Why Twitter is like one of those Morning Walker thingies

You know what I'm talking about - one of those machines that claim to give you all the benefits of exercise while you basically spend 15 minutes lying on your back twiddling your thumbs. If you're not in very good shape to begin with, you'll probably see some level of improvement for a week or two, but after that, you know you're lying to yourself, but you'll continue using it because it's still easier than, say, actually getting off your bum and working out.

Now I'm a pretty big fan of Twitter, for the most part, but the one thing I dislike about it is that it allows me to slack off on blogging/writing. Now this isn't how it's supposed to be. Twitter's supposed to actually help you write better, by forcing you to get concise and fit everything into 140 characters. Only I find that I'm not just writing less, I'm now also writing less. Let me explain - I like the idea of writing, and that's why I started blogging in the first place, but now I keep telling myself that if I am going to post something on the blog, it had better be good, or I shouldn't bother with it at all. Which eventually means that I hardly post that often on the blog these days (compare, for instance, the number of posts I did per month back in 2008 to the number I did in 2009). Instead, when I do feel the urge to express myself somewhat on the internet, I now type out a quick tweet and I'm done.

And then I go back to gorging at the all-you-can-eat buffet table that is Google Reader. I can almost feel my arteries hardening, metaphorically speaking. And so, since this is still January, I shall now make a resolution to write more, in terms of both, quantity and frequency, this year. Let's see how long that lasts.