I downloaded a copy of my Facebook account to preserve the posts and pictures that I had shared online since July of 2008. Facebook started out with people writing on your timeline. My cousin Wendi made the first post on my timeline asking about the imminent arrival of baby Garrett. I responded on my timeline, not quite understanding how the posting worked. That was my first post on Facebook. When I understood how it worked, my first intentional status update on 12 July 2008 was "is waiting to pop".
I maintained Facebook between July 2008 and finally deleted all the content and my account in December of 2018. A solid ten-year run. I realize somewhere along the line that scrolling through the Facebook feed took up an inordinate amount of my time and attention. When I started getting targeted ads about things that I had talked about in the presence of my phone I was annoyed enough to finally call it quits.
2018 was a year of big transitions for my anyhow as my heart left the church of my youth. Things that I was posting were getting me into trouble with church leadership. They didn't call me directly but rather called my husband and told him to tell me to take down posts that I had made. Based on the things I was posting, challenging the official narrative or even sharing religious posts that did not originate with the church was enough to make a significant number of people unfriend or block me, which was much more hurtful than I had anticipated. Being unfriended by someone on Facebook makes real life interactions with them much more terse. It was something I didn't like or want more of.
Rather than endure the slow burn, I opted for privacy and anonymity as I proceeded on my spiritual journey disconnected from the online community I had built. These consisted of childhood friends from Connecticut, my missionary district in the MTC and friends from the Canary Islands, my time at BYU, high school and everywhere in between.
