Social-Networking Butterfly? OR, If the Fleece Fits, Wear It

I know a lot of people have blogged about Facebook. In the months since I joined, Facebook has really cut into my blogging (and cooking, cleaning, paying attention to the kids) time but this is one of the first times I’ve felt like writing about it.

I recently realized that when I see my Facebook friends comment on dinner parties and other shindigs they’ve attended, I sort of feel left out. This is because I balance that lovely dichotomy of feeling like a complete nerdy misfit while also thinking that the entire world revolves around me .

So, if a neighbor puts pictures of a party on Facebook, or someone else writes about a Girls’ Night Out, I’m bummed about not being invited. I don’t think it’s at all tacky to put pictures like this up… I just have a wee bit of social envy. And it’s not as if I am dying to actually GO to these events—the fact that I’ve donned my fleece bathrobe by 6 pm four out of the last five nights might give you a clue that I’m a serious homebody. A homebody who wants to be asked.

I don’t know but this could stem from the fact that I was never invited to a boy/girl party in Junior High. I now consider that to have been divine providence, but at the time it felt downright cruel. New Year’s Eve 1985 didn’t help either. My mom drove me around looking for “THE party” at Tommy White’s. We just could not find the darn house! After several attempts, we had to give up. This is pre-pre-pre GPS and cell phone.

I lashed out at my mom, who just wanted to spend a quiet New Year’s at home in her bathrobe not carting her weeping daughter around the darkened suburbs. My best friend (and blog reader!) Lisa G. borrowed the phone to call periodically and update me on the rockin’est party of the year and to encourage me to keep trying. My pain was deep. I cried my 10th grade self to sleep right around midnight, bemoaning the misery that was my life. To this day I can't bear the idea of other people having fun while I'm not.

Sooooo, be it a bat mitzvah in Boise or a baptism in Bellingham, I want to be included.

When Tom surprised me on my 40th this month with dinner out with 8 friends, I didn’t put pictures up on Facebook. If any of them had been super-flattering of me I admit I would have reconsidered, but really I just didn’t want to leave someone out. Even if those some ones were people I hadn’t seen since 6th grade student government camp.

One option to rev up our social life would be to entertain more ourselves and be the instigators of fun social events. But that takes time, energy, and gumption, which seem to be in short supply at the See house these days.

And this weekend? We were kindly invited to an adults-only Halloween party for the first time EVER! We can’t make it for multiple reasons, one of which just might be the siren song of my blue fleece bathrobe, but I must admit it was awesome to be asked.

So I’m wondering… does Facebook make you feel more included or more left out?