Being Myself on Twitter

*sigh*, yup that’s the first thing that comes to my mind…a sigh. I enjoy the diversity of twitter. But there is something I learned over the past two weeks that has stood out in my mind. Everyone on twitter has a personal tweeting style for a reason. Sometimes that reason is to purge, sometimes it’s to have fun, and sometimes it’s because they have an agenda. I see people tweeting and I think, I wonder how come they tweet like that? I see people stop tweeting and I wonder how come they stopped? I pay close attention to the tweets of people I know and the tweets of people I don’t know…Yes I watch people on twitter and yes, I am sure other people watch me lol. Everyone has twitter moods, some days I feel like tweeting quotes…sometimes info…sometimes shoutouts…some days I want to tweet for others… I have good twitter friends, but something I learned about twitter this past week…you have to be careful that your tweeting experience does not become impure. What do I mean by that? Some people tweet aggressively so they can obtain a certain outcome, e.g. more followers, website traffic, personal/professional exposure, etc… and there is nothing wrong with that. I tweet aggressively sometimes, but typically when I do this I am either conversing…having fun by RTing my favorite tweeps….bored… working through a personal issue…or I’ve found some great info that I think other people might find useful. Impure tweeting to me would be if I was tweeting just so I could draw attention to myself.

Don’t get me wrong, if you tweet a whole lot…you will probably end up drawing some attention from somewhere…and this is ok, but there is a difference between getting the attention because it has come naturally and getting the attention because the attention was your goal. For me the attention was never my goal…my goal was to be able to become comfortable with tweeting and in order to do that I happened to need stuff to tweet. Now that I am at that place, I spend more time being more selective in my tweets not to mention cautious…not exactly sure how or when that transition occurred but throughout my process of learning twitter, I’ve come to realize there are many written and unwritten rules and I try and be mindful and respectful of those rules. I always try and keep in my mind being respectful of the feelings, attitudes and behavior of others, because I too want to be respected. I’ve developed a few meaningful relationships which really mean something to me and I value the content of those tweeters. I’ve somewhat picked up on the art of feeling people out…mind you I haven’t perfected this yet, sometimes I’ve been right, sometimes I’ve been wrong and there are some things where the jury is still out lol. I took a break for a few days because I wanted to sit and think about all that I’ve learned as well as what areas I hope to grow in as both a tweep and as a person, because in the end…I still just want to be able to be myself…People who spend time being other entities besides themselves often lose or become confused about themselves…this is not always a good thing.

“The surest way to fail is to aspire to an idea of perfection that doesn't even exist.” ~ Elizabeth Alraune