So some may have noticed that over the past three or four weeks my time and contributions to Twitter have been quite limited. It suddenly "clicked" the other day as to why I've done this and I think it has left me even more confused than I was when I didn't know why I was avoiding it.
Disclaimer: This is not a political post so just deal with me while I explain.
I'm not one to discuss politics openly usually and my sphere of Twitter contacts seem to be the opposite. I am just actually mentally drained having to be force-fed all the political information on Twitter. Which way the content is leaning doesn't matter to me. What matters to me is that the benefit of being able to get office/project information during the day has been virtually zero and so I have instead tuned out. Hopefully this will all change in the next few days (regardless of election outcome) and the tool will again become valuable to me each day. Until then, I will likely remain fairly silent.
Now, why did I say that I was confused? Well now I think about what offends me on Twitter or is not useful and wonder if I should change my icon. It is currently the Red Sox symbol. Will people find me offensive to show my hometown team some allegiance (Congrats to you Philly fans... thank you for taking care of the Rays)? Probably not. But you never know. I think maybe I need to think about forming more meaningful 140-character posts before hitting that "enter" button. But isn't the reason for Twitter there just to have some quick updates? What are the standards really for how you should be using it at work vs outside of 8-5? It's a community social mechanism. I just need to reconsider who that community might be and what I should be contributing to it. Obviously not everyone will see this the same way but I'm trying to figure it out as best as possible. Baseball season is over so at least I have a couple of months to work out my thoughts :-)
Disclaimer: This is not a political post so just deal with me while I explain.
I'm not one to discuss politics openly usually and my sphere of Twitter contacts seem to be the opposite. I am just actually mentally drained having to be force-fed all the political information on Twitter. Which way the content is leaning doesn't matter to me. What matters to me is that the benefit of being able to get office/project information during the day has been virtually zero and so I have instead tuned out. Hopefully this will all change in the next few days (regardless of election outcome) and the tool will again become valuable to me each day. Until then, I will likely remain fairly silent.
Now, why did I say that I was confused? Well now I think about what offends me on Twitter or is not useful and wonder if I should change my icon. It is currently the Red Sox symbol. Will people find me offensive to show my hometown team some allegiance (Congrats to you Philly fans... thank you for taking care of the Rays)? Probably not. But you never know. I think maybe I need to think about forming more meaningful 140-character posts before hitting that "enter" button. But isn't the reason for Twitter there just to have some quick updates? What are the standards really for how you should be using it at work vs outside of 8-5? It's a community social mechanism. I just need to reconsider who that community might be and what I should be contributing to it. Obviously not everyone will see this the same way but I'm trying to figure it out as best as possible. Baseball season is over so at least I have a couple of months to work out my thoughts :-)
I've tuned out as well. This has been sort of the cycle of my Twitter use the last two years -- My interest goes up very high as our events are approaching (in the past TLT Symposium and now, the Summer Camp). I find it really valuable to use the environment to move the community towards the event. Then, about this time of year, I go silent.
I have, for reasons I'm not clear about, moved my activity to Facebook. Not sure, but I am enjoying that much more. BTW, I'm not offended by the Sox icon.