Last night, I left Twitter.

It wasn’t by designed but in trying set up a new Twitter account for a client, I accidentally de-activated @markevans. Believe me, it a sad story.

In the process, I have discovered that clicking on this button, there’s apparently no going back.

According to Twitter, once an account has been de-activated, it can’t be brought back to life because “account restoration is not available at this time”.

While my departure from Twitter is entirely my fault, it seems strange that Twitter just can’t switch a switch to restore it. At the very least, I’d be happy to start over with @markevans but the username is locked in limbo.

For now, I’ve done a few things: filled out an online form on Twitter’s support section, sent an e-mail to restore@twitter.com and sent a tweet to Biz Stone. If @markevans does come back to life soon, it would be a major miracle but I have my fingers crossed.

In the meantime, I’ve set up a new Twitter account (@markconsulting), and started to re-follow some of the 300 people who had been following. As for the 5,000 people who were following me, it will take awhile before that rebounds.

On one hand, the whole thing is terribly disappointing given it had been something I had nurtured for nearly three years. On the other hand, it’s not the end of the world. Life is full of bumps in the road, and all you can do sometimes is simply take a deep breath and keep moving forward.

To paraphrase Prince, the tweeter formerly known as @markevans is now @markconsulting. If you were following @markevans, come on over to @markconsulting – same great content, brand new name….at least, I hope, for the time being.

Update: The good news is I have heard from Twitter support, and it appears – fingers crossed – that I may be able to gain access to @markevans and my e-mail address. I’m not sure whether this means the account will come back to life with all the friends and followers intact but it’s a positive development.