News item from the NYT today: "For the first time, a billion people used Facebook in a single day last Monday - that's one out of seven people on Earth logged in....Facebook had 968 million daily active users in June. Most people on Facebook live outside the United States and Canada."

Elsewhere on the Earth, people were leaving their homes seeking survival in a safer place, being shot at or shooting, starving or being starved, all those things people do when they're not online. It's scary, isn't it? I have never bothered with Facebook. I thought it would be time-consuming and invasive so I didn't try. My favourite news channel gives me little shots of Facebook, human interest stories that go "viral".

VIRAL: relating to or involving an image, video, piece of information, etc., that is circulated rapidly and widely from one Internet user to another: a viral video ad | the video went viral and was seen by millions. (online Dictionary)

Not knowing what happens on Facebook, I sort of assume that the appealing things that go viral are the essence or perhaps the above average items of interest, like funny cats; jaunty dogs; monkeys in sheepskin jackets; bears peeking through the viewfinder of a camera; nice fathers telling their teeny little kids they can be gay if they want to be; or whatever. I would never be considered viral, not in my wildest aka mediocre dreams.

Someone put me on Facebook, I don't know who or how. But I am told that my blog is on and do you know what? I am told that I have 19 hangers-on or - what do you call themFans? Friends? Likes?

HITS!

It's not a billion, of course, but it's a beginning.

You'd think after all this time and with so many departures that I would be used to it, to moving my body and brain from one place to another, but I still get uptight and my lists are fraught. Perhaps freighted would be a more accurate term. I carry much more baggage in my head than in my carry-on.

I'm disappointed that I didn't swim but it was too wet and cold this week. I did clear out my friend's fridge (and freezer). I have to make a list for her of what to use with simple recipes and tips. It's one of my few skills. As you know, I can't sew. If I lose a button that's it for that garment. I can live without it. And that reminds me of how little I can live with; my long trip proved that. I didn't take enough clothes with me but I stayed clean because we had free laundry service and no buttons fell off. I did mend a hem that I had stepped on and pulled loose. I was very proud of that.

But the point is, I didn't need much, and I learned to live with less. Hah! Oh, that sounds so fake and phoney! I don't begin to know what deprivation means. But I do know that too much can be debilitating. So this fall, always to me the new year and time for new resolutions and goals, I am going to go through my closet and drawers and empty them. Well, not empty, but cull. I've talked about clutter, mess, hoarding and pack-ratting before. It's an increasing problem (blight?) in the affluent world we are blessed to live in.

Is it possible to lighten the load? I've read lots of suggestions for changing one's accumulative ways. One is that for every new article you bring into your home, you should remove two things. I'm not bad at that, books excepted. Don't go there. Right now, I'm going home.