Silence

10 days ago I decided to take a break from using Twitter. Initially this was a fairly pragmatic decision - I was feeling down and the only things I wanted to write were miserable little snippets of my internal world. But then I started thinking about the spiritual value of silence (or at least online silence). I wondered how much of my blogging, tweeting and status updating is to keep people informed, and how much is to bolster my self-image: "Look at me. I'm here, I exist, I'm important!" So I decided that it would be at least a week before I used Twitter again. Of course, we then had interesting weather,but I resisted the urge to tell everyone that I, too, had noticed the snow. I've now got to a stage where the craving to tweet seems to be wearing off, so I may start doing it again - though cautiously.