Tweet, Tweet

About three months ago I started actively hanging out on Twitter. Prior to that I would occasionally go on, reading it as a kind of news feed. But I started noticing Twitter handles for some authors I love, and began adding them, especially once I saw they were posting all kinds of good writing advice, and book recommendations, and overall smart thinking about the state of the world. And from those people I found other people to follow and so on and so on... a whole world of really interesting and brave and beautiful and inspiring people. I don't think I can overemphasize how much I've been given by all this.

I never meant to start commenting myself.

But here's the thing. I've been looking for a writing community, a reading community, a queer community, for a while now. And while Facebook is useful for a lot of things I don't feel I can be my full self on it. My Twitter self is the closest to my writing self which is probably closest to my most deeply felt self. (And therefore also my most vulnerable and hungry self.)

In Twitter I've found the closest thing resembling tribe... I was going to say in a long time but I think perhaps ever.

So how could I not chime in, from time to time?

I wrote last month about some of the challenges I experience about being on Twitter. Since then I feel I've gotten more of the hang of it. Both how to be a respectful participant and how to manage my own anxiety. Because of course there are all the usual pitfalls of social media magnified by the fact that I don't actually know these people, yet feel compelled to bring my most fully felt self into that space.

It's been good practice in sitting through discomfort, let me tell you.

It's also made me think more about the roles I have in my real-world communities and the power I have, and also what I consider to be my work in this world. That is leading me to be more deliberate in some of the choices I make and what I voice. Hopefully more brave too.

And being deliberate and brave can never be a bad thing.

Quietly,
Annie