I don't know what to call this one

on tweeting, writing, and changing course while writing

I just logged back into Twitter because Substack suggested I connect my Twitter. I have logged back in and then proceeded to disappear from the platform for months and years on end at least 5 different times in this life (apparently I’ve been alive long enough to say that now). I’ve done this with some of my Instagrams also - been an active user/participant and then fallen off the face of the Earth. When internet-personalities do this (not to say that I am an internet-personality), for example when I stumble upon a YouTube channel that hasn't posted in 2 years and whose Instagram no longer exists, I really feel something heavy on the inside. Did they die? Did they change life paths entirely? What happened to you, stranger? I really have no reason to feel so momentarily invested. Needless to say, I get over it soon enough. However, the fact that I remember these instances, for example a particularly helpful YouTube guitar teacher who disappeared and whose comment sections are flooded with speculation, suggests that maybe, just maybe, I’m not over it.

Twitter is interesting. I logged back in this morning, and once I started tweeting, there was no stopping. What is this addictive quality about sharing nothingnesses with the void that is my 21-strong following? I then scrolled through my own profile that goes back to 2017 when I was tweeting the most, and I realized that a) I was so funny and that b) I haven’t changed much at all. I then retweeted a bunch of my own tweets. Something about this feels awfully self-indulgent.

The reason I was called to my laptop this morning is because of a book I’m reading called ‘Bird by Bird’. It’s a book about writing. Often while reading I realize how very ~white~ the writer is, with her very American childhood references. But I enjoy her writing style, it’s not too patronizing as books that tell you how to do things can be, and it is clearly also doing its part in inspiring me to get up and write something. Like one of her little writing tips is to start with short assignments. One of the little seeds that have been planted in my brain is to ‘write a book’. This year, I have so much respect for anyone who sets out to and then sees to completion the writing of a book. Generally, when I’ve thought about books, or a book as a whole, I imagine the writer knew exactly what they were getting into. The first example I can think of is J.K Rowling, who apparently had the rough plot and characters sketched out already. But now I’m thinking that it is impossible to know what you’re getting into, because there will always be changes along the way and new territory that can never really be seen too far in advance. This person must be getting up every day or other day or every few days or take a break like I did with Twitter and then come back 7 months later and get right back at it. With a small teeny tiny conviction that perhaps they have something to say and perhaps it is worth their time to go ahead and say it. And perhaps Twitter is even, in some round about way, an apt analogy to make given that it’s little teensy messages being thrown out into the universe and then if one is to look back at their profile 5 years later they will see something bigger, something like a sketch of a whole human being.

I didn’t see this thought coming full circle back to Twitter like this and especially not the connection between tweeting and writing a book. Perhaps this has more to do with my tendency to eke out connections in seemingly unrelated events but I also have an inkling that nothing is actually entirely separate from another thing. And in this case, why else would writers on the Internet always paste link to their Twitters?

I had actually intended today to write about Sports Day in school and the fact that I have had a whole school life and childhood that I almost never think back to. But I think that’s a story for another time, given where I have landed today with this one Twitter login.