Desperately seeking a sense of perspective

Or, how not to step away from the Facebook:

One day, after careful consideration, you may decide that world domination by blog is too slow in coming and that it's time to expand your readership a tiny bit. So you think you might use the privacy controls you've recently discovered in Facebook to send the link to a few carefully selected friends - just the ones who might possibly be interested in your parental ravings, and not, by any means, the ones who are your nephews and nieces or aged uncles or ex-co-workers whose friend requests you felt too guilty to turn down. Those people do not need to know about the current deployment of your boobs, which apparently is all you blog about these days.

So you carefully click on the Make Group link in the sidebar, and slowly, deliberatingly, you compile a list of those friends you think might possibly, some day, be people who might not mind being told about your blog. You run your mind over all your blog entries to make sure you haven't inadvertently insulted any of these people in a blog post at some point in the last five years.

There. You've made a group. Hmm.

Then, just as you're wondering how you do the next thing, you get an e-mail from one of those people saying she saw you put her in a group about your blog, and what's its address please?

You panic, thusly: Shite. Not a group, it should have been a list. How do I delete a group? Here? Here? Did everyone get a notification that I put them in a group called "People I might tell about my blog" or something? Now will they all get a notification telling them that I just removed them from a group called "People I might tell about my blog"? Arrgh.

You delete the group and post a hasty general update about how people shouldn't mix up groups and lists. Silly old you. Silly old Facebook. Ha ha ha.

So you take a deep breath, go back to the start, and make a list instead. You select the same people as before and put them on a list of your own. You go to your update box and type a carefully worded self-deprecating introduction to your blog and add the link. Your four-year-old wanders in looking for a cookie just as you press Share.

And you realise that you just shared that link with all 135 of your closest Facebook buddies.

You hyperventilate, remark calmly to the child that you've done something silly, and grope wildly (if you can grope with a trackpad) for the tiny x that brings relief. You click the tiny x and see the blessed words "Delete this update?" appear, to which you click in the affirmative. You look in vain for the "Turn back time so this never happened at all" button. You wonder how many of your friends were watching their Facebook news feed at just that moment, and what exactly they saw, and how long it persists for. The four-year-old continues to ask for a cookie.

Finally, you have managed to (a) give him a damn cookie, (b) retype the self-deprecating introduction, and (c) send the update only to the people on your list. You make another cup of tea to help the shakes dissipate. You are not cut out for a position of high-pressure and time-sensitive computer finagling.

And then you potter about updating your profile and blithely adding "Blogging" to your interests. All 135 of your friends are told that you have just done this, and at least one of them immediately comments to ask where they can find your blog.

You rest your head on the table and try to remember that this isn't nearly as big a deal as you think it is.