I was going pretty well with Twitter the past few months, and then I stopped. I stopped ‘cold turkey.’ No explanation, no excuses. I just stopped.

There was a reason for it. I stopped posting to Twitter because God said so. That’s it. God said to give it a rest.

So I took January off. I watched, patiently. I looked at what other people did. I actually added more people to follow. But I was silent.

It made me focus on what it was to connect with other people, 140 characters at a time. It helped me focus on how to use a social media tool as effectively as possible. To be serious about wasting my free time.

A few insights I got from my sabbatical:

  1. Some people are just more interesting than other people. But everybody says something interesting if you wait long enough. The short–form limitation helps to focus what people write.
  2. I have been blessed to slowly grow my network. Sure, I don’t have 270,000+ followers, but at least I actually follow the people on my list.
  3. My rule about following people is still in effect. Perhaps less so about the mean part. But interestingness is a hard to quantify, but incredibly valuable commodity. It’s not to be forsaken.

I’m now back to Twittering (as much as can be expected). Though I don’t have much tweeting capital, I want to use it as effectively as possible. To be intentional with what I do, even if it’s on posting links to funny cat pictures captioned with horrible grammar.

In a way, my Twitter Sabbatical was a like a microcosm of the rest of my life. To sit back, evaluate what I was doing, and make changes to become more effective, more intentional with my purpose, and — oh, by the way — figure out just what that purpose is, after all.

The break was good for me. Now to get on with it!

status: published
lastmod: '2009-02-13T23:22:29.000Z'
author: meadowhill login
cms: textpattern
custom:
  section: articles
  custom_1: twitter 2oft