Did I Cheat?

During rehearsal today someone mentioned that they didn't understand how I could claim to be away from social media when I was blogging the entire time and maintaining a presence on Facebook through automatic linking; it seemed that I was cheating on my claims.   Perhaps I was; perhaps I was not.

When I decided to take my social media sabbatical, my main vices at the time were Facebook and Twitter.  I had all but abandoned this blog in favor of sharing the next 140 characters I could think of.  The challenge of being as witty and clever as possible to convey what was going on at the time would consume my thoughts.  Everything became a shareable event; if I was out with my family - share it; when I'd have rehearsals - share it; when a funny thought would pop in head - take a picture of my thinking about it - and share it.  I began doing things for the sake of Twitter and Facebook instead of doing them because I wanted to.  It's like I was chasing the (online) dragon.  No matter how much of sharing I did, it wasn't enough.  And with all of the boolsheet going on at the time (and some of which still is), I was really unhappy with myself.  I would compare my online personas with others and feeling like I wasn't doing enough in my life.  The quest for acceptance still lingers in my heart and head.  I'd get really bummed out and would get angry/sad for long periods of time.  I needed to decompress and get reconnect with myself; therefore, I got off the wheel of despair I set in motion.

So, to me blogging was a cheat as long as I wrote about things I normally had been writing about, and shared my thoughts in a "more than 140 characters" fashion, i.e., be truthful, raw and open.  I've written more in the last couple of weeks than I have in the last 6 months (ok, maybe not, but it feels like I have).  Dumping my life online like this holds me accountable to myself in a lot of regards.  It's cool that people actually have been reading it; that makes me happy because I tend to put up facades in a lot of ways which is difficult for me to do with the blog.  I want to be put in check by others when I get a bit out of line.  I want to put all of my blogs into a book to give to my kids at some point.  Maybe by having a written history of Daddy's most inner thoughts, they'll come to appreciate (or loathe ;-)) me in the future.  I think of it as mental time capsule.

So, did I cheat? I say no. What do you say?