Saturday, February 17, 2018

Why I left Twitter....

This is (mostly) for me....


Mortal clams, mortal words.

This is an experiment.

I am mortal. So are you. My heart's been bouncy this week, nothing extreme, more like a polite panhandler trying to get my attention, nothing threatening, and it did.

I no longer pretend I know what's real--the dulling of age, the explosion of what's possible, it all becomes confusing. (I've had a lot of concussions.) But I know who I trust.

I have more time for the guitar, for the uke, for learning French (we're traveling to Paris in a few months), for raising Brussels sprouts, for clamming, for dancing and singing and living.

No one gives a fuck on Twitter who I am. But I do.
And so do a few folk I care about.

My blog started out as a public diary.
And it's ending the same way.



I could blame the switch from 140 characters to 280--I truly loved the game, the succinctness, the love of the value of a single word.

But that's not it.

It's the mortality.

You want to meet, want a postcard, want to connect, send me an email, and I'll respond with an old-fashioned letter.



7 comments:

Jose Vilson said...

Every so often, I feel a similar pull. It can sometimes feel like we're speaking into the void if no one responds in kind.

Cristina Milos said...

You have time for what matters more...

doyle said...

Dear Jose,

Your words carry tremendous weight on Twitter, as they do in private spaces as well. It's a wonderful (and near essential) platform for folks doing the work beyond the local level. It's clear that you do at least as much work at the local level (family, classroom, district) as you do nationally.

I do some work locally, and certainly not enough, and no work nationally (beyond making noise). For me, Twitter became a distraction at an age when I have less time for noise.

You respond to so many people authentically (dare I use that word after EducCon?) and quickly, you are centered, you are brilliant, and my guess is you sleep less than a giraffe.

I expect to use more time listening voices I need to hear--Twitter has been tremendously useful for me that way. More importantly, I plan to dive deeper into the local. Nothing is going to change so long as pale folk tolerate the behavior of other pale folk behaving badly, and most of us behave badly.

Thanks for the words.

~Michael

doyle said...

Dear Cristina,

So true--but even more important (I hope, anyway), is a deeper appreciation for the time I (or any of us) have.

Too many people I once saw more often face to face I now "see" far more frequently but with less of what seeing others used to mean, if that makes sense.

I can fall in love with a tiny patch of a mudflat under my feet; I could fall in love with the whole wide world. But I cannot do both.

Thanks for summing up in seven words what's taken me too long to figure out. Keep writing and suggesting wonderful resources (as you do); I'll keep listening.


~Michael

Shannon said...

You are one of the few people on the internet I follow where I started reading your blog first then eventually found you had a twitter account. These days it seems most of it goes the other way for me. So, in my head you were always a writer first.
This space always seemed to me like the place where your voice lived and I look forward to every new (or old posts coming back in cycles) piece posted here.
Thanks for all the writing you've done and pushing me to think about things in new ways.

doyle said...

Dear Shannon,

This is about the nicest comment I have ever had. Thanks.

~Michael

doyle said...

Dear Shannon (redux),

Glad to see you're blogging again! =)