Post Number 40

Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls. Step right and enjoy this last post of my Lenten experiment. You're reading post 40. And while I technically went beyond Lent (it ended Wednesday night, I'm told by more religious folk than I), I consider #40in40 a success.

Generally, we learn things from experiments, and I certainly did. So what have I concluded, you ask? Let me tell you.

• Writing is hard. I've always known this — after all, I write all day, five days a week. (In some form. Not always a ton, but words are put together and published in some manner nearly every day.) I've always hated people who think a glass of wine and moonlight lead to divine inspiration and words that magically appear on a page. Those people are fakers. Writers know, and now I understand more deeply, that developing ideas is hard. Not falling asleep at night and writing instead is hard. Trying to be interesting or amusing or emotional is hard. I don't have a big audience, but I also didn't want to plop words on the screen that didn't mean something to me or the folks who might actually read them. Creating meaningful content nearly every day for 40 days was hard work.
• Writing is also incredibly rewarding. While I'm not super thrilled with all 40 posts in this collection, there are a few that I look back on with pride. Which leads me to ...
• I write much better under pressure. Sometimes I'd write during 30 free minutes at work, and the post knocked my socks off. I didn't overthink it — I just busted the damn thing out. I've always worked this way and blogging seemed to be no different. I'd usually write late at night, close to my midnight deadline, and I'd always get something up. I think ahead, sure, and do what a former professor called "prewriting" in my head. But when push came to shove, the less time I had to write, the better the post. 
• I don't think this will ever make me rich and famous. But I do think I have a knack for the non-fiction essay and to neglect that sort of writing in the future would be to my detriment. Bitch Brain keeps trying to tell me I'm not a real writer, but I think I've proven her wrong with this project.
• This is the most important lesson: I'm a lot more than the Girl Who Got Dumped Via Email. And I have a lot more to write about than the circumstances surrounding that event and the years that led up to it. I'm not saying that there aren't more stories about Email Dumper taking shape in my head, but this experiment helped me realize that I'm more than that one story. I'm the sum of my stories. And I've written 40 of them since March 1 alone.

But what about Facebook, Ms. Loseafatty? 

Oh that. We'll here's what I learned during six weeks without the ol' FB in my life.

• Facebook is evil. It shows us the world it wants us to see. Without Facebook, I experienced the news, current events and people on my own terms. I loved it. I made more plans with people in person. I got out more. I made more of an effort to initiate social activities with people. It was great. It was like 2005 all over again.
• I stopped comparing myself to everyone else. It's incredibly freeing, not logging in to a program and seeing how blissfully happy, beautiful and satisfied everyone else in the world appears to be. I still have some days when I feel like I've wasted my life or I have a bad day or I feel lonely. But for the most part, I love not having everyone else's business shoved in my face. (Take your "#blessed" and stick it up your bum, OK?)
• I became a voracious Washington Post reader. Holy cow, that paper is churning out some great journalism these days. And I read it on my own time and didn't have to read other peoples' interpretations of the stories. I just read great stories. In silence. And it was lovely.
• Stalking people is harder without Facebook, but it's still possible. Hey, I'm no angel.
• I used to spend way too much time on FB at work. I'm much more productive now. I'm also more productive at home.
• I'm going to log in at midnight just to see if I have any notifications and then on Monday, I'm going back to my no-FB ways. It may just become a weekend treat.

In conclusion:

Writing is hard, but I think I'm OK at it.

Facebook is evil.

I'm going to try to keep doing the former, but probably not every day.

I'm going to try to keep avoiding the latter.

And hey, if you were someone who read even a handful of these, please know how much I appreciate that. It's nice to know that a least a few people heard my voice.

THE END.