In 2007 when facebook made itself available to a whole wide Western World of fools, me and my cousin Dee were the first grownups we knew who were there. My college-kids had been on it, and if we’re being honest here – bragging about it, for a while. We’d dash back over to MySpace and leave posts inviting all our friends there to our new clubhouse, while we gathered our favorite songs and photos, maybe a story or two, and ran back over to facebook and laid that stuff down like it had a new home. It did. Our stuff loved facebook way more than it ever loved MySpace. Sorry Tom.

The two of us – me and Dee, we are some social beasts. Look up “Life of the Party” and you’ll see a picture of us from that Halloween where I was a pirate with my mates and she was our imaginary virgin or some shit. We were trouble and every kind of combined OG Catcholic schooling and street smarts. When we were both starting out what became more than a decades long process of taking care of our parents, facebook filled a void that otherwise was left empty annnnd we could talk way too much and it was rewarded with more talking too much as we felt necessary. It rocked for everybody involved.

And, Everybody was on facebook.

It helped that we were clever girls with a lot of free time to think. We grew our online friendships fast and steady, we reviewed things, shared stories and photos and jokes with generous abandon. To be honest – we didn’t sleep much – together we shared millions of words and thousands of photos. We were the most ideal candidates for booking some prolific face that Mark Zuckerburg could ever find – “the better to sell your data with, MY Dear.” That Zuck – sly as a fox.

And our lives were considerably richer by virtue of these friendships built in a million conversations (sliding into the DMs is what the kids call it now and I don’t know if it means like the same thing as “Netflix and chill” but I just try and avoid saying it out loud around the kids and I still say, just send me a note thingy.)

I was able to turn my time on facebook into the resource that let me live on the road for 15 years by signing on annual clients who paid me to be clever for them. It’s ridiculous how much of my Clever I used on my clients and I’m way too embarrassed to admit it, but suffice to say – they looked brilliant and I did just okay and never went hungry. I also never intentionally flew first-class, so there’s that.

Now it’s just about to be 15 years later and the relationship I have with facebook feels like it’s run its course and we’re good here, I want it to send me away like something that it still loves but can’t be with anymore. I want to leave before I start having dreams where I wrap my bony white hands around its vital pink neck.

A million years ago, once upon a really shitty horrid time, both my best friends died in the same month, but not the same day and it really jacked me up. I was really angry at them, off and on these last few years more than most, because they’d magically disappeared before the shit got real and ugly and brutally sad. That quote about leaving behind a “beautiful corpse” was playing way too loud for me, too often.

It occurred to me that I might be feeling a little powerless, being all resentful like that with death and all, so it made me take a step back at my literal legacy. What am I leaving behind? Am I playing one too many song on stage after one too many ovations? Like really? Don’t I just have total and complete power at what I leave behind in terns of words and images? Aren’t I a pioneer of this lifestyle where the only things that matter, if you’re not that top 1% of the top %, is what can be scientifically linked back to you? Kinda, I guess. I’m a little young but I’m due to be young for something.

I’m choosing the Grey Fade on social, as the badge I want to earn at this point in the Post-Covid Change Camp. I’m giving everybody else 4 days to get me phone numbers and emails while I harvest every single last word and image that I have ever generated. Everywhere – I’m not restricting it this to facebook. It’s time I gather all my resources and those are most of what I call mine. Thank God they’re so lightweight.

My cousin Dee, I think she’s still good here. I know she is having to apply a lot more of her Clever at home now, so her digital time is spread thin, but I’m retiring soon, and I hope you plan on leaving more hearts for the freaking truck-sized hole I’mma be leaving in that situation. When in doubt – leave a heart. Trust me when I tell you that that will rarely go wrong.