Don't be offended if I un-friend you

Some people connect hoping to find old school friends, a job, network, or to see if they can get more followers than Ashton Kutcher. Regardless, of why they connected at some point everyone wonders: Is it time to disconnect?

For me connecting has been an amazing adventure into the powerful world of social media. We are seeing right now how it's changing the world in Iran. And don't get me wrong, I've connected to some amazing people in the social media world and learned a great deal. However, there comes a time when you have to decide - is this a professional place or a personal place.

I never thought I'd have to draw that line - I'm a neurotic hippy and believe in communal living. I'm fond of saying I don't have an esoteric bone in my body. So, for me it's always been a personal place and I didn't mind sharing that place with my professional contacts. It's a place where I'm supposed to be safe to share my joys and vent my frustrations. We all have bad days, right. The problem Im having is I no longer feel like I can be myself - so I'm going to start disconnecting. I'm leaving this job soon for Iraq and I don't want to feel as if I can't be honest about how I feel during what will obviously be a very stressful time. I want to know that the groups of people sharing my virtual world are there to support me and love me - warts and all.

So, please don't be offended if I un-friend you, it's nothing personal.

Maybe we can be friends again in the future.

For those also contemplating disconnecting here are some tutorials.

LinkedIn:
Disconnecting is as easy as going to the "Connections" screen, click "Remove Connections" at the top right-hand side, and then choosing and confirming who you want to disconnect from.

Twitter:
Go to the Profile page, click on "Followers," click "Remove," and if you don't want them to follow you click "Blocked."

Facebook
Click on "Friends" tab at top of page. Click on "All Friends" tab in the upper, left hand corner of the page. Click on the big "X" to the far right of their name. To block someone go to "Settings" in the upper right hand corner of the page. Click on privacy – at the bottom of the page is a box type the person's name and click the "Block" button.

If you are worried about reprisal don't

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn none of them will inform your connection that you disconnected from them.

On Facebook and Twitter you can go one extra step and block people – this makes them unable to see you at all like you don't exist.

For LinkedIn if the disconnected individual invites you to connect again, they will get an error message saying something to the effect that "This user cannot be invited at this time".

If they contact you directly - you have to decide how to explain yourself. I'm for ignoring the issue personally or announcing it on my blog - depends how I feel that day.

If you decide that you want to reconnect you can re-invite the person you disconnected from, in which case the connection will be fully restored

The ability to disconnect makes me feel like I have some, small seminence of power over my own life.