I'm not even gonna try to pretend that I don't spend at least 19 hours of my life on Twitter. With my messed up sleep schedule, I constantly find myself browsing my numerous timelines (perks of having multiple accounts) at 4 in the morning just to fall asleep, phone in hand, and wake up at 8 or 10 to dive right back into scrolling through the app.
It's unhealthy, I know.
Not only does it pose an ungodly amount of health risks, but this habit has also impacted my attitude in ways that I can't say I'm proud of.
Perhaps it's the fact that my lifestyle has inspired various nights of sleep deprived insomnia or the more frequently occuring daytime fatigue, or maybe it's that the general idea of focusing your attention on everyone's online musings instead of partaking in real life that has completely weakened my system the more involved I get into the app.
Now don't get me wrong-- I don't have anything against the company or the platform itself. It's more of the habits I associate it with that motivates my antagonistic thoughts towards it. Humblebragging, endless rants, empty political and cultural opinions, unrealistic beauty standards, patronization of insensitivity, and one too many bursts of TMI posts-- my timeline for the last few years has been tattooed with all kinds of negativity.
And now I'm ready to admit that I'm being pricked with it's angry ink as well.
A few years back, due to some personal issues I was experiencing, I was pretty much forced by my mom to delete my account. For the first few weeks, I felt like a chainsmoker in her early stages of rehabilitation-- my hands were practically trembling with the crave to get back into my routine.
But along the way, I found other things to direct my attention to and this eventually helped me see that I could not only survive without the app, but I could live a lot happier without it.
Though despite this epiphany, I decided to join the Twitterverse again after a year of feeling quite left out with the trends and memes that only an avid user of the website would know about. So I registered a new account, and the rest was history-- a history, I now have decided to learn and improve from.
Some might wonder what suddenly sparked this sudden desire if I had always been aware of the cons that came with the app. I can't give an exact answer to that, but what I can say is that this isn't as sudden as you think it is. At least twice a month I find myself considering deleting my account but then eventually shrugging the idea off when I see a pretty header on the account of someone I'm stalking and immediately finding the need to find an equally gorgeous one of my own. But due to recent events, I've realized that I've become too dependent on the opinions of plausible spectators. I think my final straw was when I succumbed to changing my header into a plain white photo just so it could look like the profiles of the other people I followed. It may not seem like a big deal to you, but I have always prided myself in straying away from the mainstream, so to see my personal account turn into a mirror of everyone else's, I could no longer bear to watch my originality disintegrate in favor of the approval of people I didn't actually care about.
I needed out, and I needed it ASAP.
So instead of waiting, one day I just deleted the app, purging it from my phone and from my life instantly.
Since then, I've cut down my usage to birthday greeting purposes only. So far, I think the results are going pretty well. A lot of the negativity I attributed to Twitter no longer exists in my life and I can't deny that it's an amazing feeling. Sure, sometimes I feel like caving in because the lack of drama makes me feel a little empty and bored. But I'm no longer allowing myself to sacrifice my happiness for temporary satisfaction.
Tuesday will mark a whole week of this abstinence. I know, I know-- it's not a lot. But hey, that's just because this decision to renew and restart my life is still fresh. And honestly, there's nothing that terrifies and entices me more than the idea that this is only the beginning.