The Following was the penultimate post I logged on Facebook before I deleted my account:

“Long post ahead. Its 1:45 am, 4th January and I have decided to close off my Facebook account. I’m in the process of downloading my content. I am not doing it because I dislike Facebook. I like it a lot. Perhaps too much. I do have concerns for free speech and the corporations alliances with extreme Leftist liberal leaning people and governments and vested interests who want to control things because they know better than the rest of us. Granted thats my perspective. But really it’ not that important or whats driving me to do this.. The real reason for giving up Facebook is that its too easy to the point of being a pavlovian behaviour to keep in touch with people.

It doesn’t feel real anymore. 

I want to feel a real connection with people, and to challenge myself to be responsible for my relationships and not let an app do it for me.

I want to feel a real genuine and challenging connection to the people I call friends and family. And by removing Facebook it makes it that much harder to stay in touch, but it challenges me to make more of a genuine effort to reach out to people.  I used to write letters in my youth to my friends far away. It was a big effort. But I loved it and I loved putting my thoughts down with pen and paper and physically sending them to people, and getting replies. As I write now I recall being away on camp in Galway as teen in the Gaeltacht,where for three weeks we tried to speak nothing but the Irish language. I remember the thrilling feeling you’d get when you’re name was called to collect a letter from home or from a friend. I don’t get that from Facebook anymore. I used to when I first joined. And thats not a criticism. Facebook is awesome. But for middle-aged me its too easy and convenient. So I am going to deprive myself of it and challenge myself and more importantly make myself solely responsible for my relationships with people. Its going to be tough, but I am enthusiastically going forward with it. Don’t see it as loosing a friend or anything like that. It’s just me choosing to interact with people on my own terms. Happy New Year to each and every one of my friends on this platform. And don’t see it as me going anywhere.

I’m just not depending on this awesome app anymore to keep in touch. This is a penultimate post. When I have downloaded my content, I’ll say a proper farewell to the app and challenge the lot of you to send me your snail mail and see if we can correspond by mail and phone 🙂 So Retro I know.”

I downloaded all my Face book content and got this videos out of it which I share here to mark the closing of my account and say farewell to friends who remain on the platform.

Since then, a hell of a lot of things have happened. The US is up in arms and eating itself since the inauguration of the 45th President of the United States. This has affected me personally as some friendships I have in the US are frankly strained for me after I’ve exchanged views that are my own, and just my perspective. There certainly is a divide, which is shocking and unexpected. Now one could tag me from my penultimate post that I’m a right leaning person and Pro Trump. Thats not true. I gave myself one of those political tests, and to my surprise I find I”m in the Libertarian right category. I was surprised. I know I had Libertarian leanings but I always felt I was on the left. That said in this jumped up political climate, the Lines of Left have moved to the extremes. So appearing on the right when I passionately defend free speech, no matter what that speech is, probably puts me in the right, such are the upside down times of 2017.

But if I am honest with myself I’d prefer to be in the mind of a Centrist and get deeper into what is amiss in this world. What really is the splinter in our mind ,beyond our dogmas.

So as you can see I’ve been doing a lot of introspection as I struggle to get work and college stuff done. I’m not writing letters just yet. I am doing a Masters in Business Data and I have a thesis and Business model due in two months. I’m panicking. I am also procrastinating from that work writing this blog.

About 8 years ago I had a personal crisis relating to my property that went on for 4 years and involved litigation. It was damned stressful for my wife and I and we had a young baby at the time when it started. While thats all over now I did go off the deep end and into the web and books about law, property and commerce. And engineering specs too. It did change me at the time. I came out of that period thankfully with things settled and got on with my life. We had another baby and that brought its own challenges and my wife and I moved on. But something from that bad time sticks with me now.    And thats when I look at the two sides of the Geo political Divide. And even as I look at the crisis the EU faces which is front and centre for me living in Ireland.   I personally think that there is a game afoot we all want to play to pit ourselves against each other because its a game and because we don’t fully understand our real place and purpose in the world.

And I actually believe this relates to peoples lack of knowledge of money and commerce. You might not think that money and commerce have  much to do with this geo political kefuffle, but any yank will tell you “It’s the economy stupid”. And it really is. Especially if you take a deep dive into money creation. It’s a fascinating subject. And one I am going to delve further into writing about when I finish this masters and get through the Conference silly season of 2017. Seriously however if you want to distract yourself form the Geo political kabuki theatre, and not wait for my writings and rants, take a look at the UK group known as Positive Money They have an interesting perspective on money. I am not endorsing their view, but I do think they are knocking clearly on a particular door. Its fascinating to me. Maybe it might be to you too.

More blog posts to come, and this time I have to do it. Blogging is still important and engaging, and seeing as I’m not on Facebook ranting socially. I am going to focus on Business data and be more of a data provocateur with a philosophical edge. And I’m also delving into the world of Nootropics. So I’m going to have plenty to share. As well as all things Influencer Marketing wise at Dell EMC.

Belated Happy 2017. See you out there.