I don’t want to know what people eat for breakfast.
I don’t want to know what they are doing and thinking every second of the day.
I just don’t have anything to say that is that important.
Nothing in my life is that interesting that I have to broadcast it to the world
Well, let me tell you something! Actually let me tell you a few things. Let me tell you 30,000 things! My life is that interesting and I can’t (won’t) shut up about it. My every thought is worth a broadcast and everything I do is life changing. Take this for example: It is Friday night, I am blasting the Beastie Boys to get in the mood to write this post. My head is bobbing; my heart is racing because I am excited about scribbling these thoughts into the cyber void. I have goosebumps. I can’t believe how lucky I am to have the freedom and the tools to assign value to my thoughts, my life, my experiences. If my life is not interesting enough for me to write about and share with the world than I feel am doing something wrong. If I am not excited about what I eat, then I am eating the wrong foods. If the minutes of my life are boring than I am wasting it.
I share it all because sharing it forces me to be aware. It forces me to shine a light on my ideas, my thoughts, my kids, my books my writing, my doubts, my friends, my politics, my thoughts on god, on the beauty of homemade pasta, music, and parenthood. Hell, 30,000 tweets are not enough for me, I am writing a memoir describing every memory in exquisite detail. Why? I am fascinated by the whole damn thing. The questions. The answers. The whole journey is one amazingly intense ride and I don’t want to miss a second of it. More importantly, I don’t want you to miss your life either. I hope my enthusiasm can act as a mirror for your life too.
What people who think their thoughts are not important, or that their lives are boring, or the people who say they don’t care about what other people are doing every second of the day- don’t understand is that this one life is all we get. One life, one shot. Game over. I see it two ways: First: if you feel your life is not interesting enough to share with other people than you may want to ask yourself why. Second: If you feel that other people don’t care about your life, you are underestimating people’s need for human connections or your ability to tell stories.
For the first time in human history, we can all be published authors with a push of a button. What? What’s that? This only means that there will be a lot of mediocre prose and garbage media out there? Fair enough, but it is ours- this voice, these space, these stories, and I for one will share as much as I can for as long as I can. I will do my best to weave a world of tenderness, wit and honesty. I’ll take a crack at humor, reflection, and art. I’ll share the low-brow and the high. I’ll share the novel and the bizarre.
People often ask, “What the hell do you say in 30,000 tweets?” The answer? The story of my life. I am writing it all down and throwing it all out into the universe and you know what I am finding? That a tribe of kindred spirits are gathering around me and digging on what I confess. No one’s life is special enough to warrant so much attention. No one’s life is so unimportant not to warrant some attention. I know people gawk at my output, but honestly I have found a formula that works for me. When I scan my list of RTs, I am honored by the pieces of my soul that people share. I am not here to share edtech resources. I am here to shift a culture. I am here to inspire and push people’s buttons. I am here to make you think. I am here to manipulate every tool into a weapon of art and creation.
Who knows? Maybe someday I will collect all these snippets of experience and wrap them up in book. Or maybe I will forget them all and sweep away the memories like the sands of a Mandala. But, for now, I am here and jotting it all down. Thanks for joining me on my ride. My advice to you dear reader or timid Tweeter, is tell me what you had for breakfast. What are you doing this very second? Share the infinite epiphanies you had right before you fell sleep last night. What’s your favorite song? Movie? Book? I find it all interesting because I find life interesting. I find you interesting. So go on don’t be shy. Tweet, blog, write, film, share…you’ll be surprised what comes back to you.
I enjoy your tweets Jabiz and the hard-core passion for life that you obviously have. I agree that people have interesting stories to share but it’s so hard to put yourself out there without it feeling like self-promotion of some type. This has been on my mind this week as I have been putting together a professional portfolio as part of a university course. It’s so hard to say nice things (or any things) about yourself without feeling uncomfortable about doing so, at least it is for me. I enjoy reading tweets and posts from people like yourself you just lay it bare and say it like it is. It’s funny as in “real” life I have no problem with calling a spade a spade and am quite direct, yet somehow online I feel more self-conscious and guarded. With only 169 tweets to my name I’m starting slowly and for now still finding my feet.
By the way right now I’m watching Australian football, eating home made lemon pie, finishing my assignment, my favourite movie is Happy Gilmore (I don’t care who judges me), and my favourite song at the moment is Jet Plane by Angus & Julia Stone.
Yeah I know. I was being a bit brash on purpose to prove a point. Not sure what that point is, but I am sure it had some meaning. Just wanted to say that some of the best connections I have made have been through the most random tweets and posts. We learn about each other though the minutia not the obvious.
Happy Gilmore huh? “You can have a warm cup of shut the hell up!” Is one of my favorite lines. See, just like that we know more about each other. That’s all it take. Some of the best advice someone gave me was, don’t filter yourself. Let your readers do that. 175 Tweets? Let’er rip a while and see what connections and experiences come your way.
Thanks for being a regular member of the tribe I mentioned. Looking forward to continued learning, understanding and growth. Passion is just fancy word for alive. We all have it, just have to notice.
As for talking about yourself…there is a way to be obnoxious about it and a way to make it work. I walk the line for sure, but many of my tweets are also sharing other people’s blogs and ideas. That makes it easier to toot my own horn, now and then.
Great post Jabiz. My favorite part about tweeting and sharing is that it makes me more mindful. I go out of the way to look for meaning in small things. If I can’t fit my thoughts in 140 characters, then I blog it. If it doesn’t fit in a blog, then I memoir it. But without a doubt I credit Twitter as helping me become a better writer, and subsequently, a better thinker.
I love the expression “Don’t filter yourself. Let your readers do that.” I commonly use the expression: Use, Abuse, or Lose. Feel free to use what I’m sharing, abuse it and make it into something more meaningful for you, or lose it and forget it exists, but I’m offering it to the world. If I can share one thing that makes someone’s life easier, allows a person more time with their family, or helps someone see the world in a different light, it was worth my time. It seems that some people are still so frightened to share. As educators, at some point we were taught to horde all our lesson plans and ideas so that someday we could publish a book. I still want to write that book, quite a few in fact, but I don’t plan on getting there by keeping all of my ideas to myself. When I share with others, I learn and I grow. That is all the payback I really need. Teaching=Sharing. The sift is coming, but it starts with changing the mentality of sharing. Too many of us still have surround our ideas with protective walls. It is OK to open up our mouths and speak. Thank you for sharing.
I love this. This whole idea has been on my mind the past week. I reached 50,000 tweets the other day and had a lot of people kind of making fun. So I decided to try to slow down, but I couldn’t. It took 2 1/2 years to reach 50,000, but it really is the story of my life, just as you said. I tweet about what I learn, what I do (more than what I had for dinner, even though that makes it sometimes), and sometimes just my opinion or emotions about things. What I have learned is that it not only gives people an idea of who I am, through it I learn about others. This forms a community that helps each other and learns together. I think it is the community and the “knowing” someone without knowing them is what keeps twitter going. It all comes down to human relationships and we learn and grow best from each other. This hit me pretty hard over the last 2 weeks. On April 27, my state was hit terribly hard by an outbreak of tornadoes, the most deadly in US since 1925. It was amazing to see the social media mediums (facebook and especially Twitter) go from warning systems, to search and rescue, to the main drive to recovery efforts. The medium is just that, the medium that brings people together for learning and forms a community that makes our world smaller! Can’t wait to read your 30,000 more tweets!