I'm a few days into being sans tweets, and I must say, it is challenging. One of the reasons I remained on Twitter after the initial exodus when Musk took over was because I was emotionally invested in the Jacksonville mayor's race.

This took on a form of hyper-vigilance, as the incumbent mayor and his allies were involved with the campaign of the Republican candidate, and these are just not people to be trusted. So I felt I was always on the lookout for lies, baseless attacks and actions on their part that revealed their perfidy and faithlessness, of which, sadly, there was little shortage.

Well, the election is over and the good guys won. I'm officially no longer a part of Twitter, but I still have this interior feeling of hyper-vigilance. I'm not seeing a timeline of news reports and commentary that I'm responding to, or re-tweeting and I feel like I'm missing out on something.

I know this will pass, nearly all feelings do. I went through something similar when I left Facebook and Instagram, though it wasn't perhaps as intense as this feeling.

Naturally, there's still access to news. I have subscriptions to local and regional papers, and many of them offer email or RSS feeds, I don't have to visit their web sites just to see what's being reported. But there's the reflexive habit of wanting to share a news report, with a comment of some kind, usually snarky or ironic, sometimes perhaps a little insightful. But it's not as easy without the well lubricated hamster wheels of a social media silo.

In any event. I'm confident that, in the long run, this is better for me.