All the Little Birds Go Tweet, Tweet, Tweet

This whole twitter thing. What's up with that? I know there are people who love it, and who are addicted to it. Those are probably the same people who follow Ashton Kutcher. I personally tend towards the group that maintains that the internet has sucked us in enough already. Exhibit one: MyFace. Exhibit two: youtube. Exhibit three: Blog feeds. I'm covered. But apparently everyone in the world doesn't agree with me. Silly but true.


I googled "why Twitter," and a few of the very top posts were "Why Twitter Isn't a Waste of Time" and "Why Twitter Sucks." I keep thinking that it will die out. But even the guy that says it sucks says it will succeed. Bummer. I'm hoping that it at least morphs into something a little less ridiculous. I know it can be a place where you can get news about events or other things of interest to you, and that is neat-o. But I'm kind of over that. Just using the technology that I have, I can get more information faster than I ever could in my pre-computer, pre-cell phone days. Yes, that's right, when I was a kid, we didn't even have cable at my house.


I can find plenty of ways to fill my day with technology if I really want to. That's the dangerous and wonderful thing about it. I've noticed that I spend a lot of time on the computer, and walk away from it wondering how so much time has gone by with so little really accomplished. I can research things, catch up on TV shows, catch up with friends, read blogs from my favorite writers, and find recipes. All of these things are fun, and harmless, at least in small doses. But sometimes (especially with this whole unemployment thing), I find myself spending way to much time online. All the sudden I look up and it's dark and I missed the last lovely sunny hours of the day.


I've also seen that my teenagers often don't know what to do without a laptop in front of them or their fancy phones to text, check emails, etc, on. I can't say it's just a problem teenagers have, though, because it can be just as bad with adults. I have recently assessed my own uses of time and come to the conclusion that I need to stop getting sucked into things and make conscious decisions to do other things with my time. With all this free time, shouldn't I be doing some of those projects I've always meant to get to? Shouldn't my apartment be sparkling? Shouldn't I be nice and cook dinner for my roommate or something? I have family picture to catolog for my mom, tapes of family members talking to transcribe and add to the family history, toenails to repaint, old toys I either need to put in a box or let go of and donate/throw away. So why am I not doing those things? I could totally do them all.

But back to this Twitter thing. If it made you "jittery" to not be able to connect to it for an hour or two, would you admit to it? Because you shouldn't. Also, P.S., iReporter, not only do I not understand why CNN keeps letting you post things, I don't think Twitter needs a competitor. Unless that comes in the form of something less silly and more useful.