From Friendless to Almost Famous

So I am on facebook. Who isn't? I signed up about three or four years ago and I have enjoyed keeping in touch with people through it and looking at pictures and profiles to see what everyone's up to and things. However, I noticed a small, depressing trend - I rarely get/got any friend requests. It was a little emotionally disturbing. I figured I was simply a bigger dork than I thought and not that many people wanted to be friends with me. While on the other hand I thought "What the Ef. I am an okay kid, why wouldn't someone want to be a 'friend' of mine on this little website?" While I spent three years or so pondering in and out of a state of curiousness, I finally decided to stop pouting about it and write it off as another social misshap/fopa and just forget about it. So I moved in, leaving facebook behind, and trying to slowly but surely drift away from the slightly addicting website.

I quit going on it almost completely, maybe now and then when I got an email saying someone wrote on my wall or tagged a photo of me. Other than that, this "social network" eventually began to drift away in the wind for me.

About a week ago I began to notice a new trend. People were actually asking me, yes asking me personally why they could not find me on facebook when they searched for me. With a rush of excitement that I immediately suppressed, I just laughed it off and told them it was because there are so many Jessica Carlson's on that goofy site. (Which there are). Finally after about the third or fourth coworker asking me the same thing, I decided to investigate. I glimmer of hope began to shine forth and I started to contrive up an idea in my mind that there might be more to the mystery of being facebook friendless than the mere fact that I am a dork. While during a break at work I asked my friend to try and search for me on their Blackberry just to see if it is true, and that you cannot find me.

Sure enough, he typed in the name and even filtered it down through the Penn State and Pittsburgh networks. The only Jessica Carlson that appeared, amusingly enough, was a comical character displaying the same name but with a picture of a monkey as their profile pic. (Not me for the record)

Hmmmm. that glimmer of light just got brighter.

Adrenaline began to pump through my veins. I immediatly felt a surge of excitement and suddenly no longer desired to be at work making money but wanted to dash home to my laptop to pull up my profile and decipher this issue until it resolved itself. I impatiently waited out the day and rushed home, bursting through the front door and dashing up the steps to my room where the answer to all my questions and insecure feelings awaited me.

I logged onto the long-lost website - having to retype in my email and password because it had been so long since my last log-in. I checked out my privacy settings and sure enough...all this time...I had them set so that you could not search for me. Who the hell does that? Who sets their privacy so that you cannot even be searched for? Did I do this as a precaution at some point so that no employers could search for me? If I did I don't remember. Did I do it so that I could be 'mysterious' and have more control over who I find rather than who finds me online? Or was it a terrible over'site' (pardon the pun), on my part that when I initially signed up that was the actual default setting that I never knew to change?

I may never know how this whole problem generated itself, but I do know that it has been resolved. If I may add, since changing my settings so that anyone can search for me, within 24 hours I had FOUR friend requests. Count 'em - FOUR. That's more than I have had since I signed up for this silly site. I mean I went from being on the edge of friendless to dancing on the line of almost famous.

So, after letting out a very deep and long overdue breathe of lonely air, I smiled and felt assured that from now on I will sleep much more soundly knowing that I've got a friend in facebook.