When I posted—on FB—that I planned to deactivate my FB account for 90 days, family and friends offered various reactions, from ‘terrible idea’ and ‘oy gevalt’ and ‘yikes’ to several likes. If you want to know why I plan to deactivate, read on.

I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with Face Book. I love staying in touch with far-flung family, distant friends, and meeting new people through interest groups. I have ‘friends’ in, Bulgaria, Canada, China, France, Israel, and Romania, people I’d never know except for FB. So. Love it.

But on the negative, I’ve seen friends lose jobs over ill-conceived FB posts. I’m totally burned out on politics. I’ve learned to just move on by the hundreds of shared posts about donkeys and elephants, conspiracy theories, killer toxins, and, yes, even cats. Unless it’s something that interests me—like health care or publishing or African violets–I’m probably not reading.  And even so, FB took up WAY too much time.

Last year, I decided to look at FB twice a day, morning and evening. I limited my viewing time to half an hour. But wow. That’s still an hour out of my day.

And then I had to seriously consider all the political bots, fake news, the Analytica data grab in light of my high irritation levels and blood pressure spikes. Why wouldn’t I deactivate my account for 90 days and see what happens?

Back in the 1990’s, I had a highly stressful job and decided to see what happened if I didn’t watch the news for a while. One day, about six months after I turned off my TV, a co-worker stuck her head in my office door to announce, “Gorbachev’s back.” My reply? “I didn’t know he was gone.” See? I missed the agony of all that drama.

So what do I think I’ll miss this time?

Messenger. Although I believe my family and friends can be retrained to text me.

Updates on friends living in foreign lands. Hope they’ll join me here.

The many, gorgeous gardening (indoor and outdoor) photos posted daily.

But I won’t miss the daily histrionics and crises that make me angry, crazy, and worried.

It’s an experiment. In the late ’90’s I went back to watching the news. Maybe I’ll reactivate FB at the end of this trial. Join me here, and I’ll let you know how it goes, but please note. This blog site is a work in progress while I try and figure out the latest WordPress setup. Be patient with me. If you’re a WordPress guru, don’t hesitate to tell me how to achieve a better result.

I’ll probably write about some other things—stress management given post-modern frustrations and political chaos, gardening in the brave new world of climate change–FYI, it’s Easter, it’s snowing. And who knows. Maybe some thoughts about health care and publishing.

If you’re coming on board from New Gardener Blues, thanks for making the switch. If you’re here from Face Book, welcome! Glad we can stay in touch for the duration.

Finally, if you’re new to my blog–or to me–I hope you’ll enjoy.