[This post was originally published on The Living Room Tumblr.]

Two quick announcements about my Twitter “hiatus”:

1. In order to alleviate ongoing terminological confusion about the intended scope of the hiatus – which was never designed to result in literally zero or near-zero tweets; my original goal was 200 tweets in 30 days, and I’d be within striking distance of that goal if not for the #WeekFromHell – I am officially changing the name of this endeavor from a “Twitter hiatus” to a “Twitter sequester,” effective immediately.

2. Because I think my sequester-allowed habit of posting several pictures per day on my “social-media methadone,” Instagram, will be more than adequate as a tweeting outlet during our family vacation to the Florida panhandle next month, I am officially extending the planned end date of the hiatus sequester from May 9 to May 18.

That’s right: the 30-day hiatus is now a 39-day sequester. #PANIC!

This will not, of course, affect the #HiatusPool (or #SequesterPool, if you like), which will be judged based on my totals on May 9 at 11:59pm, as per the original plan.

Speaking of which, as of noon today, I have posted 712 tweets during the 19.5 days of the hiatus sequester (590 during the 5-day Week From Hell, 122 during the other 14.5 days since April 10). If I continue on my non-#WeekFromHell pace of 8.4 tweets per day for the next 10.5 days, I’ll end up with exactly 800 tweets. The primary contenders to win the pool would thus appear to be @kevinheaslip (wins if I finish between 741 and 763 tweets), @dinunziodjd (winning range 764-825) and @KennyOcker (826-936). Contenders like @AirborneGeek (937-1,099) and others with even higher guesses probably need another major news event to throw me off course again. If any of them is seen traveling to North Korea, call the FBI immediately. 🙂

Oh, and yes, this Tumblr post is itself a violation of the #hiatus, err,  #sequester. So sue me. 🙂

P.S. Regarding the “ongoing terminological confusion about the intended scope of the [sequester formerly known as] hiatus,” here’s a reminder – this is what I wrote before it started:

Definitionally, a “hiatus” is when I change my Twitter password to something unknown to me, thus locking myself out of web Twitter, and also disable my most commonly used apps (like Tweetbot). This forces me to reset my password (and then re-enable my apps) before I can effectively use Twitter again. That said, during a “hiatus,” I will still typically post a steady trickle of photos, Instagrams, Spotify tweets, etc. — those are allowed, because they are non-interactive when I can’t see replies and RTs, and thus they don’t open the door to Twitter becoming a massive time-sink, like it can when I get into conversations on it. (Plus, those occasional tweets keep my account “active,” dodging any unfollow scripts that track such things.)

So those Instagrams you see are not “cheating,” and do not mean the “hiatus is over.” True @hiatusfails (or #sequesterfails now) occur when I change my password back, as I did several times during the #WeekFromHell, and start tweeting again normally. 8 tweets per day via Instagram, Spotify and the occasional iOS photo or SMS text tweet do not qualify as a #FAIL; they are all part of the plan. Well, the SMS tweets are borderline…heh. But in general, those ~8 daily tweets are the “steady trickle” of third-party, non-interactive posts that are a planned part of this whole thing. (I recognize that, for most people, a tweet every 3 hours might not qualify as a mere “trickle,” but remember that I typically average ~115 tweets per day, or a tweet every ~12 minutes. So this is roughly a fourteen-fold decrease!)

Anyway, that’s all for now. We now return you to your previously scheduled #sequester, already (sort of) in progress. Hehe.