What I miss about Twitter
It's not the heavy topics I miss writing about on the Bird. I can do that here. Sure, my words on Substack don't reach nearly the same amount of eyeballs, but that's ok. I was writing long threads on Twitter back at the end of 2020 and the first half of 2021 when hardly anyone was reading them either. I was aware of that; I accepted that; it was part of the plan. I knew eventually the sound would travel and people would wonder what the hell I was chopping so hard at. They'd come to see and the numbers around me would grow - precisely what happened. And so I don’t mind doing the same thing again here. I'm kind of intrigued by the fresh challenge. It’s the little stuff I miss...
It’s posting an impromptu picture of beautiful northern land at 8am and the day's worth of interesting conversation it provoked.
It’s a random thought by the fire.
It’s sharing tidbits of my journey as a father of young kids.
Both the good…
And the bad…
It’s sharing excitement about my mother in law's meatballs.
Swapping favorite dishes with new friends.
I enjoyed sharing my love for nature…
… and pictures of encounters.
A chance and magical crossing of paths.
It's sharing stories and imagery while on travels.
Spreading my love for this state…
this town…
… and its history.
The day-to-day stuff was my digital vitamins on there! I would have burned out just hammering the heavy topics all the time. But moreso than having a place to put out, I miss what I received in return. There was truly a community that had formed around my relentless activity on Twitter. I enjoyed that dialogue much more than I did writing threads. That’s why I retweeted replies so frequently. I crossed paths with so many wonderful people, learned so much from intelligent and wise and dynamic minds. We grew close, wished holiday cheers, got excited for success stories. It damn near started feeling like a family. I miss YOU! I do very much. I miss toasting coffee in the early morning with Chickadee. All of that taken away from me, from us, because I’m deemed hateful and harmful, a menace to society. What a joke. Perhaps a similar energy and dialogue will form here one day. I sure hope so, and for the time being I am going to work hard at it.
You may notice a tone of finality to these words, but this wasn’t meant to be a sob story. I could return to Twitter if I wanted to. But I don’t want to, and I don’t plan to fly there again. I have reached a sense of finality with that, as difficult as it was due to how heavily/continuously I had invested. It is time to move on and change direction. Plus I don’t want to risk my thousands of posts and threads getting zapped Lindsay-style, and I'm confident it would only be a matter of time. I like being able to link back to my threads here and don’t want to see all of that work erased. I just don’t see any need to kick that can down the road, and that’s all it would be. It feels… right… at this moment to do something else. I talked about those plans a few days ago:
I’ve started using this place a bit more like Twitter. Somewhat as a relay, not just my own writing. I’ve begun pasting some replies under articles, kind of like RTing an interesting thought. I’m hoping some of that enriching conversation can transfer here, but this place isn’t very good for that.
I share these thoughts simply to lament how much I miss those little things. How they actually weren’t little at all. The simple stuff you don’t fully appreciate how much you enjoy and adore until it's gone. There simply isn’t a substitute for that. The instantaneousness lure of Twitter was not just on the likes and endorphins-side, but how spontaneous and popping the discourse is. The ability to share random things and get immediate feedback and interplay. There isn’t another outlet for that, another place it ping-pongs back in return. It is what it is, but that's the true loss. And it’s an absolute shame that they (a handful of people in California) can just take that all away, excommunicate us from our era's town square. But alas, this is where we are, where we as a society have allowed it to get. They do this to people daily, some of them for simply stating (inconvenient) reality.
I’m going to explore this site some more; play around with the chat and thread features, do some rants on the podcast section and maybe do some videos. While I had no intention on accepting payments at this point and had that option off, I was absolutely floored and honored to receive a contribution pledge from a few of you and am going to figure out how I can reward that. A sincere thank you to those folks, it hit out of the blue at a really interesting time. One of those sparks, those meant to be's, that path carving.
It will take me a bit of time to get comfortable here and make it deliver what I want it to. But I’m excited to work in a new direction and have a lot of ideas bouncing around my head. I have a real-life to tend to; two young kids to raise, a wife to love, a business to run, and a house to hold down. So this isn’t some new all-in endeavor. It can’t be. But I’ll pour a lot of that Twitter energy over this way and we'll see what happens. If it fizzles out, so be it. Perhaps that was meant to be too. This whole ride has already been a hell of an adventure for me and insanely rewarding from a personal/life standpoint. If something more is meant to happen, awesome! Let’s do it. If not, my life off this screen is pretty awesome too. I have more energy forming, more to give. So much is happening in our world! I feel I must continue. I desire to continue. But I don’t want to beg to be able to do it over there. I want to do it here. And so we'll see where this goes.
To those who have come here and continued taking part in the dialogue, thank you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you. Your support means a ton to me, and that landed heavy this week. It’s amazing how many wonderful people I’ve met. It’s beautiful how many wonderful people there are. This whole experience has been so rich, and much of it will travel on with me now through my life journey, no matter what happens in this digital realm.
Cheers, my friends!
I understand, but I hope you will reconsider and return to Twitter. The immediate connection of that place is not available anywhere else. You are missed.
You're missed, Theo. There are a lot of fiery writers on Twitter, but few that I've found that write at your level. Glad you're here and that I get an email every time you publish!