It's been eight long years and I'm not sure how to break this to you, so I'll just say it.

We're done.

Earlier this week I made a decision to post less. I was going to stop updating publicly and only keep in touch with a select group of people who actually cared about what I was doing. I started limiting the visibility of photos and went through deleting posts from months and years ago. But that wasn't enough.

Something still felt wrong.

I thought about it yesterday, about what I was doing. What had I been doing for the last eight years? I'm a very neurotic person with an overactive mind. MySpace was a lifesaver for me, or so I thought. I was able to look at hundreds of people and their updates. I absorbed people and what they were saying. Facebook came along and amplified it.

I started thinking about all the time I spent using this. It had become a drug. My senior year of high school I was spending my lunch sitting on MySpace. In college I would spend night after night on MySpace and Facebook just observing everything that was being said. Nothing changed after I dropped out. It's only been the same, if not worse. I wake up in the morning and check my Facebook to see what updates there are and it's the last thing I check before I go to sleep.

It had become an insecure and manipulative girlfriend to me, one that had me feeling like I must constantly check in and see how it's doing. If I'm not on Facebook then I'm out of the loop. The reality is, any status update that was funny or interesting that others might have liked, was forgotten about by the next day. That's the way it works. To live in that community you must be active.

What happened to my life? What happened to living it for me, rather than sharing every detail of my life on Facebook to people who really don't care? They're just like me, sharing every detail of their life and the truth is, I don't really care about what they're saying either. I don't click on most things people share, or watch videos or even take the time to look at their photos.

I think Facebook had become so addictive because for most of those eight years I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. It was a cheap therapist to make me feel good about myself. AT this point I know where my priorities are in life, I know what I want to do and where I want to take my work. My neurosis is still and will always be there but my insecurities are fading. Facebook is no longer a positive for me.

I have no energy to deal with girls who use Facebook as a tool for manipulation, update my own status or spend time organizing photo albums. It's sad really, that I let it go on for so long. I wondered if I would be able to just switch it off after eight years of constant checking. And really, it hasn't been hard because what replaced Facebook was a couple of things. I realized that none of it matters at all. None of it. And most importantly, I feel empowered. I feel like a part of my life has been given back to me.

So am I off of there completely? No, I'm not. I still have my page for my photography and other work, if I deactivate my profile that gets deactivated too. I'm also using it to check and send messages (I have deactivated the chat functionality), although my main form of communication from here out is email and telephone.

That's it. This blog, which I'll be updating from time to time, and my creative work is what I'll be sharing. I have no hard feelings towards any of my friends who use Facebook and Twitter.

Tuning myself out is what's best for me.