This will auto-post to Twitter from my Buckaroo Banzai micro.blog, which cross-posts from the marmot and here in the underground. But I've written my last tweet. I'll pull the plug this evening, probably before Wheel of Fortune comes on.

I've mentioned a few times that I was leaving Twitter after the Jacksonville mayor's race. Yesterday I mentioned it again, in case anyone wanted to reach out for contact info (or to buy some used lenses), and I was surprised and gratified by many of the replies asking me to stay.

I can't. Partly it's a personal weakness. Twitter can be somewhat addictive for me, and I'll find hours of time scrolled into the ether, consuming often toxic rhetoric or being my own bad self in offering caustic snark. Not exactly how I want to spend my life.

But also, the platform itself has become toxic. No amount of blocking or muting or unfollowing can limit your exposure to the radioactivity emanating from the top. It gets reflected and refracted and re-tweeted and finds a way into your timeline despite all your best efforts. And it's probably good to know that it exists, to a certain extent, but it exacts a toll.

The cumulative damage to my spiritual DNA was beginning to reach a level that threatened my faith in humanity. I don't want to end up hating everybody. I recall something I thought about after I met a wonderful couple in Scottsdale, Arizona last year and later learned they were hard-core Trumpers.

The only way to win is not to play the game.

I'm on mastodon and I haven't figured out my relationship with that platform. There are fun and harmless ways of engaging with social media, but people bring their own baggage and sometimes that energy can spill over. I want to be more deliberate, more thoughtful about what I'm putting into the world. I can do that here in my blogs. I'll see how mastodon shapes up for me.

The immediacy and interactivity of social media are both its blessing and its curse. I know I want to engage with people more, but I need to find a better way to do that. So that's something I'll try to work on.

Until then, I'll be here in the underground, commenting on politics, or over in the marmot with more general content about my life, cameras, radios, whatever has my attention at the moment.

Hopefully more mindfully. Maybe with more compassion and grace for the folks who have lost their way. And I know that sounds presumptuous, as if I know "the way." Let's just say, having been lost once myself, I know it when I see it.

Anyway, this is the long good-bye for my Twitter friends. I'm sure we'll meet again somewhere in cyberspace or IRL.

My dad, in his later years, often ended our conversations by FaceTime or in person with, "I love ya, pal. Keep the faith."

I love you all.

Keep the faith.