[Note: I just noticed this is my 800th post on my blog. At the end of this month, fifteenkey.com will be six. The math says I’ve averaged 11 posts a month for six years, but in the last two months I’ve averaged only two. I’m wondering why.]

Often when I’m looking at my phone, I’ll hear a smart-alecky “Are you updating your Facebook page?” Yes, sometimes I am. It’s still fun and at times, very funny. Mostly though, I think it provides me just enough Cheeze-It sized narcissistic moments to keep insecure me somewhat secure that I’m a worthwhile human being. Or something like that. It’s also a great daily distraction to keep my ADD appetite satiated.

Facebook is an incredibly powerful tool to keep people connected, albeit superficially. I mean how else would I know of some of my Facebook “friends” “like” Rush Limbaugh?  Sigh… Still, what I love most about the social network is the humor of many friends there and the ability to share life’s moments with immediacy. How else could I have shared this, this and this almost as they happened? The book of face does give us some ability to document our lives.

My quandary is that’s what my blog used to be for, and it demanded more than 140 characters per serving. I’m trying to figure out if Facebook is stunting my other writing and otherwise sapping very finite creativity one short post at a time.  A good friend of mine who blogs is also doing so very sparsely these days, though twin boys may also be matching contributors.

There are some other possibilities why I’m not expressing here like I used to. There’s the work blog demanding a weekly post and a good deal of other work-related writing I do between weekends. Then there are these theories from Ernie Hemingway:

“Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer’s loneliness but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates.” – Excerpt from Nobel Prize acceptance speech

“I have to ease off making love when writing hard as the two things are run by the same motor.” – Letter to Charles Scribner, 1948

Seriously, given the choice in that second one, I’m surprised the man wrote any books at all…

I guess I need to fight through my happiness and keep writing… Just not on Facebook.