Taking a break from Twitter

Yesterday morning I decided to unfollow everyone I was following on Twitter. The move was prompted by a retweet of someone I don’t know who tweeted something along the lines of, “In case you missed it, here’s a link to my blog post about ABC”. In case I missed it? If I have no idea who you are, how would I miss anything you do? I get that’s the whole point of Twitter but it seems like today a good percentage of my timeline is filled with things I didn’t necessarily sign up to see. Promoted tweets - annoying. Retweets - annoying. Showing me tweets from verified accounts because people I follow follow them - annoying AND confusing AND unstoppable.

What I realized in a short 24 hours is that Twitter has become a bad habit for me. Even after I unfollowed everyone, I found myself instantly opening the app when I’d look at my phone. Not surprising, I’m still seeing the tweets from verified accounts because people I follow(ed) follow them. Still dumb. I also realized that Twitter, for me, is very impulsive. In a way it feeds my ADD because it gives me a microplatform to spew any and everything that comes to my mind.

I’ve decided over the next few weeks I’m going to try something new. When I have an impulsive moment, I will create a new post in svbtle and see if it is worthy of at least a paragraph of explanation. If not, i will delete it. If so, i’ll write. I’m like everyone else on the web, I keep promising myself I’ll write more but never do. Hopefully this will help push me over the edge.