It's been an interesting 12 hours. People's reaction to my leaving consists of "likes" where people are kinda saying "good on ya!" and other actually write their support of the idea, others worry that I will lose touch with them, others will miss my posts. All in all, thank you for the kindness and I am so glad to see that my posts are helpful to others!

But today is the day - I go to Facebook to try and cancel my account and I can't seem to figure out how to do it! I have been searching through my settings and can't seem to figure this out. They don't make it easy to leave. I go to scroll down to the bottom of my page and see the last few years of posts and get a bit nostalgic...  past adventures, past relationships, friends and relatives lovely comments, and Ayla growing up in front of my eyes. Sigh... this is harder than I thought. I start questioning whether this is necessary. Perhaps I could just ignore it for a few days...

I have tried that before and to be honest, it's like having a bar of chocolate sitting in the drawer when you are trying to give up sweets - I just know it's there and it keeps "calling me."

Ok, back to trying to figure out how to leave...
Ahhh - I figured it out! No they do not make it easy! Here's the message I receive before I confirm that I want to deactivate my account:

 

"Are you sure you want to deactivate your account?"

 

"Deactivating your account will disable your profile and remove your name and picture from most things you've shared on Facebook. Some information may still be visible to others, such as your name in their friends list and messages you sent."

 

"Your 394 friends will no longer be able to keep in touch with you." and here's the kicker, photos of various friends are posted along with the message beside each photo, "____ will miss you."

Nice touch... and indeed, I realize that I will miss everyone and miss having a wee window into everyone's lives - especially those of you who live far away. However, I'm going on a Facebook holiday for a couple of months to realign things in my non-virtual life and this is the perfect time to do so. 

Take care everyone and see you later!

Ta ta for now!

Love,

Melissa

 

p.s. when I tic the reason for leaving Facebook, an automated answer to "solve" my problem pops up... and right after deactivating my account, Facebook sends and email with three different links to reactivate my account. Geez... and apparently, through something called Facebook Connect, accounts have been created on Soundcloud by me (though I was completely unaware of this)!... and that is one way to connect to my information... this is a bit disconcerting...