them.  They also need more editing and we have a lot of places to visit, people to see, and events to update for our site SF Tourism Tips and we are working with our friend on building the new website which takes time and effort.  We have our logo, which we are still in the design stage but getting close, and it will need concerted effort and not wasted Facebook time.

We are heading off to some museums today to see them and take pictures, update information, and make connections.

Yesterday we went to a local and were shown around it and treated to lunch because our site has brought them business and they were thankful for everything we’ve done.  It was really wonderful to put a person to the page and know that we are making a difference in their business and they see all the hard work Jill has put into it and that they wanted to hear her story, and our story, and how much we had in common.  It was also delicious food and we had excellent wine.

Back to this weekend and The Purge:  I just decided I want to drop people I don’t really connect with or post to my wall.  I just don’t see the need for so many friends if I’m not actually connecting and being “friends” with them.

I still have over 1,000 friends but these are people that I do actually tend to connect with in some way.  They are fellow travelers, or from high school, or salsa dancing, or somewhere else and I think they will be important as Jill and I start our life of being vagabonds and traveling the world.  They will keep me grounded by being able to check in, say hello, and also meet up on our trip around the world.

It is a pretty daunting change to think of moving to another country, after living abroad for the last 1.5 years, but as long as we can spend time seeing our friends and family in the next 6 months, I think it will work itself out quite well.

I’m excited, and nervous, to be taking on this adventure because we will be able to see so many exciting sites and locations around the world.  We will also be able to meet so many new friends.

The part that makes me nervous is being away from family and friends in case something negative happens and not being able to help or be there in time.

This is the trade off one makes when they are an expatriate.

 

You see things others may never see but you miss things you wish you were there for.