Iowahawk (David Burge) caused massive distress by announcing last night on Facebook that he intends to take time off from social media.

I’ve had some folks ask me to elaborate, so here goes…

1. no, nobody paid me the million bucks.

2. no, it had nothing to do with the Sam Wang twitter thing.

Fact is this has been on my to-do list for some time. I’ve never been paid for anything I’ve done online, nor have I wanted to. Even if I went balls-out and threw myself into writing full time, I could never hope to make a third of what I make in my boring (yet fulfilling) day job. It’s always been a lark, a tertiary hobby for me.

I abandoned the blog largely because the posts were fairly time consuming and Twitter allowed me to drop a quick mini-satire in between real life stuff. Over the last 2 years, though, I found myself questioning why I do any of it in the first place. I don’t need the money, so why bother? Answers weren’t very reassuring. The only honest answer I can give you is my own narcissism, and addiction to attention/approval.

There’s certain high provided by follows, RTs & upthumbs, but in the end it’s fleeting and empty. I have a pretty damn kickass real life, and the time I spend on social media subtracts, rather than adds, to it. One kiss from Tammi Jo still beats the hell out of all the retweets in the world.

So basically I’ve decided to lay off the social media crack for a while and enjoy myself, without the constant need to post about it. I’m keeping my Twitter account, but only for DM communication; observer rather than participant. May go back there at some point, don’t know.

As for FB, I’ll be nuking this account in a few days. If you’re a real-life buddy, who knows, maybe I’ll reappear somewhere elsewhere around here on Planet Zuckerberg.

He is uniquely brilliant and talented, and however long he is absent the loss will be incalculable.