It's done!

Happy Dia de los muertos. Just got back from a crazy Halloween party and I realized that my month is up. I got back on facebook and I spent a good 20 minutes looking at the pictures of a complete stranger. Maybe I'm not over my addiction just yet. But at least my week is slow.

I'll post pictures once I get my margarita!

Now what?

So my very busy week is done. My no facebook experiment made it less stressful, but not that I'm back with my routine, I have nothing to do.

Three more days until I can have facebook (if I decide to get it back) and my margarita.

Any suggestions to keep me busy until then?

What to do with all this extra time...

The last two weeks have been dedicated to midterms, so I apologize for almost abandoning you all. I do have some good news, however. Thanks to my no facebook experiment, I have all this extra time in my hands to do things like, well...study.

As a journalism student, I live by deadlines. I'm good at multitasking and setting priorities, but only when I have to. This week, I definitely had to.

On Monday I had 2 papers and a midterm, Tuesday a research paper and about 200 pages of reading, Wednesday another paper and about 100 other pages and for tomorrow...ta da, my COM LAW exam. Between this week and last week from hell I should be celebrating. Combine it with the fact that it's Halloween, only my favorite holiday EVER and you have a recipe for disaster.

But before I get to rock my costume (it's a surprise!) , I need to finish work. Guess what? Having no facebook had left me stressed free.

That seven page paper that I handed in today? It would have taken me at least half a day to do--if I was lucky. It took me a total of three hours to get it done once I finished doing all the reading (which might have taken me half a day, but that's debatable).

And why I'm I not stressing out over my COM Law exam? probably because after I finished my six-page paper that's due tomorrow (which I did in about three hours also, normally, in which I skyped with my friends from home) I had some time to review my notes and get my questions straightened before I really start cramming tomorrow.

I still have to work on that whole getting started way in advance. Maybe I will once I actually miss a deadline, which has yet to happen. But if this keeps up, I might not get back on facebook until the semester ends.

How many margaritas do you think I can I get out of that bet?

What I would be tweeting if I could...

Everyone should watch CNN's special Latino in America. The second part of the series airs tonight at 9p.m.

I would have been tweeting about how great it was all night, but I couldn't. This doesn't count, does it?

I'd love to take you out, but I can't find you on facebook

Friday night at Chuck's bar. It was the typical crowd of Yankee sports fans (the game was on) and college students. If you are hoping to see people that you haven't seen in a long time, there is a really good chance that they are here.

Case in point: lawyer boy. I'm not going to disclose anyone's name if I'm not saying anything positive about them. Especially when they are in law school and they could find a way to sue me for presenting them under a false light.

Lawyer boy and I had been facebook chatting for a few days before I I disabled the social network. He is, in fact, one of the many reasons why I did it in the first place. I was getting tiered of meeting guys and not having actual conversations with them. I figured (maybe inspired by watching He's Just Not That Into You) that if he really was interested, he would find out about my no facebook experiment and find my phone number from one of our mutual friends. He didn't and I put him in the he's just not that into you shelf (Yep, there is a shelf and I have no problem adding people to it).

But lawyer boy was at Chuck's and the first thing that comes out of his mouth when he sees me is: When are you getting back on facebook? Obviously, he had cared enough to ask why my profile no longer appeared when he searched for me.

"Excuse me? You could have just called," was all I could say.

"I couldn't. I don't have your number."

Whatever. My mistake. I thought you had to be smart to get into law school. I left Chuck's laughing. He never asked for my number, but it' fine. Let's face it. I'm not that into him either. And I have no intention of seeing anyone who doesn't know how to use the phone.

Unwired: The video

10 things that you can use as an excuse to procrastinate when you don't have facebook

1. This blog
2. Your friend's blog
3. Paris Hilton getting killed in Supernatural
4. The rest of Thursday night TV
5. The rest of the week's TV shows. On DVR.
6. The latest issues of Glamour and Marie Claire arriving this week.
7. Weekly issues of Entertainment Weekly and New York Magazine
8. Skype
9. Netflix
10. Swine Flu

Group projects

October is, apparently, the month for group projects. Three of my professors have divided us into groups and asked us to complete some form of task.

After the inicial, "Hi, I'm Andrea. Yes, I'm your partner. Sure, let's get this done this weekend!" I get the comment that I know will ultimately make me look like a complete loser.

-"I'll facebook you."
-"Uh, I actually don't have facebook. Do you think you can call or e-mail me?"
-"Why don't you have facebook?"

Can I remind everyone that five years ago no one had facebook?

I'm trying to be cool here, people!

Don't say I didn't warn you yesterday..

200 and plus pages to read and a paper due first thing tomorrow morning. How I wish I can blame my procrastination on facebook.

Skype isn't cheating

I had a full house this weekend, so not being able to go on facebook or messenger to interact with people didn't seem like a big deal. Until everyone packed their bags and I was left alone in my apartment.

One thing I've learned so far is that I didn't need facebook to procrastinate. Okay, so I already did all the reading for one of my classes this week and I actually got started on homework that is not due until Wednesday, but that paper that is due on Tuesday that my friend started on Friday night? Still no sign of it coming alive. You'll sense my stress tomorrow.

