I recently found out that Twitter has a follow limit of 2,000. That’s the maximum number of accounts that you can follow. So I decided to review who or what I’m following and “cull the herd,” so to speak.

I chose to trim my “recovery” list. As I am not a recovery professional, I decided to unfollow almost every treatment facility/detox center and the like. I have nothing against such places, they do great work with people. But if I were to make use of Twitter in the manner I’d prefer to use it, I’d just follow and interact with individuals. And so my recovery list is now filled with fellow people in recovery, with some exceptions for Catholic organizations and recovery media accounts. I know that I can add accounts to a list and not follow them, but there’s already too much noise and clutter online. Again, facilities do great work and are a critical need, but I cannot read everything that comes across a feed or timeline and so some restrictions are in order. Having multiple Twitter accounts only multiplies the problem.

I will look at other lists that I have used to organize my Twitter follows, and trim those as well. I may limit my Twitter follows to just people in recovery, writers of any stripe, (but preferably Catholic or involved in recovery), pro-lifers and those few people I consider online friends but I know only through Twitter (or perhaps elsewhere, but Twitter is an additional way to keep in touch with them).

I don’t have much personal use for Twitter; it exists mostly to promote the posts I write for this blog, and to a lesser extent, to connect with other people. The fact that Twitter limits you to 140 characters for any post renders the latter somewhat less than useful. I’m a writer and blogger, what can I do with 140 characters? Its user interface isn’t to me very helpful, anything that happened much longer than a few hours ago is basically lost to history. Twitter power users might point out that the use of lists can help along those lines, but due to what I said above, I have little interest in being a “power user.” I do make use of lists as I’ve indicated above, and they do help matters, but still, the limited nature of 140 characters dissuades me from making much use of the network. The 140 lends itself to shorter online attention spans, oh look! my cats are doing something cute.

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)