Twit-Break

So, I finally made it through about two and a half months without Twitter. It's amazing the stuff that can happen to you when you can't tweet about it. I'm serious, some of the most tweet-worthy things happened to and around me during this period. Example...I drove around the city of Bloomington with a dead bird stuck into my car's grill head first. This happened during the first week without Twitter. All I wanted to do was twitpic that gross scene. But no, I stayed strong and disciplined. Which brings me to why I went off Twitter in the first place. I felt like it was consuming my free time and some not-so-free time. Work was getting busy and this was the summer before my oldest went to full-time school for the first time. I took the break to concentrate on work and family life and also to see if I could be disciplined enough to do it. What I gained from this experience was the urge to pull my iPhone out and check Twitter. This action had become involuntary to me over the last couple of years of using Twitter. It took a few weeks of withdrawal symptoms where I would pull my phone out and realize I had nothing to check on it and put it away. Also, to not be tempted, I deleted all Twitter apps from my phone. I also gained just being in the moment when something happened with the kids or the wife or at work. With Twitter, I always feel like a journalist covering my life, finding interesting tidbits to share with the internets. I'm not saying this is wrong. This IS in fact the draw to tweet and read tweets. It's just that it was becoming so much of a habit that I was tweeting about hanging out with my friends instead of hanging out with them. Maybe it's just me and the way I used Twitter. What I realized from this experiment was how much I used Twitter to stay current with the lives of people I would ordinarily not know a thing about. These people are acquaintances and not close friends, but somehow following them on Twitter brought them a step closer in our relationship even if it was one-sided. I somehow felt more updated about their lives, which made it easier to talk to them at occasional social events. Having returned to using Twitter, I'm just more aware of my usage time. I see the advantages and disadvantages of the medium and hopefully will use it with wisdom. I love sharing tidbits of my life on Twitter and appreciate those who are doing the same. I figure that even if no one is interested in my tweets, at least it can serve as a timeline of the happenings in my life. For more than 140 characters at a time coverage of my thoughts...subscribe to this blog.