Priorities

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately, and I've decided to slowly wean myself off of Facebook completely.  I will be posting more often here instead.  My goal is to be Facebook free by the time the movers come to pack our things.  There are several reasons for my decision, but the biggest one lies in making sure I have my priorities straight.  

I don't sleep well.  My boys come by their bad sleeping habits honestly.  If I sleep four hours per night I'm very lucky.  I have had insomnia for as long as I can remember, and always slept poorly as a child.  I had night terrors for years, and I was also a sleepwalker.  When I outgrew those bad sleep problems, I just turned into a crappy sleeper.  I fall asleep easily but wake up around midnight every night.  I am then awake till around four or five and doze off until the alarm wakes me.  It's a miserable existence, but one that I have gotten used to.  I absolutely REFUSE to take medication for it, because I know I'll get hooked on it.  Or worse, I won't hear a kid if they are having problems in the middle of the night because I'm sleeping too soundly.  So, I deal with it.

What the heck does that have to do with anything?  Well, I'll tell you.  My mind races during those hours I'm awake in the middle of the night.  I think about everything under the sun.  But I've come to realize the stuff I think about are things that are posted on someone else's Facebook account.  I can't take it anymore.  I can't take the drama, the cryptic posts some feel they need to share, the immaturity, the problems, the backbiting I see between people.  I just can't take it.  I spend 90% of my time thinking about people that I don't even speak to in "real life".  And that's not necessarily a bad thing if you've got time for it.  But guess what?  I don't!  I am pushing up against a gigantic move.  An old house that needs a lot of work before we put it on the market, and a new house that will need to be taken care of at the same time.  I have a husband that is changing jobs AGAIN next week, and two kids in sports.  I have a Dad in Washington that I should be thinking of more often, and other family that I don't speak to nearly enough.  I have a dear friend from the Navy I haven't had dinner with in a year.  I have a close friend that just had a baby and I haven't even been to see her yet.  I have a Sister at church that is battling cancer for the second time in a year, and I haven't checked on her.  I have this blog that I am trying to keep up for my children but I slack on it.  But the folks that are getting priority of my thoughts are the ones that post frequently on Facebook, whether I know them well or not.  I empathize with their plight, or I get tired of their drama.  Either way it impacts my life in a way I can't afford.  If you have a Facebook account, you understand exactly what I'm talking about.  This isn't about a specific person, or a specific incident, it's just about the whole thing.  

And it's not that I don't care about people.  That's the problem.  I care about ALL the people, and I care more than I can afford because my own families needs aren't being met.  I love my true and close friends and my family dearly, and would do anything for them if they needed me and they know that, I hope.  The problem is that my closest friends and family aren't getting enough of my attention.

And no matter how many hours per night I spend in my head trying to fix the rest of the world's problems, I just can't do it.  Especially on four hours of sleep per night.