The fine line between order and chaos...

Storm by Έλενα Λαγαρία on Flickr

It could be the title of my latest book, but no, it's about my life and how I network across social media sites.

Twitter is great - you're on and you're off. You don't have to linger. Leaving is easy.

Google+ is pretty much the same, plus, I can reply to anyone from my email inbox: I don't even need to go to my Google profile :)

But Facebook... oh, Facebook and I have a love-hate relationship. I LOOOOVE connecting with readers; I adore all my reviewers... and I met most of them on FB.

I HAAAATE becoming so consumed in everyone's Newsfeeds and promo that I'm left with no time to write and promo my own books, and please understand that I only blame myself here. I find it hard to walk away. I also like to be in control - walking away means leaving that control behind.

Walking away never used to be a problem... what can I say? For some reason, it is now. It's just busier. And I'm busier. And I've had to make an executive decision to leave FB behind - at least, in part.

From the 5th Sept, I'll solely be working from my author page and not my profile. Status updates will only be made on the author page, and not my profile. My profile will become dormant.

I was ready to storm off in a hissy-fit, actually, and deactivate the whole profile, but that would have been cutting my nose off to spite my face. Readers and reviewers still message me on there. And - the most annoying thing of all - you have to have a profile to become involved with groups. I would love to go to groups as my author page, but no. I can't do that.

So, my profile will become a placeholder: inactive to everyone but me. I shall experiment with working 'behind the scenes' on a dormant profile and see if it works. I say this, not actually knowing if what I intend is possible, but I have to try, and I probably have to try a few different ways. I may still deactivate the whole thing!

Being on FB is like chaos for me at the moment. I cannot hear myself think when I'm on there, and I never get around to doing what I'd planned to do because I end up having discussions (no one's fault but mine), ignoring game requests, ignoring app requests, ignoring a million events (although I do go to a few), ignoring people I don't want to ignore, but feel I have no choice, and because in the non-virtual world, my daughter needs me on the left, and my husband needs me on the right... and it's never not busy. I had no idea it could ever get this busy, and I only have 200+ friends :s

By God, I need to concentrate on writing my books! And I need to concentrate on my family - I really need to concentrate on my family.

So... September is going to be an interesting month where I trial this new FB plan of mine... if you stop by my profile after 5th September, you should see not a hell of a lot. If you stop by my profile at the end of Sept, and see it deactivated, you'll know my plan didn't work ;) But hey, I am not invisible - you couldn't even miss me online if you were short-sighted. Google my name - there I am.

Please join my author page.

And thank you a million times for your continued support. Me letting go of my FB profile has me worrying that I'm letting go of my readers... but I'm not... right?

xxx