I’ve had a love-hate relationship with Twitter over the years.
In the beginning, I used to love the feeling of community and connection — getting to know people I never would have otherwise met, and developing personal and professional relationships along the way.
But recently, I’ve found the platform to be a harsh, unwelcoming place, and one that more often than not reveals my inadequacies and lack of worth — and sheer irrelevance — without the counterbalance of meaningful connections.
And I’ve found it tougher than I would have expected when people I connected with years back stop engaging with me, or colleagues I’ve known and worked with for a long time actively unfollow me — and I know you’re not supposed to take this personally, but I do.
But more than this, it’s the sheer weight of combined social messaging that keeps up a constant barrage of signals that tell me what I secretly know — I’m not valued, that I’m a bore, that I have nothing of worth to say or give; that I should just be quiet.
And so I’m going to be quiet — at least for the month of May. Then we’ll see how I feel after a few weeks away from the platform.
With that, Twitter’s gone from my phone and my computer. The browser window’s been closed. And I’ll be resisting the temptation to take a peek, just to see what’s going on.
In the meantime, I do need to work out where else to get my news from …
