Hello all. You may not have even noticed, but I’ve taken a short break way from being online. Stresses and strains on my life have meant that I haven’t had much time to be my usual self on the internet, both in time and temperament.

I first noticed this towards the start of the week that I wasn’t in the best frame of mind and didn’t want my negative attitude to affect my posts or replies. I’ve let this happen before when Twitter poked and prodded at me to cause an emotional reaction, but learnt to deal with it is much better now.

It’s remarkable the different the way you feel impacts the way you think and react to things. Being mindful of emotions is important, and often having to save all my mental energy for important decision or deep work in my day job means I am exhausted when it comes to posting and replying online. For better or worse I truly value what I do around the internet and as such a step back is what I (and possibly many people) need every now and again.

What I thought was solely down to manipulation of emotions and my attention by social media companies runs much deeper than I first realised. However, the fact remains that social media companies work hard to pull on these strings and keep users interacting with their service. Emotions breed interaction. Mastodon, and in my case specifically through micro.blog, is a much nicer place for me to hang out. That doesn’t mean there are not issues caused by the constant stream of updates.

Anyway, enough of the negativity. It’s only when I step back and don’t post do I realise how much I miss it. I get overly worried about being connected all the time, but it provides a considerable benefit to me. Not only that, but I’m lucky to have found numerous great people that interact with me. Thanks for being wonderful.