We're hiatus-ing

I'm on vacation.

I still have to work, and I have several other events taking placing in town that will require my attention. I won't leave a lengthy explanation of vacation on my work voicemail, and I will be responding to calls on my cell phone and emails to my various accounts.

But I need a break. From Twitter.

If you haven't heard by now (likely from me), Twitter is the 140-character nanoblogging service that has revolutionized the Internet and social media, with news services, athletes, celebrities and the common man counting themselves among its millions of users.

And I've been very active with it. I use Twitter during football (er... soccer...) matches, college football season, college hoops smorgasbords, LDS General Conference, sacrament meeting snoozers, planning and coordination of events, breaking news and anything else for which you can use the outlet.

But I've had enough.

L.A. Galaxy and U.S. men's national team star Landon Donovan (via his Twitter account) said he was stepping away from the popular service because "there's too much negativity on there." Likewise, I've had a few friends comment to me similar things, stating that Twitter has become its own version of high school — except with 24-years-and-older versions of their teenage selves. It's a popularity contest where the medium has taken over the media it once broadcast.

And I'm sick of it.

I never liked the cliques and social circles of high school; I always tried to pass through several categorical listings. I was a three-sport athlete, a page editor for the school newspaper, a Thespian, a recovering ballroom dancer, a gamer, an occasional semi-professional B-boy, a budding fashionista and the only Gringo silly enough to take AP Spanish. One of the few titles I didn't inherit, it would seem was Prom King — quite possibly because I never went to a prom night.

When I graduated, I thought I had left high school behind. Sure, there were many things I would miss: weekend wrestling tournaments; theatre rehearsals that lasted through the night and well into the morning; football games where the better action was in the stands rather than on the field; all-night video game sessions with the boys where we subsisted on Mtn Dew and Cheetos.

But I never missed the cliques. And that's what Twitter has become. Cliquish. Uncontrolled. A popularity contest.

And, for now, I'm done with it. I have plenty else to optimize my time. A new high school sports season approaches quickly, and we have a Web site to outfit. I'm two weeks away from taking the GRE, which will dramatically influence my future. And I want to write more on this blog (you know, because I don't do that enough, working as a newspaper reporter).

I'll still be around. Just not on Twitter. And I'll be back; there's a good chance I'll be around before the NFL Lockout ends, and I'll have more time to tweet once I've taken The Test.

In the meantime, I'll still be "hanging out" (thought not literally) on Google+. I still have email and this blog. And I still have the old-fashion phone and unlimited text messaging for anyone who knows me in real life.

It should be enough — while I'm on hiatus.