Tweets or Twits?

I learnt today that I am expected to start a twitter account to help promote my blogs. For some reason there has always been some instinct that kept me from going anywhere near twitter. To be honest I can't even be bothered to text on my mobile; it's quicker to make a call.

Don't get me wrong –I'm no technophobe, I've bought into technology; I had a mobile before any of my peers, I took office space in a media centre that gave me broadband back in 96, and I've been designing interactive content for CDs and Websites before most people had the kit to access CDs and websites. Perhaps it might be more accurate to call me a technocynic.

None the less I found myself approaching the whole twitter thing with a little reservation. I began by watching a youtube video by a woman extolling the virtues of twitter to promote her own blogs. Before the video was halfway through I found myself crying. These were not tears of joy, some rapture of realisation, no, these were tears wrenched from the core of my being, tears shed for the human race. What had we become? Beings capable profound understanding of the nature of the universe, philosophy, music, art, who can express the deepest emotion through prose and attain the highest states of self awareness through long meditation, reduced to twitter.

– Pellets of fecal minutiae passing mindlessly from one computer screen to another, pointlessly creating thousands of tonnes of carbon dioxide, hastening our own demise.

So of course I had to sign up...

UnforgivingMuse Twits.

Knowing the Demon

There have been times when my lack of confidence, coupled with doubts over the uncertain future of a career in writing, have caused me to question whether I'm doing the right thing; spending huge amounts of my savings on my continued education. Am I being silly, entertaining the pipe dream that I will ever succeed at this game? Worse am I being foolish investing in myself; It's not like my track record, littered with so many almost achievements, hollow awards, and abandoned projects demonstrates a strong future. Heck, why am I investing in this MA at all, when I could resurrect one of half a dozen worthy projects with the fees, let alone the money I am not earning for want of full time commitment to my job.

I'll tell you why; it has nothing to do with money, or career, and it is not because I want fame. Love it or hate it, deep down in some primal part of me, my soul, if you will, it is what I'm driven to do. I didn't make me this way, I think it made itself, or was there to begin with. I simply picked up the skills to be able to feed it's hunger as I went through life. Prior to starting the course, I didn't truly comprehend this essential part of my nature, because over the years I had created many mechanisms to contain it, without knowing what it was.

It wasn't until I began to write properly; freely, for the need of it, for myself; that I started to truly know and understand. And now, the demon is free; there is no going back. I fear for my future and look forward with excitement. Poor Pandora, I know how she must have felt.