Twitter angst

Twitter is making me feel inadequate. There. Said it. Having signed up somewhat belatedly I've found that I love it, and at times am glued to it, but I do sometimes feel like I can't quite cut it with the rest of the Twitterati.

How do all these people find the time to scan, read and analyse the world's websites, academic journals, policy papers and acts of parliament, then tweet all day about the nuggets of fascinating info they've gleaned - and still hold down a job?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not scoffing. I'm admiring and grateful and I've learned a lot by clicking on all those links. But it's as much as I can do to get my two small monsters to the childminder of a morning, clear up the crap left over from breakfast, write whatever I've got to file soonest and grab a quick kip to make up for the broken nights I thought we might have been done with at nine months, Baby M....

I tweet the odd feature I've written, or, more often, comment on something in the news that has hacked me off or made me grin. Hell, I told the world about my first hot chocolate of autumn the other day. (A low point in my Twitter career to date.)

But I'll have to hold off tweeting my personal analysis of the education revolution hitting our country until I've interviewed two academics, transcribed what they've said, written up the article, washed the baby's bottles, pitched another couple of ideas to an editor who probably won't have the space to run them even if they're any good, tried them elsewhere to other editors who don't have any money to run them even if they've got the space, had a consoling cup of tea, constructed a conference programme, designed a training course, paid the childminder, picked up the kids....

Mmm, yeah. That analysis... it won't happen, will it? Guess I'll just have to keep clicking on other people's Twitter links and pop on a bit of lipstick to bolster my self-esteem.