Seven years ago my husband Carey and I bought my childhood home. We peeled off all the hideous wallpaper and ugly paint, we painted all the rooms in Disney colors. We had the hardwood floors refinished and carpeted some of the rooms and the halls and stairs. We planted magnolia trees and rose bushes. We completely remodeled the kitchen with gorgeous custom cabinets and a lovely tile floor. We filled our seventeen floor to ceiling bookshelves with books, actually overfilled them. Our mortgage is halfway paid off in spite of the fact that our house is worth over $100,000 less than when we bought it.

And this week I learned that the only way I can keep a job with my company is to move to Indianapolis. And they want me to move in two to three months. If I don’t transfer I lose all the company matches to my 401(k) and my bonus for this year. And have to start the job search once again.

When I was younger, I probably would have given notice to my landlord and moved. I’ve done it many times, from Pennsylvania, to LA, back to Pennsylvania, to Boston, to Austin, and back to New Jersey. From my frequent trips to the company headquarters in Indianapolis I have grown to love Indiana, but do I want to start over again there? I have a husband, a special house, I can’t just move on a whim as I could do in the past.

Decisions aren’t as easy now that I’m older in spite of taking two classes in decision theory in business school. It’s no longer as simple as making a pro and con list and seeing which list is longer. It’s a decision that is tearing at my soul. The only outcome I want is for things to go on as they are and that is not one of the options.

I click the status box on Facebook and it asks me that question. I look forward to learning what is on my friends’ minds as part of keeping in touch with friends across the world, some of whom I have only met electronically. I want to know what they are doing, what events are happening in their lives, indeed, what’s on their mind. But in the past year I have seen a rapid decline in the number of posts that give me any information about the poster. Instead my wall is filled with cartoons, pictures, videos, and commentary that was shared from someone else’s wall and was probably not original to that wall either. Often I see the same cartoons multiple times. Sometimes I see hoaxes that have been circulating for years. And the worst are shared items that attempt to guilt me into liking or sharing, because if I scroll it means that I don’t like my mother, or God, that I don’t support our military, that I am a bonafide schmuck.

From these posts I learn about the causes my friends support, but I don’t learn anything about them. No longer do I know what’s going on in their lives, what’s on their mind. And I miss that.

Sharing has become effortless; I can even share others’ content from my iPad or iPhone, and I have shared myself when a cartoon or link captures exactly what was on my mind.

In an episode of Bones, Dr. Brennan meets her second cousin Margaret (played by her real-life sister) who carries around a small volume of Benjamin Franklin’s sayings and responds to every question with an aptly chosen saying. At first, Dr. Brennan challenges whether Ben Franklin is the smartest man in the world as her cousin believes, or questions whether the sayings are true, but finally she responds with “I’d rather hear what you have to say than Benjamin Franklin,” and Margaret tells her that that is the nicest thing that anyone has ever said to her. I’d rather hear what my friends have to say than something they discovered and passed on. Like Facebook, I want to know what’s on their mind.