Recently, however, it has been making me slightly depressed. The idealistic snapshots of the perfectly happy families, the photos of beautiful restaurant meals, the personal sports stats, the pseudo- psychology quizzes e.g. What song sums up your life? In which era should you have lived? What type of wine are you? (Vintage and none too bubbly at the moment!)
It isn't jealousy either. I am happy for the successes of others. It is more a feeling of loss on my part, a sense of grieving for what could have been, had the stresses and difficulties of autism not entered our home.
Also, I have become increasingly angry when reading autism "support" pages especially those slagging off teachers when I know first-hand that we try our best on the behalf of our pupils in spite of the lack of training, finances, increased paperwork and the neglect of our own children. Sometimes the points of parental concern seem so unbelievably trivial and the responses received from strangers are all too often, over the top, like an incensed mob baying for blood. I am so pleased (and relieved) that I can rely on the support of parents at my school. Teachers are only human, after all.
So, I have come to the decision that I need a holiday from Mark Zuckerburg's time-consuming, digital realm and for the month of August, I am going cold turkey. I have deleted FB from my phone and hidden the site from Chrome. I hope to use added time during the month of August to regain my life, try to lose some of the copious amount of weight I need to lose, swim more, read a book, have better conversations, take photographs with the camera I received for my birthday last April and basically think about myself... AND then, come September, I will return fully charged to publish it all on Facebook ;)
P.S. 01/08/14 I believe from reading the BBC News website that "Facebook went down" today. The shock of my absence must have been a step too far! ;)