Well, I’m nearly there. I set myself the challenge of managing to last seven days without using Twitter, and I am nearly there. At midnight I shall log back in and see if anything’s changed… if anyone remembers me. To be honest, I sort of cheated in a way. Back in January, I was completely addicted to Twitter and simply had to catch up with my followers whenever I could. These days I don’t use it nearly as much because I’m following around 400 people and quite often just can’t see through the noise. When you’re only catching up every now and again, it really does make it easier to quit. Not that I’m quitting, you understand. I fully intend to get back in the saddle this evening. I just wanted to see a) if I could do it, and b) how it would feel.
It’s been an interesting and varied seven days. Throughout the week, I’ve been keeping a mini-diary of how I’ve been feeling at the times I would usually be tweeting. I was hoping that my attention span would lengthen and I would be able to read more than blogs, magazines and newspapers as a result. I was hoping that I would revert to more ‘old fashioned’ ways of keeping in touch. I was also a bit worried that I’d be acting like an addict going cold turkey. However, this is what happened:
- Monday morning – Feeling smug and virtuous as I finally finished reading The Bloody Chamber!
- Monday lunch time – Caught myself planning my “comeback tweet”.
- Monday evening – Was, er, somewhat distracted this evening and and forgot all about Twitter!
- Tuesday morning – Read more of Chicks Dig Timelords on my commute.
- Tuesday lunch time – Feeling a bit lonely and wondering what everyone’s up to.
- Tuesday evening – Discovered a fantastic charity shop after work and didn’t feel the need to instantly tell someone about it.
- Wednesday morning – Decided to email a few friends to find out how they are. It felt so very turn-of-the-century.
- Wednesday lunch time – Met up with someone who mentioned a couple of things I didn’t know about, because she’d posted them on Twitter.
- Wednesday evening – Very productive. Far more time to do useful things when I’m home alone if I’m not getting distracted by Twitter.
- Thursday morning – Fired off a few emails on the train to work. Then just stared out of the window…
- Thursday lunch time – Chats with Amanda. Talking about stuff we wouldn’t put on Twitter anyway.
- Thursday evening – Pleasantly surprised as to who was at Southwark Playhouse to see Howl’s Moving Castle as I’d not done/seen a Twitter roll call in the afternoon. Fun times! No desire to tweet.
- Friday morning – Desire to tweet nil, but I’m still checking my phone for notifications, oddly.
- Friday lunch time – Nope… still nothing. Didn’t check my phone either.
- Friday evening – Busy doing other things.
- Saturday – Put up the Nightmare Before Christmas tree in the afternoon. Briefly thought about tweeting a photo of it. Figured it could wait another couple of days.
- Sunday – Spent the afternoon at the What Katie Did boutique’s ‘Glamour & Seduction’ workshop. Resisted the urge to instantly tweet about how awesome it was.
So, what will be waiting for me upon my return? Will people have missed me? Have I missed out on any campaigns, daft hashtags, or awful jokes? The really interesting thing is that I’ve only lost a handful of followers all week and have still been gaining new ones. I wonder if they’ll all stick around once I start tweeting again. Even though I now know that my short attention span and desire to tell people everything that’s going on in my life is partly the result of being on Twitter so often, something tells me that things will be back to normal the moment I reinstall that app on my phone.
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