I don't like Facebook. I never have. It always felt too intrusive to me. Most of my early concerns have since proven to be more accurate than paranoid. But beyond all that, I simply don't like the way Facebook breaks everything down to the lowest common denominator. In a blog, or at least the blogs I used to read, people could get into whatever they wanted to talk about in depth. On Facebook, it is a picture of something no one cares about and a sentence or two. More often than not, a Facebook post is simply some cartoon someone copied from someone else's post. Most of the typing happens in comments and most of the comments are horrible. I never met a sociopath on a blog. It looks like Facebook is littered with them.
Facebook is also highly censored and its rules are enforced arbitrarily. You can say anything you want on a blog, and I have seen pictures that would get a Facebook user banned for life. Even I have posted things that would cross the line on Facebook. And I am the most vanilla person I know.
The point of this particular blog, as far as I know, has always been to document my life in Hong Kong. As hard as it is to believe now, there was a time when I did not live here. Once upon more than a few years ago, Hong Kong was new and exotic to me. Now, it is simply where I live. No place is exotic when you live there long enough. The top news story right now is the big extradition protest. I have posted nothing about it. Protests are so common in Hong Kong, they are pretty easy to ignore, even when news outlets in other parts of the world make it sound like the entire city is on fire. If my health were better, I probably would have gone out into the middle of the action once or twice just to see what all the fuss was about, just like I did during the umbrella movement a few years ago.
Every once in a while, I read a long forgotten post that I wrote years ago. I like the fact that I wrote down something while it was still fresh in my mind, and I realize I should do that more often. The more my brain fails me, the more important it is to record memories. If I were smart, I would write down a little something every day, if only to keep track. But I don't. This blog would be so much better if I updated it every day, or at least once or twice a week. There would be a lot more to look back on. But I have never had that much free time. That might be one reason Facebook is so popular. How long does it take to upload an image and type “lol”? But then, what is the use of reading that post a few years later?
Then there are health issues. I want to document everything while it happens, but I know how tedious it is to read about someone else's medical problems. If I do not want to read something somewhere else, I certainly do not want to read it here. Unless that person is a doctor or nurse. They can often talk about their problems and give useful information at the same time. The rest of us know what we are told. I can go on all day about how to perform a craniotomy, but only from my experience. There are probably a dozen other ways to do it, and some might be better. Medical professionals also have better inside information about staying in hospitals.
I have no intention of shutting this blog down. For now. But I have no strong desire to keep going. I think posts will be infrequent and not necessarily about any particular subject or theme. I was posting some of the dreams I wrote down after the craniotomy, but I don't really see the point of doing that anymore. They are old news.
I might get interested again some day. There could always be a burst of activity out of the blue, followed by another slow period. Or I could have a lot I want to say for a longer time. Who knows. Anything can happen, which is why I am not closing up shop entirely. But I think I will be taking longer lunch breaks.
