Séamas O'Reilly: My life would be unrecognisable without Twitter

'Whether you use Twitter or not, this column would not exist and neither would most of my work, in its current form. The same could likely be said for a handful of other people in this newspaper, and most others.'

Séamas O'Reilly. Picture: Orfhlaith Whelan

Four years ago, I quit my last job to write full-time. It wasn’t exactly a stab in the dark since, by that time, I’d already been writing a weekly column for an Irish paper for over a year. 

It’s just that — and make sure you’re sitting down when you read this — the pay for those columns was meagre enough that quitting my job had never really been an option. And so, I continued to traipse into an office near Oxford Circus to eat Tesco Meal Deals as I stared at spreadsheets, chatted over teas, and signed cards at a rate that suggested at least half of my colleagues had six birthdays a year.