When I discovered, a couple of weeks back, that my Twitter account hadn't been deactivated as I had requested, back in November, I went through the motions of having it deactivated a second time. That was it, I said, I'm done. I closed the tab and continued on with my day.
But then I went in, a few hours later, just to see if I could still log on. Of course, I could. I even saw that some of my Twitter friends had left me notifications, wondering if I was back.
"No, I'm not back," was my reply.
I knew that by using the account, it wouldn't be deactivated. As far as the program was concerned, I was back. And I thought that if my account was still open, I might as well make use of it, and so I started posting announcements of my blog posts. I'd set up the tweet, post it, and then close the Twitter tab on my Web browser.
I wasn't really back, after all.
But some mornings, as I was preparing my tweet to announce a new blog post, I would see other tweets from friends with whom I hadn't been in contact since November, and I would miss them. I would click the Like button on their tweet. I would see that it was his or her birthday, and I would tweet them a greeting. If someone had reached out to me, in my absence, I would reply to them.
But I wasn't back. Not really.
When I saw a friend tweet a picture of the Amalfi Coast, from where he and his family was vacationing, I responded, saying that we would have to meet when he returned, as DW and I are planning to go to this Italian region later this year, and I wanted to pick his brain about his experience. He agreed, and we'll meet over a pint, hopefully in the near future.
Because our direct point of contact has been through Twitter (although, we are also connected through LinkedIn—another account that I almost never look at it, these days), I would have to stay connected to arrange a time to get together.
I'm not coming back to Twitter the way I used to. I find that I cannot scroll my timeline without seeing unwanted promoted tweets or to see the tweets that the people I follow have liked (most of the time, I'm not interested in those tweets or worse, that the content strikes up anxiety). I still plan to use my account to introduce the latest blog post and then get out of it.
I won't scroll. I won't share my thoughts or opinions as I did, ad nauseum, throughout the day (I rarely even do that on Mastodon). If a Twitter buddy reaches out to me, of course I'll reply. If I see a tweet from a friend that prompts me to respond, I'll respond.
But I won't be spending time on Twitter. I have a new social media home, and I'm happy there. I'll liken visits to Twitter as driving through an old neighbourhood to drop off an item (my Brown Knowser post). If I see a friend, I'll wave or say hi. But I don't live in this neighbourhood anymore.
I'm back but not back.
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