Twitter

So I broke down and started a Twitter account over the last couple of months. A friend of mine talked me into it. While I was signing up I kept wondering how often I would use it. I am not particularly succinct. I have a tendency to use 20 words when 5 will do and I figured I would struggle using only 140 characters.  And that is true to a point. But I was missing the whole point of Twitter. I was worried about posting. Now I realize that Twitter is perfect for listening.

Once I started the account I saw how many of my favorite authors, artists, and musicians happened to have accounts. I started following people I admire, people who's work inspires me. And they posted things about their work and their lives. I found a quick easy way to tell artists how much I admire their work. And I quickly became obsessed.

I have a number of friends that I follow and I love to hear what's going in their life. I use my twitter account the same way I use Facebook. More reading and less posting. And when I do post I try to make it good, not just what I'm eating for lunch that day. If you are interested in seeing me struggle to keep my posts to 140 characters follow me over on @catbier. If you do, let me know you're coming from the blog and I'll try to follow you too. Twitter is fun!

Not keeping up (with the Joneses or anyone else)

I logged onto my Facebook account for the first time in three weeks. I looked at all the new notifications that I have. I read one new email. And I glanced at the number of requests that I had. Then I logged out. I didn't even accept my requests. I think I'm officially burnt out on Facebook.

A friend of mine got me started with the site and I played around with it a bit. I created a profile, found some friends, and added a couple applications. Then I lost interest. I tried to maintain at least some connection with the site for a while. I'd log in, send out silly requests, and post to people's walls. But my heart really wasn't in it. I wanted to say more. I prefer conversation to superpokes. Throwing a frog at me tells me nothing about how your life is going. The site is okay for email but I actually prefer regular email systems.

The one good thing that has come out of my early interest in Facebook is this blog. As I realized I wanted to say more I decided that I would start this. Now I spend significantly more thought on this then I do log time on Facebook. I figure I spend all day at work on the computer, I spend some of my evenings on the computer playing World of Warcraft, and I try to fit in more and more time at the computer for writing. I'm done with sites that are just time wasters. I don't really feel like I have a lot of time to waste. So for those of you who read my blog, that are waiting for me to come back strong to Facebook, sorry. I'll try to log in occassionally but if you really want to contact me, text, phone, or email works best.