After three months, my social media sab­bat­i­cal is offi­cially over.

Inter­est­ingly enough, when I unplugged at the begin­ning of Sep­tem­ber, I was cer­tain that I would be sit­ting in a cor­ner like a crack addict, itch­ing to post a sta­tus update. While I can­not say that I didn’t have some­thing akin to with­drawal symp­toms at first, the obsessive/compulsive urge to check in fell off rather quickly. To tell the truth, being away from social media was quite lib­er­at­ing. With­out the ben­e­fit of Face­book or Twit­ter, I was forced to actu­ally pick up the phone and call peo­ple if I wanted, or needed, to have a sub­stan­tive con­ver­sa­tion. Email is pretty much still my default method of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, but it was nice to hear people’s voices — par­tic­u­larly the laugh­ter. There is absolutely no com­par­ing “LOL” to hear­ing the heart-felt laugh of a fam­ily mem­ber or friend. In fact, just last week my buddy Dotch and I shared some­thing that, in the scheme of things, was rather mun­dane, but we must have laughed for five min­utes straight. Had I made the joke in an email, text mes­sage, IM chat, or on Face­book, it just wouldn’t have been the same.

This exchange led me to ques­tion just why I was jump­ing back into the fray. It’s as sim­ple as this: there are just as many peo­ple that I don’t get a chance to talk to dur­ing my time off and I miss them. Social media is a good way to keep up with more peo­ple than I have time to call. I think what I’ve learned from my sab­bat­i­cal is not to lean to heav­ily on Face­book and Twit­ter for inter­ac­tion with friends. It can­not serve as a sub­sti­tute for a phone call, an email, or, more impor­tantly, face-to-face time. The con­ve­nience of social media, at least for me, lends itself to the dis­con­nect. I don’t think this issue is lim­ited to me, but I won’t project.

As I sus­pected, the things that I did miss were dif­fer­ent for each mode of social media. Face­book pro­vided the more per­sonal updates about friends, their kids, and fam­ily that I appre­ci­ate. Twit­ter had become my news ticker. With­out Twit­ter, I found that I merely spent more time online scan­ning news sites and blogs. Google Buzz served as my out­let for engag­ing in sub­stan­tive dis­cus­sions and debates. This void was filled with forums and blogs.

As I men­tioned in my piece when I signed off, I real­ized that social media was really the symp­tom — not the dis­ease. I am eas­ily dis­tracted, and it was prob­a­bly too con­ve­nient to blame social media for my per­sis­tent habit of check­ing in.

With that said, the time off was a great breather. If you log into Face­book and/or Twit­ter mul­ti­ple times a day, I sug­gest that you try tak­ing a break. For me, it helped put things into per­spec­tive. As I return to the social media sphere, I have an idea about how I plan to re-engage. Much like just about every­thing in our lives, there has to be bound­aries and lim­its. I think what friends will see is that my engage­ment will now be much more pre­dictable. No longer will I be drop­ping into Face­book through­out the day. Twit­ter is a lit­tle dif­fer­ent, because I still see it as akin to peek­ing in on the news. The key is to peek in, do a quick scan and then move on. Google Buzz, which tends to require more of my atten­tion, is some­thing that will have be reeval­u­ated. Even when I logged off, there was some dis­cus­sion about its longevity. Per­haps time has resolved that debate. Google Buzz is either going strong or inter­est and par­tic­i­pa­tion is waning.

As I sit here typ­ing, it occurs to me that I don’t really have any­thing too pro­found to share. I’m sure many of you have thought about, if not acted on, these this issue. I reached a burn out point with social media, and though I’m return­ing, it’s def­i­nitely with a cau­tious approach. I may, in the end, decide that the return only con­firmed that my time off was the right thing to do, and I’ll just shut the whole thing down and return to call­ing and email­ing my friends. That’s actu­ally my pref­er­ence any­way. (I never under­stood why peo­ple sent me mes­sages through Face­book when they knew my phone num­ber and/or email address.)

I’m happy to answer ques­tions, if you have them. Oth­er­wise, that’s it. No great fan­fare. Just a quiet reen­try into the fold. So, with­out fur­ther ado, here’s where to find me in the social media space.

If you fol­lowed me on Twit­ter before my exit, you’ll need to find me again. Unlike Face­book, I couldn’t deac­ti­vate my Twit­ter account. It’s pretty much an all or noth­ing propo­si­tion. Google Buzz appears to have retained who I fol­lowed, and those who fol­lowed me.