A Facebook Fast.

Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is–his good, pleasing and perfect will. – Romans 12: 2

I have to be honest with you. Facebook has transformed our lives greatly, keeping us connected with our primary school mates and its-been-ages-since-we’ve-met relatives. But to me, it just makes me feel depressed most of the time. Of the “pinnacle of life” I can never seem to achieve, vacation photos I will never be able to top, sweet photos of couples posting 12343098 times a day, all shouting “YOUR LIFE SUCKS, BET YOU WISH YOU WERE ME” in my face.

I mean I believe most posts were well intentioned. It’s just that I tend to compare and when I see people all dolled up and seeming having the best time of their lives while I sit in front of my laptop with my shorts, glasses, pimple cream and sweaty armpits, it just doesn’t feel so good.

So I’m doing what I should have done a looong time ago: trying a one-month Facebook fast. Note the word “try”, because I’m a terribly inconsistent person. I really hope I can do it (and I did pray about it just now) and in fact the triggering factor was when I read the verse in Romans 12 and I realise that this is the solution for me to stop feeling depressed about life. Always coveting for what I don’t have when I am already blessed more than I already deserve. It’s easy to praise God for what He has done for me, and then one look at my computer screen and I’m back to feeling miserable.

So this is what I plan to do: check Whatsapp only during mealtimes (I used to check my phone so often during study break that my friend Tina had to confiscate my phone!) and Facebook only for messages and notifications.

Let’s see what happens, and please pray for me that I will have the courage and wisdom to pursue this throughout the month!

Updates on my London trip in the next post!

mom’s take on smartphones

my mom had just gotten her first smartphone: a 6 month old samsung galaxy S4 from my sister. she had been wanting to own a smartphone for a while now so she can take and send photos to me via whatsapp. 

my mom works as a nurse in a diagnostic lab (they take blood, do cervical smears, various forms of imaging, ECG +/- stress tests etc). and she tells me the funniest things that happen in her workplace with the emergence of smartphones. just imagine the following scenarios:

– A middle-aged lady comes in for a basic checkup with her 20+ year old daughter. While my mom takes her blood, her daughter whips out her phone, leans back to get a better angle, and takes a picture of her mom’s blood being taken.

– A young man is about to start his ECG stress test. With the ECG leads strapped to his bare chest, my mom asks if he is ready so she can turn on the treadmill and… he whips out his phone for a selfie first! *background song: but first let me take a selfie*

As for my mom, i still took a couple of days to guide her through various tasks on her smartphone: basically those involving taking photos and using whatsapp, and how to bring the two together: like choosing a photo from an album to share with a whatsapp contact, and the other way round: choose a whatsapp contact and select photos to send to the person. she’s faring pretty well now (though I did call her just now and I think she pressed the green button instead of sliding it from left to right.. until being corrected by her colleague), and she likes using emojis in her messages. the samsung keyboard, which is still rather small, and a bit too sensitive to touch irks her sometimes;  it takes her of an average of 2-3 minutes to type a phrase. but still. she seems to be enjoying it (and it’s cute to see her struggling with technology too! LOL)