Twitter has been much in the news lately. I opened up an account back in May with my daughter’s encouragement, used it for a few days, then allowed it to languish–a well-known behavioral pattern, certainly. At any rate, I took it up again several weeks ago, and have been enjoying it. For me, it serves much the same purpose as Mrs. Weasley’s clock.
For those who read Harry Potter, this needs no explanation, but for those who don’t, Mrs. Weasley is a character who possesses a wall clock with many hands, one for each member of her immediate family. The hands point out the current location of each individual, or whether they are in danger (“mortal perilâ€). For me, Twitter is something like that. As people “tweet†you can see at a glance that they are accounted for, that things are going all right (or not), and get an idea of what is going on in their day.
As you may guess, I mostly follow the young ‘uns of my acquaintance as they travel and work on careers and discover interesting things. But I’m also very slowly expanding that to include more distant people I’ve known. What do I gain? A fuzzy, never-overwhelming glimpse into what others are up to. It shakes up the day a little, and reminds me that I should be getting things done too.
Posted on: Friday, March 6th, 2009 at 8:38 am
Categories: Meanderings.
July 26th, 2010 at 9:53 pm
Connecting — and reconnecting — is a great use of Twitter, as well as Facebook. For instance, several weeks ago I said to my fiancee, “You know, now that I’ve sold a novel I need to send a note to Linda Nagata, thanking her for her help in the Writer’s Digest short story writing class I took.” But that was back in the old correspondance school days, and although I still have all the material, I’d have had to dig through boxes in my basement to find an address — which might not still be good, after all these years.
This way of reconnecting is much easier!
July 27th, 2010 at 4:26 pm
Very much easier, at least when you’re got connectivity! We’ve been out all day due to a severed undersea cable. I hope we don’t go down again.
Congratulations on the novel! Tell me more about it. Who did you sell to? What sort is it? Here’s my email address: linda at mythicisland dot com