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This past year, such as it is (a giant raging garbage fire if I’m to be delicate), I’ve had to make some changes in my life.

Many of them are fairly minute and probably something you don’t really care about, but you started this read so now you’re here for the long run. Of course, at this point in the writing I don’t know how long this will be, so I guess we’ll both find out just how long this really gets or if it will even be a run.

Just so you’re aware, I hate running.

Essentially, I’m finding social media to be almost intolerable lately. Gone are the days of sharing witty or funny posts, posts on daily life or posts of memories.

However, those days are gone and replaced by the simplicity of sharing memes that share the posters own personal feelings of being right.

They are replaced by the finger-pointing and the near constant course of “discussions” that are nothing more than glorified, “nuh, uh … you are.”

A lot of this is because we have opinions and in the past opinions led to more simple discussions that, while sometimes turning heated, often ended with, “hey, you like this band? Sure thing, I like that band.” And we’re cool again.

Myspace was a more innocent time.

Things are rarely that easy anymore and we find ourselves triggered much easier than normal. I say “we” because I have to admit that I’ve done this. Last year in particular I was incredibly righteous about my feelings, knowing that each time I was right when really I might have felt I was right, but was wrong because other opinions didn’t matter much.

And believe me, I’ve been wrong a lot. My family will bring up NHL star Jaromír Jágr, who has been playing professional hockey now for approximately 100 years, even though he was drafted by the Penguins in 1990 — “officially.” I sense aliens, but I’ll just put that in my back pocket.

Still, the man has been on the ice forever, sporting perhaps the most amazing mullet I’ve ever seen on a man. Spectacular.

At any rate, I might have thought ESPN claimed he was in France at one point. I was young and not real bright and to be quite frank wasn’t real sure Czechoslovakia was a thing, just as I’m sure I still can’t spell it without looking it up.

I held the claim for a long time in my youth, but eventually figured it out, though the joke continues within my family.

So yeah, I’ve been wrong tons of times. I rather excelled at it actually, but the key to being wrong, like so many other things, is to work to fix it. Maybe not necessarily being right, because sometimes the answer isn’t so simple as yes or no, right or wrong.

The key to all of this is listening — and maybe share a fact or two, rather than something from the affirmable part of the internet that always backs up personal feelings.

Case in point, every so often on Faceargument, a picture of Albert Einstein, sometimes with his tongue sticking out, is pictured next to the phrase, “The definition of insanity, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

I hate to tell the social justice warriors on either and any side, but Einstein didn’t say that. According to a Salon article (www.salon.com/2013/08/06/the_definition_of_insanity_is_the_most_overused_cliche_of_all_time/)

the phrase isn’t actually attributable to any one person and after reading up on the smart man, it really doesn’t seem like something he would say.

Though I do kind of wonder how he would describe these times.

So, I took the first step and realized that before I could persuade anybody to my way of thinking, I first had to change myself and so I’ve pulled myself back from Facebitter for a bit to try and remove myself from the negativity and to understand I’m so important that people need to think how I do.

I’ll post every so often and yes, still post things I feel particularly charged about, but I try to limit it because in the end it makes me feel horrible. To have to read this stuff over and over again. To see the arguments where nothing of value comes from it. That is venomous.

Removing myself from these places and visiting less frequently has been amazingly freeing. I’m spending more time on the incredibly expensive hobby of home-brewing, the garden is looking good (except the peppers, which continue to not grow) and I’m enjoying time in the home more.

I end this with something I think we all need to hear by a man with an interesting take on history: “One does not simply walk into Mordor,” John F. Kennedy.