I am not involved in Twitter or Facebook. Briefly I once joined Friends Reunited but found the people I was interested in re-discovering had not embraced the concept.

I did join Facebook several years ago purely because I read that an old rock star favourite of mine was answering questions on his career and music. The next thing I knew was that over the following six months, I received so many requests from people who wanted to become my friends, many of whom had never been to my house when I was in England. I used that as a rough yardstick with regard to judging whom I regarded as friends: had they been in my kitchen?

I was then amazed by the every-day triviality of many posts.

I recall on one occasion, a person I knew and liked, posted the fact he was sitting in his car outside a property and was attempting to psyche himself up to go to the house, knock on the door and undertake his assignment. The response was almost immediate.

One post assured him he was good at his job and that he was equal to the task. Another just wished him good luck and added: “You can do it, mate.” The next reminded him that if he took a deep breath and made the call, in one hour’s time he could look back on it and realise the trauma was behind him and the future would look bright.

I re-read these posts and marvelled at them. They were almost immediate: as if three or four of his friends were just waiting for someone to update them on his or her life and jumped at the chance to be sympathetic.

The plain fact was, all these words, thoughts and communications, while supportive seemed a little over the top to me. My ’friend’ was not sitting in the car, screwing a silencer on his P08 Luger as he prepared to wipe out the occupants of the house. Nor was he getting papers together in order to service them on the householder. He was preparing to do no more that fulfil an appointment and take the person’s photograph: an everyday job.

The other fact struck me that unless I knew my ‘friend’ was terminally ill, I could not imagine spending so much of my time keeping up with their latest thoughts, happenings and the mental and physical equivalent of their bowel movements.

The end of a series, such as Downton Abbey, inspires heavy activity with posters admitting to tears or relief things worked out well for Lady Edith or disappointment at the slightly rose-tinted finale in which everyone seemed to be paired off and walking into the sunset.

I have a life to get on with and while I am the first to admit I undertake a fair amount of relaxation and in no way can I claim to fill every moment meaningfully, I do not want to crowd my life with what I perceive as minutiae.

That is another reason, chronic staff cuts aside, that I am glad I am no longer a working journalist. To have to keep up to date with the tweets, observations and generally insignificant observations of various local personalities would seem like a serious waste of time but one you would have to undertake, in case they came up with something vaguely approaching importance.

Recently, I was relating my Facebook experience to a friend of mine who pointed out that in effect I was undertaking my own weekly postings on this website column. I countered that this is different. I was asked to provide a weekly column, free of charge for the website, whereas previously I had been paid for such a column in the paper, which had run for a dozen or more years.

Yet he had a point. I have not lived in the Watford area for almost 11 years; I am no longer involved in the weekly occurrences of the locality and so my column takes on the narrative of a boat that has slipped anchor and is floating without direction on the high seas.

I sent last week’s column about my brief indulgence in depression to a friend who is a little down. In reply, I was asked if I had written the article for my own consumption and I realised in a way, I had done just that. When I explained that perhaps there was an element of confession being good for the soul about writing it, surprise was expressed that I had laid out my feelings in public.

I reflected on that and came to the conclusion that it is not at all easy to write a weekly column, despite the wide parameters. Perhaps I was padding out with too much personal stuff. I sat down last week and pondered as to what I was to write about this week. My wife Ellie, who often volunteers valuable suggestions, was at a loss. Three days later, I was still no further.

If I had been on Facebook, I might have asked why they chose the 1920s to end such a series as Downton, when the next two decades were rich in background and potential. But bemoaning the fact they had drawn a line under the series, as opposed to squeezing some more out of it by heading into the late 20s, recession and the anxieties about war, was at odds with how I was feeling.

I thought over the last week and noted that apart from being 16 foot up a ladder for four or five hours – which is nine foot higher than I prefer to be – there is little to report. Nor can I see any other insightful moments quivering on the horizon.

The realisation that I often have to lapse into Facebook-type utterances about everyday life on a weekly basis, brought me to a conclusion. Writing a weekly column is perhaps unsustainable after 20 years of undertaking the challenge. I enjoy the discipline but mentally I fulfil an obligation, as opposed to enthusiastically reach for the keyboard every week. Perhaps the writer felt something akin to that when he approached the end of Downton.

I began to feel I was doing what I have criticised with regard to Facebook, so I decided I will continue to submit columns to the website but no longer on a weekly basis. I will wait until I feel I have something credible to say and with equal hope that you will find them interesting.