I have a confession to make. I posted recently about my leaving Twitter. Well, it's true I did but the good people at Tweet central give you 30 days in which to chew on the prospect of committing social suicide and it pains me to say I did skulk back like a recently divorced man to his mother. To begin with, it was just to see what people were talking about and yes, if they were talking about me. A handful were; several Twitterfolk had voiced their concerns as to my whereabouts and then later lamented my passing as if I'd died.

I didn't write back, like the Ghost of Tweeters Past, but I did feel a pang of guilt about going away. Despite them being people I've never actually met, they were friends, at least in an online capacity. Then just the other night I broke my silence. I felt like a fraud for all the stuff I'd said about how Twitter was a giant time-sink and now, here I was, idling away time again just like before.

But it didn't feel the same; I felt alienated, I felt like I was cheating on my writing time, having an affair with the little blue bird while my scripts and articles sat on the shelf, wondering what time I'd be home. I slipped away again, relatively unnoticed, but worried about going back to my writing, knowing I was still attached to my online umbilical chord. Since the break I've been so much more productive, writing extensive character profiles for a sitcom idea, which is shaping up really nicely, and I've been asked to submit articles to a newly re-branded men's lifestyle site called gridlock magazine by editor, @benwakeling. Yes, someone actually read some of my stuff and emailed me for articles, thanks to this blog as it happens. I've got a lot to be thankful for and a lot of people to thank for it.

People like Andrea Mann (@jazzchantoozie), who first gave me the opportunity to write for the Huff, which I would never have known about if it wasn't for Twitter. Jody Thompson (@jodythompson), the editor, for putting my last Twitter blog on the front page. @Mjowen174, who basically told me to stop titting about and write, which I've done. Thanks to @OliJBA and @WGallagher for their friendships beyond the walls of Tweetsville. And thanks to @QuintinForbes, @LauraSparling, @iamchads and @artminx for the simple act of missing me when I wasn't there. Like I said, it's like quitting smoking, this Twitter shenanigan. I now equate writing success with staying-off-Twitter, so going back feels like a recipe for disaster. I have a new regime and a complete break away seems inevitable. I'm nothing if not indecisive, complicated, perplexing and exasperating. It's what sets us apart from snails and enormous, monolithic American servers, blinking ceaselessly.

I'm only human.

Follow Marc Paterson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/marcpaterson