Twitter

(Hey Jeff Pulver, if you are ever in need of a character at a 140 Conference I can convert this post into a short presentation. Just saying. )

It is after midnight and the room is dark.  I am wearing an old headset, a sweatshirt and the shiny shorts that shone for the Shmata Queen. Don’t ask, it just kind of worked.

I am listening to Desperado and imagining that the song was written about me. Hmm…, maybe I should be listening to Carly Simon sing You’re So Vain. Anyway, the song catches my eye and my ears because of the combination of lyrics and music.

It makes a lot of sense, the idea of being happy with what you have. It is not always easy to do and not because of social or cultural messages. Sure those things have an impact upon our thoughts so it would be foolish not to acknowledge them.

But what I think is a bigger issue is the challenge of understanding ourselves well enough to know what it is we need versus what it is we want. If you are one of the 17 long time readers of this blog you have seen the posts that tie into this in which I ask you to tell me what brings you joy, what makes you happy.

I ask those questions because I am truly interested but also because I have spent a lot of time searching my own soul for my answers. Some people grow up and know that they want to be doctors or astronauts. They have a dream and they follow it from the time in which they are little until they are so called grown ups.

I have had a lot of dreams. The first was to play outfield for the Dodgers. I still think about it, but at 40 I am slowly coming to accept that it is not very likely. Neither is playing for the Lakers. Both of those would have made me very happy and brought me great joy, but they aren’t part of my reality.

Blogging is a pleasure and an outlet because it provides an easy way for me to vent and gain a greater understanding of myself. This is where I learned that I really am interested in writing a book. This is where I learned that I want to write a screenplay.

Twitter ties into this because of the restriction on characters. 140 characters, that is all you have to work with. It forces you to take your message and to simplify it. Trim the excess fat off that puppy and make it easy to understand.

Brevity isn’t my strong suit so it is a great exercise for me.

It also ties in well with the lessons that I am trying to teach my children. The goal isn’t to try and have more toys than the other kids. It is not to have better toys, but to be happy with what you have.

But when I think of this I am thinking about this from a long term perspective. What can I do to help the kids figure out what makes them happy. How can I help them find their passion because isn’t that what we talk about. Don’t get a job, find a career.

Figure out what you love and then figure out how to make money doing that. Now some of this might sound like goofy, feel good crap, but it is significant.

To be clear, I don’t expect my kids to know what they want to do for the rest of their lives. I expect that their dreams will change and evolve the way that most of ours do. If they happen to be the exception I’ll be happy for them, but really it doesn’t matter that much now.

The important thing is to give them the tools to use to figure it out and then get out of the way. At least that is the general idea. I get to spend the next 100 years watching them to see how well they learned the lessons or conversely how well I taught them.

Either way it is an interesting ride.

Thirty days ago I wrote How Twitter Has Impacted My Blogging.  At the time I didn’t have any metrics to use to measure its impact upon my blog. And a month later I still don’t have raw data that I can crunch and massage and that’s ok.

I’m the client and I am perfectly fine with the research methodology I conducted for this exercise. All I wanted to do was gain a better understanding of the practical uses of Twitter as they apply to me. Here is what I learned/confirmed.

My blog has always been used as a place for me to explore thoughts/feelings, write stories and share links that I think are interesting. Since making Twitter part of my daily routine I am less likely to put together short posts about some of the wacky stuff I find.

That’s not say that those posts have been eliminated, they just occur less frequently than they did. Instead I tend to share that kind of stuff on Twitter.

There is a direct correlation between traffic here and Twitter. Since I became more active there I have seen an increase in the number of unique users that come by. This does not include former employers who stalk me here (yes, I see you in my stats) or assorted other sundry characters.

At the moment I have more than 1,100 followers. That number grows daily. I am curious to see what happens in six months. I expect that the growth in readers will continue, but we’ll confirm that down the road.

On a side not since I monetized my Twitter stream I have noticed a steady flow of income. It is not enough to write home about but if it follows the same curve as followers and blog traffic it should cover my coffee and that is worth something to me.

I don’t know about you but with the proliferation of all of the time saving devices I seem to have less time than I did before. In addition “real life” obligations have taken away a chunk of time that I used to have as well.

I just don’t have time to read the way that I used to, or should I say that I don’t seem to have time to read and comment as often as I’d like to.

Anyway, I am curious. How many blogs do you read and do you think that Twitter has had an impact upon that?