In the past couple weeks a few posts from old high school friends on Facebook have got me thinking again about who I actually want to stay connected with, with whom I want to share my news, and from whom I care to receive news.
So today, I did some cleaning. I unfriended a friend of a friend from my junior year abroad. I unfriended several very nice people I met at a wedding in 2013 that I have communicated with since the immediate weeks after the wedding. And I unfriended an RA from college who tragically passed away in a car accident before graduating; right after her death her Facebook page was a kind of memorial, but 14 years on I feel like I don't need to hold on to that anymore.
I actually been thinking about some more drastic unfriending, as in the huge list of friends from my hometown. When Facebook first came out and you could easily look up people based on their high schools, these old friends were among the first I friended. It was so amazing to see what they were all up to, and to reconnect with people I hadn't seen in years.
But for a lot of those people, 10 minutes of catching up on their lives goes a long way. Do I really need to keep up to date with the girl I went to middle and high school with and now lives in New Mexico and swears by the healing powers of essential oils? I haven't had a real exchange with her since 2002.
The first few were easy, but I think I will work my way up to some of the "harder" ones: the very nice ex-colleague I haven't spoken with since 2010; the person I went to school with but hasn't been a part of my life since 2002; the friend of a friend I met a few times.
And maybe I'll even be so drastic as to unfriend people who used to be very good, even best, friends, but our divergent life paths mean we don't have much in common anymore, and even less to say to each other.
Call it a spring prune, in order for the light to get in and new branches to grow.
1 comment:
I unfriended a lot a few years ago. News Feed helped me with that, since there were people whose news I realized just didn't interest me.
These days I am more circumspect before adding people, in the hopes that I'll avoid unfriending that way. I tend to wait until I've known the person a while and interacted with them in more individual or at least pertinent ways.
I say, go for it. Be brutal! A few people have re-added me years later, and I've said yes in some cases. One or two friend-backs is more interesting than 100 friends that are pretty much just clutter.
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