When We Were Vikings

Last night I went to my auntie’s house for supper. We were celebrating my great uncle’s 92^nd birthday. After supper when the supper dishes had been cleared from the long table in the dining room, and with the coffee cups and dessert plates pushed out of the way, together we looked at old photographs.

There was one picture I’d never received a copy of. That was the one of my auntie and I all dressed up for Hughenden’s 2006 History Book Release parade. She wore a traditional Norwegian outfit borrowed from a local traditional Norwegian. Thinking that authentic sheep horns attached to a hardhat would make a great costume, that’s what I wore. The silver duct tape was awesome in that it made the hardhat look like a metal helmet.

I thought old sheep horns would be dried up and light. They were not. At dinner last night, I told the other guests, “Before that day, I was actually five feet, seven inches tall. That helmet was so heavy that it compressed me down permanently to five feet!”

Vikings aren’t often on Facebook

While I really miss the connections I had on Facebook, I don’t miss the pressure I got from the social media service to constantly post new content. I’d read that the content that users post to Facebook then belongs to Facebook.

At first, I didn’t plan to completely leave Facebook. I thought I could get a fresh start by deleting my older posts and by deleting Messenger. After deleting my old posts one by one only to have the social media site restore them not once, not once, but three times, I understood that this really wasn’t my content to delete. Facebook could do what it wanted with content I’d shared to keep its audience engaged. I worked for Facebook.

I also discovered that it’s not possible to delete Messenger once a user has signed on. You can delete the app and you can block selected people from messaging you. But when I clicked around Facebook’s help section and finally found the link to the instructions for removing Messenger, I found out that particular help page was no longer available.

So how do you like me now?

Since you can’t find me on Facebook, how do you “like” and share my work? Well, you can still share my posts to Facebook. I can’t, but if you do, I’ll get more readers. Because of the huge number of people that use the network, Facebook remains one of the best vehicles to drive website traffic. (The corporation really limited how I could do that through my author page near the end, though.)

To show your support, you can also follow me here on WordPress. If you have a WordPress account, simply follow me. If you don’t, follow me by email. That way, my new posts will pop right into your email’s inbox. And if you like what you read, please like it and comment on it, just like you would on Facebook.

Thanks for spending this time with me today. I hope you have a nice Sunday evening. Please keep in touch. You can contact me through my website and I’ll get back to you. I’d still love to chat!  ~ Lori