Is this thing on?

So it's been almost a year since I last posted to this blog.  Once I got pregnant, it was almost all I thought about.  The growing life inside me.  My excitement, fears and discomfort. I didn't want this blog to be all about that.  And it appeared I had nothing else to say.  I still don't know I have anything to say but now I have fewer people to say it to.

Now that I'm a stay-at-home mum, my existence has become even more insular.  I don't really have any friends with kids.  I'm trying but I struggle with the whole coffee group mummy thing.  So far I haven't met anyone I would actually like to hang out with. Initially I was quite active on Facebook after my son was born; my cousins in particular were very keen for photos and details.  But then I started feeling like I was spamming my other friends.  I actually didn't post that many photos but I would post often. Then I really started to resent Facebook.  For making me feel like a nuisance.  For making me feel like I was shouting across a large room.  For making me listen to other people shouting about shit I didn't want to fucking hear about.  The number of people I was hiding from my newsfeed grew.  I began to really look forward to my New Years Day cull.  I even accepted friend requests that I normally would've rejected; just to bloat the beast I was going to gut.

But the final straw was when I tried to fundraise for AMI Round The Bays. I didn't go with the default official charity partner but chose one that dealt with child abuse / neglect.  Something that has been close to my heart for some time but more so now than ever.  I got quite excited at the prospect of using online social networking to raise money to help the vulnerable children in this country.  Or at least to do my tiny part.  I thought that the combination of the seemingly constant horror stories in the media and the humour of my fundraising page was going to ensure success.  I wasn't asking for much.  $10 for a great cause.  And yet not a single donation through Facebook or Twitter.  No comments, no likes, no nothing.  Yet if I made a bitchy comment or posted a humorous article, I got plenty of positive feedback.  So instead of a cull, at the beginning of this year I quit Facebook.  I've come pretty close to quitting Twitter too.  Instead I only use it for when I have something I just have to say.  Social networking has tremendous capacity to bring about change and awareness.  But I guess that's true of a lot of mediums and yet we mostly choose to embrace the inane, the glib, the trite, the meaningless.  Fundraising should have been a breeze.  I was really hurt that not one person responded.

So now I have no friends.  I didn't have many friends before, really.  But now I have cut everybody loose.  There are people out there who love/like me who aren't related to me.  But now they have to reach out and contact me.  One on one.  Or wait for me to contact them.  And we've all become such lazy friends.  But I feel happier without the safety net of Facebook. Quite a few of my FB friends don't have my email address or mobile number.  I have probably lost contact with them forever.  We'll see.