Twitter Guilt

Twitter me this: Do you have Twitter Guilt?

You know what I'm talking about - that nagging queasiness in the pit of your stomach when you check back in with Twitter after a day or two away? That sand-in-your-eye burning when you see how chatty the Twittervese has been since you logged off? That ringing in your ears when you realize that you just tweeted something "They" all talked about yesterday or that you have DMs that you really, really wish you had seen and replied to a day ago?

Yeah, I have that. Bad.

I try to take the time to log off during the week, to step away from the constant (occasionally annoying, if not entirely overwhelming) updates of not only Twitter, but Facebook, LinkedIn, and my RSS Feed, to name a few. I try to step away and say, "Hey, let's focus people!" And by "people," I do mean me. Oh, and by "focus," I do not mean me.

Just wanted to clarify.

Back to the point, there's a very real feeling of guilt when I return to these series of tubes we call the Internet. I can hear the murmurs of abandonment in my keyboard, taste the bitter bile of being out of the loop for an extended period of time.*

Or I could be overly imaginative. That's a possibility.

Yet, I have it. The guilt. About Twitter.

So, to sum up: I have Twitter Guilt.

My condition makes me wonder: How do other people do it? How do you step away and come back to the Twitterverse with ease, grace, and jazz hands waving proudly in the air?

I'd like to know - even if your jazz hands are more like spirit fingers.



*Which, if I may, is more often than not less than 6-hours.