Since my roommate is out and most of my friends are busy with homework, I decided to look for ways to interact with my friends from home. I had a web cam hiding in the back of my closet that I wasn't using because it required me to install messenger, a big no-no on this experiment.

Thinking that I couldn't use Skype with it, I let it go. Until today when my friend Nancy told me that Skype would read my web cam without the need for messenger. My apologies if I sound technologically challenged.

So after about an hour (where I again delayed working on my paper) I finally installed my web cam and Skype and my friend and I had an actual conversation. Almost face to face! Isn't this awesome?

I love how I'm easily pleased...

I have call waiting. Look at that!

I'm beginning to like this no-facebook experiment of mine. Maybe my friends are as excited as I am or they are just worried that I am going to go crazy from not connecting with people. Whatever the case, they are actually calling! Some just to say hello!

The day before I deactivated facebook I posted my experiment idea as my status and sent my e-mail to a few friends in a private message, just in case they didn't get a chance to see what I was up to. I told myself that I was only going to send the private message to a few people that I knew would worry if suddenly they couldn't find my profile, but I was surprised when out of
50o+ friends I ended up sending the message to about 20.

Out of those, a few called last night asking how the experiment is doing. Some tell me they are proud and understand why I'm doing it; others are advising me not to. One is betting me a Margarita if i make it up until November 1st.

I really am loving the 5-minute phone conversations that I'm having with these people. I hope the keep on coming. I can already taste the tequila.

Text a little, why don't you?

Maybe getting rid of all text messages is a little too much. Texting is a great invention. It makes it easy to get in touch with people when they are in a place where they can't take a call and, when you have unlimited texts in your cell phone plan(as I do), it is cheaper that the actual phone call.

What really bothers me about texting is that people, myself included, use it as a means to have conversations that would be better done on the phone.

"I'm outside," said one text I recently received from my friend who was picking me up. By this time, my phone is usually at the bottom of my purse and I'm sitting in front of the couch, watching TV, waiting for the doorbell or at least the phone, to ring. And she gets mad because I made her wait.

So taking this into consideration, I decided that for my experiment I am only going to answer texts that require a simple "yes, no, maybe" reply. No picture or video texts can be seen, and when I do get a text, if it requires me to scroll down to read the entire thing, then I can't reply to it.

On a brighter note, I did get a few phone calls last night from friends that wanted to make plans fom the night and knew I wasn't allowed to text. Extra points to those that knew I couldn't text and called me anyway even though they are addicted to their Blackberries. Is this a sign of friendship? I think so.

Signs of withdrawl...

We are creatures of habit. When my little brother broke my car's radio a few years ago, it took me a while to get used to. I'm not exactly a music person and I didn't want to spend $200 to fix it right away, so I did the only thing I could do: drive in silence.

The funny thing is that every few minutes you would find me reaching for the power button to turn the radio on, only to discover that nothing would happen. I'd laugh at myself for forgetting, get my hand back on the wheel and keep on driving. Yet less that a minute later the same thing would happen: I'd inadvertently reach for the on button trying to get rid of the silence.

The same thing is happening now that my facebook page is disabled. I get up, turn my computer like I always used to, go to the kitchen to get a cup of coffee while it uploads and sit back to my desk, only to remember that I can't go on facebook.

Let's face it: last night was Friday. I wasn't going to start that paper on sex tourism that's due on Tuesday, so there really was no point on having my computer on, teasing me to check any of the many social media websites that are saved in my history. So I do the smart thing: I turn the computer on and go to the living room and catch up on Grey's Anatomy.

Guess what I do less than an hour later? Yep. Get off the couch, go to my room and without thinking about it, I turn my computer back on. Only to realize once it's set that I have no use for it.

Anything like this happened to you? And if so, how long did it take you to get out of the routine?

It hurt. I admit it.

I just deactivated my profile. It hurt. I admit it. I felt guilty when old pictures with me and someone I actually don't even talk to anymore appeared on the deactivating page saying the were going to miss me.


Maybe I should do homework or something.

I hope you miss me...

I just spent the entire morning chatting on facebook. I could have done homework, or gone for a run, or clean my apartment, but instead, i sat in front of my computer anxiously waiting for my crush to reply.

Then, a creepy feeling hit me. I might have conversations with this person, but between facebook and text messages, I have no idea what his voice sounds like or if he could even construct a sentence longer than 140 characters.

And this wasn't just my crush. Friends I once spent hours talking to on the phone were suddenly wishing me happy birthday through a message on my wall.

It wasn't until my own mother started chatting about her day that I decided something must be done. And this is how my little experiment came to place.

For the whole month I am disabling my facebook profile and all forms of social interaction that require, well, minimum interaction. This means that I will not sign on to IM, twitter or gmail chat.

There are a few things I want to test. First of all, I want to improve the way I communicate with people. A lot is left to the imagination when body language and tone of voice is missing from the conversation, so perhaps this experiment will avoid a few misunderstandings.

Then, of course, is the problem I'm going to refer to as the tree in the forest. Just as no one knows if the tree makes a sound if no one is around I wonder, do I exist in the social world if I don't have a facebook profile?

Guess we are about to find out.