ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä

I felt empty, sore and very tired.

This felt wrong. After abdominal surgery in June, I’d gotten back to running as quickly as I could. As promised, I kept my pace slow and gradually added miles, but the miles weren’t really adding up.

By this time last year, I was already running 12 or 13 miles, but that seemed next to impossible.

I took a breath, tried walking for a quarter mile but couldn’t seem to pick up my feet. I was like a lawnmower that wouldn’t start, no matter how many times I pulled the cord.

This was as perfect a day to run as I’d seen in weeks. We had clear skies in ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä and the morning sun gave everything a sweet polish that reminded me of television breakfast cereal commercials.

And runners were out in force.

As I limped across the road toward my parked car, I watched a line of women in spandex happily glide down the boulevard.

I envied them, and there was no one to share my misery.

Just a few weeks earlier, before I dropped off social media, this failure would have been the post of the day. I’d have snapped a picture on my phone and posted it for posterity, maybe, and posted it for sympathy, probably.

But I was still off Facebook and not looking at some of the other social media sites out there, some of which seem like semi-literate bar fights.

And this was when I missed Facebook. A picture and a few words would’ve netted me a slew of “likes,� mostly from people I didn’t know, and a few friendly comments from others I seldom saw.

Why did I want that?

With so much time away from social media, I’ve had time to read more. One of the books this month has been “How To Break Up With Your Phone� by Catherine Price. The book is largely about giving up the distractions on your smartphone, which might lead to living a more present life. Price casts a broader net than just social media and includes games and email as potential problems.

I don’t have any games on my phone or on my computer, but I could probably check my email a little less.

One of the points Price makes is that when we’re reaching for these things, we should stop and ask ourselves why we’re reaching for it. What do we really want?

In my head, I was thinking I needed a little sympathy, but that seemed a little cheap. Regardless, I thought this would’ve been me trying to fulfill some need, replace something I was missing.

Platforms like Facebook can help us fill in some of those holes in our lives. It can close part of the distance between absent family members and old friends.

After high school, I moved away, seldom went home and scarcely stayed more than a day when I did. Some of it was work. Some of it was just the life I had.

Not that many of the people I’d known as a teenager were still hanging around the old neighborhood, anyway. They’d moved on, too. Many of them got married. They’d gone to school out of state, taken jobs in other parts of the world or maybe become wandering martial arts masters in search of something, somewhere in the vast and dusty American west.

I had no idea.

Social media brought us all back together — sort of. At least, it helped to cover those conversations I did not have at the class reunions I skipped.

Social media Is also pretty good at introducing you to new people, though actual friendship — as in real life — is trickier. You still have to show up for things. It’s nice when you wish someone a happy birthday online, but a card and stamp mean a little more.

Social media can act as a substitute for actual community, I think.

Connection used to mean getting to know people. Often, you had to meet them where they were. You had to develop actual hobbies that others shared, which was something to talk about until you figured out something else to say.

If things went badly, this might lead to marriage.

In generations past, if you were looking to be part of a body of people, you could volunteer and help out, join a club, drink too much and learn a weird handshake — or just join a church.

Churches were and are great places to meet people, and most mainstream churches have “welcome to all� as part of their message.

Conditions and restrictions may apply at some locations, but the general message is that houses of worship are supposed to be a place for everyone.

And a well-organized church will get you involved. Before you know it, they’ll fill your schedule with worship services a couple of times a week, plus Sunday school, bible study, prayer breakfasts, men and women’s outings, softball and volleyball leagues and enough potluck dinners to make you develop an allergy to potato salad.

You will be connected. You just have to be willing to do the time.

Social media, on the other hand, doesn’t require that much of an investment. You can sleep in Sunday mornings, and you don’t have to worry about the potato salad.

And social media lets you do stuff churches tend to frown on, like judge. You get to judge on social media.

Make no mistake: We all judge in real life, but social media encourages us to do it brazenly, to be fearless and unsparing.

We judge through the many likes we give and the many more we choose not to give. We judge through our comments on the posts we like and in the posts we disagree with.

We’re also judging when we just glare at the screen and do not respond.

We also come to social media and ask to be judged. We ask people to judge us by what we wear, by the words we post, even by the adorableness of our pets and children.

We want to be validated for our choices, for our goodness, for our likability, for our wisdom — or we want to be vilified for being politically incorrect, for thinking differently than someone or everyone else, for being a rebel or prophet.

And this is what I think I wanted. When I thought about posting the picture from my run, I was asking to be judged. Maybe, I’d luck out and the world at large would see me as earnest, even in the face of adversity.

Or just as likely, someone would remember I’d undergone surgery a couple of months back and what was I doing trying to run 10 miles?