Every time I log in to Twitter (@heysstef), I get distracted by the 18.4K tweet count glaring at me from the side of my feed. I couldn’t shake off the urge to bring that number down, no matter how senseless and time-consuming the task was.

Did I really post that many tweets? What were those tweets about anyway? When DID I first jump on the blue bird wagon?

Bored with work, I checked for possible ways to go back to the start of my timeline. Turns out you just need to go to https://twitter.com/search-advanced, type in your username and select the date range.

BOOM ? instant shame and embarrassment to scroll through for the next half hour.

As a regular digital consumer + content creator, mindfulness is something I’ve only begun to exercise. There’s just so much junk out on the internet that cleaning up my mess is a responsibility I need to take on.

My personal approach to mindfulness is to create or share what inspires or teaches people. I prefer to keep content that engages me, assuring me that my time was well-spent. While the social media timeline is inherently a personal space, I want to fill it with content that actually helps others one way or another.

Going through my 2009-2012 posts, there were 30-40 Tweets telling the world I’m hungry, sad, bored, or awake. Some of those Tweets had broken links or led to dead websites! So I set out to delete every one of those unworthy updates.

From 18.4K I painstakingly brought it down to 12.4K. It was like I was shedding 6,000 additional unwanted social media fat.

What’s interesting about this funny project was rediscovering old wishful thinking, memories, and dreams that eventually turned into a reality.

https://twitter.com/heysstef/status/906662078223486976

https://twitter.com/heysstef/status/907204346261020672

https://twitter.com/heysstef/status/908125048854032385

https://twitter.com/heysstef/status/912627532968607744

https://twitter.com/heysstef/status/912644130517299200

https://twitter.com/heysstef/status/919754631000899584

So while it sounds like a total waste of time, it was time well-spent. ?

Although…

If it took me a month and a half to scroll through 18.4K Tweets and delete 6K forever, I can only imagine hours of clicking and deleting thousands of useless Facebook posts.

?