Twice, I have deactivated my twitter account. The first time, I was able to retrieve it, but the second time, twitter wouldn’t let me reactivate it. I’m not sure that I would have deactivated it the second time if I hadn’t had the first success reactivating it, but given that I didn’t know I would be able to reactivate it the first time, maybe I would have (do you get that? sorry if you don’t – I’m feeling lethargic today and have only enough energy to write, not to redraft or rewrite).
Anyhoo, watching qanda one night just after I had landed in Australia on our ‘summer’ vacation, I realised that qanda would be even better if I were logged in to twitter. Then I started hooking into the #ausvotes updates regularly and before I knew it I had set up another account.
I joined twitter in a completely different way this time than I had the previous time. Instead of following anyone, I just followed the #tags. My, but it was fun. I guess at times I felt a bit stalky, always listening and never saying anything, but then I reminded myself it was just old-fashioned lurking. I’m sure I’m not the only one using twitter that way.
Writing about my decision to leave twitter, I hypothesised that the reason it was making me feel bad was because it was making me feel a bit like a 16 year old schoolgirl, back on the fringes again, but clearly that wasn’t it, because here I was quite happily on the fringe.
But I wasn’t completely wrong. At that time, twitter really did make me feel left out, and it did become a tool of desperation – desperation to be at home. On the one hand, I liked the sense of attachment it gave me to Australia, but on the other, it exaggerated the distance between here and home, especially at around five o’clock as the tweets tapered off and one by one the lights went out, and I was left with lots to say, but no one to say it to. I really was using a virtual conversation as a substitute for a real one.
So, I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to do about it now. I mean, there aren’t that many events like #ausvotes where you can sustain events-based twittering. There’s plenty of people I’d love to follow again, but I want to be careful. You see, I’m coping remarkably well with my return to Abu Dhabi at the moment. I’ve had a great couple of days catching up with people, getting back to the gym and so on and I’m in a better state of mind than I’ve ever been while living here.
But I don’t want to test it. There’s still a little way to go before we leave. And not that re-joining twitter will be the make it or break it of life in Abu Dhabi. Just that there’s no need to break something that’s just been fixed.
Which all makes it sound a lot more agonised than it really is. Really, I just meant to tell you that I did go back to twitter. And just so you don’t get the wrong impression, when I left twitter I wasn’t wrong , I just changed my mind.