Almost exactly three years ago, I decided to kill my Facebook account. Not log off. Delete it. It’s been gone since then, and honestly, I never miss it.

When I signed on to Twitter for the first time in May of 2008, I had no idea what I would do with it. The running joke at the time was that Twitter was primarily used to let others know you were going to/were in/were back from, the bathroom. Colleagues at a startup in Austin even registered a domain name (whospoopin.com) as a joke, in the hopes of creating a “competitor” to Twitter.

During the last 8 and a half years, I’ve used Twitter to make new friends, find old ones, and make connections that sometimes even translate from binary into analog, meeting Twitter connections for the first time. As I once said on Twitter, when I was young, I didn’t get the point of pen pals, but now with Twitter, I did, and had pen pals around the world.

I’m very disappointed with the state of the world at the moment, and I find that Twitter lately only adds despair, rage, or both to my mood.

In my life, I try to be mindful of how tools work for me or not, and discard them if they cost me more than they benefit me. Recently, I’ve realized that Twitter’s return for my investment has greatly diminished, and I’m wasting far more on it vs. what it gives me. Sure, some of this has to do with this insane election. But it is not just that. Pondering what Twitter means to me has helped me highlight a desire to focus inward on my own personal priorities – my health, my weight, my job, reading and learning, and  my other personal interests, ahead of the seemingly empty calories that Twitter provides to me of late.

For the time being, I’m not deleting my Twitter account, deleting any tweets, or even taking the account dark. But I have deleted the apps from my computers and iPhone, and I don’t intend to check Twitter with any regularity any longer. I continue to be reachable via email, and cell phone, as well as Signal and Telegram.