Today's Rant/Rave: Timeline

I may or may not have mentioned that I suffer (ed. note--suffer?  really?) from a mood disorder.  Basically I feel very strongly about a lot of things.  For example, I'll begin by liking something a whole lot.  Like right off the bat, it strikes me as a completely batshit crazy wonderful thing.  It makes me ecstatic and I get obsessed with it.  <cough Black Keys cough>   And then certain aspects of whatever it is bring me down and then I'm really sad.  And sometimes maybe angry.  Or small and weak. I haven't gotten to these stages with the Black Keys yet.  But I do swing up and down and back and forth a fair bit.  The Rollercoaster of Love.   <cue Ohio Players>   I mean, I'm told that my version of these experiences is more intense than normal.   Really?  Then maybe we should dial "normal" up two clicks because that doesn't sound very fun at all.

Oddly, though my moods are changeable, I don't handle change very well.  I don't relish it.  I fear it.  Case in point:  Timeline.  A new format that is wildly different from what I'm used to in my Facebook page is causing me great anxiety.   What will my page look like in the new medium?  How will I get my message across?  Will my wit and wisdom come shining through?  Or will the swirling chaos of the page overpower the swirling chaos in my mind?

People get ready, there's change a-comin.  Or maybe a train.  

My shrink says that chaos is not good for me.  (If my shrink knew how obsessed I am with Facebook and my blog, that would not be good for me either.)   I need structure imposed from the outside to corral the tangential thinking that can get really out of control at times.  Facebook as it's currently constructed works really well for me.   I look at the Timeline, though, and I get dizzy.  Where is my post going to show up?  What happened to the really cool blog I linked to last week?  Why is that photo still there after I deleted it three times?  There are no answers to these imponderable questions.  I like to think that once I settle in and work with it, I'll get used to it and come to like it.  But that seems to me like an arranged marriage.  I'll learn to love it.  What?  How about I find something I truly love instead of having to be taught?

So there's that.  Fucking Timeline.  We have the luxury of complaining about our problems with Facebook, when, let's face it  (see what I did there?), they didn't *have* to make a social app that links over a half a billion people and gives self-absorbed latter-day hipsters like me an open mike 24/7.  They could (and probably do) sell my soul through the next seven rotations of the karmic wheel and I wouldn't *really* complain because I feel so damn lucky to have this beautiful obsession.  Woody Allen in the Catskills. Such small portions.

So you see how it works here at the Chron.  Why the rants have to share a page with the raves.  It is all part of the big chaos that swirls like Brownian motion through joy and hostility, guilt and rage, humility and terror, self-loathing and superiority.   How am I going to make sense of it all in the Timeline, which, like experience, isn't really linear at all?

Don't even get me started with Daylight Savings Time.  I'm pretty sure they are trying to kill me with all this superfluous change they keep throwing at me like the Christmas trees in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.  Don't be afraid to admit that you got that reference.  In my last post, I accused you of not being able to keep up.  But we both know better.  Embrace your randomness.  And buckle up.  Here comes Timeline.