It’s been almost exactly two years since my last post to this blog. When one considers that I am a compulsive writer who must write in order to breathe, this anomalous temporal blogging gap stands in stark contrast. What can possibly account for this 24-month blogging hiatus? My operational theory: Twitter.
Twitter is micro-blogging. Say what you want to say in 140 characters or less. Get in, get out. I think Twitter has stolen my writing thunder. This is not all bad. I post primarily from my phone when I have small chunks of down time. I share personal experiences, voice my pitiful opinions on a variety of topics, read the random ramblings of my friends and colleagues. In short, Twitter gives me social media happiness and a readily available spontaneous writing outlet.
Since I started using Twitter in 2008 I have posted nearly 2,400 tweets. At a maximum post size of 140 characters, that comes out to more than 300,000 characters, or somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 words. That’s a lot of blogging, no matter how thick or thin you slice it.
Ironically, it appears that after two years of regular micro-blogging, when I do get back to my regular blog, I write about Twitter. Well, in any case I’ve broken the blogging silence. Glad to finally post something after such a long break. I’m so excited. Gotta hurry and tweet about this.
Glad you’re blogging again. I like your thoughts on Twitter, but I’ve missed your insightful long-form writing here.
Reminds me of a post I wrote in 2009: http://globalconstant.scnay.com/2009/12/05/twitter-has-become-my-new-blog/
Can’t fault your logic but there are two fatal flaws– (1) Like Steve Nay, some actually read and thirst for like-minded kindred to help us cognate the universe in our heads; hard to respect someone who “rites 4 u” and (2) the whole of humanity is always ‘saved’ by those few who write on things that last. Else all they do is merely blown away on the winds of time. What a travesty if Hegel or Nietzsche had ruminated with charcoal on birch bark in a rainstorm. Ergo, “If you don’t write it, it never happened.” Much of humanity’s existence in that sense has never happened.
Just spent a minute re-reading this last comment left by my dear friend Lee Richan. He passed away about a month after leaving this comment, in December 2012, and there’s still a hole in me somewhere that hasn’t quite healed. The funny thing about Lee is that this comment isn’t some strange hyperbolic creation crafted to impress. This is just the way he talked. As I ponder my blogging failures of the last few years, Lee’s last written missive to me provides sufficient impetus to continue my quest to write for the record.