Just a little while ago, I was congratulating myself on 8 years of blogging. But the truth is, I haven*t been here in some months. I had been drawn away, first and foremost, by Twitter. After that was dealt with each day, I had neither the time nor the energy to sit and write blog entries.
And that seemed OK, for a while. However, after a month or two, it became evident to me just how much time I was spending trying to keep up with my Twitter feeds, how little else I was doing online, and how the novelty of Twitter had worn off. Last week I just had to shut it all down. For some days I didn’t look at Twitter at all — and I survived! I even found time to read other stuff. Wow! What a revelation of what I had been missing.
And as I started to re-visit the lively politics, arts and science sites that used to be my daily fare, I had more and more desire to share some of this stuff as I used to. And to write about it. Last night, as I rebuilt my Daily Bookmarks list, it was a joy to see some of those sites again. Made me excited after what I recognize as the torpor that Twitter induces.
My daughter in England and I have found Twitter to be a very useful way of keeping us in touch each day; and so we’ll continue to do that. I’ll spend some time winnowing down my Twitter “following” list to just those dozen or so artists that I’ve enjoyed interacting with. And that will be that for Twitter.
Jak's View of Vancouver v.3 
Are you a professional journalist? You write very well.
No, but thanks. I’m a professional writer, but not usually a journalist.