I Stand Considerably Corrected

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When last we left our hero, I was saying that I'm in a category of one, and it's very lonely, and I am just certain that there is no one like me out there, who would be even marginally interested to read anything that I have to say.*


Well, I was wrong.


They're on Twitter.  Not that they'd necessarily want to read what I have to say, but at least they're like me.


Let me step back and give you an idea of what took me so long to sign up for Twitter.  


Since 2007, I have been operating within The Social Network (yes, That One)'s Weltanschauung.  The one where status updates are mundane, photos are only taken of pets (guilty) and children (guilty) and food (guilty), and everyone tries to show their best face (pun intended) to the people they now know or once knew.  There is a subliminal pressure to post only what is socially acceptable, what you think will make people think more of you, or pity you, or just plain pay attention to you.  


Example:


The Daily P90x Progress Post: 


Just started P90x, Day 1! Wow this is AWESOME!
It's day 8 and I'm PUMPED!  
It's day 16 and I'm in AGONY! 
It's day 89 and I already ordered P90x2 and Insaneoworkout because I'm ADDICTED to ENDORPHINS!


Am I alone in feeling like (nearly) everyone is the fake version of themselves in that universe?  Or maybe just the hyperbolic version of themselves.  Parents are SUPERPARENTS and that's all they post about.  Runners are SUPERRUNNERS and that's all they post about.  Angry people are ALWAYS ANGRY ABOUT SOMETHING!  Sad people are PERMASAD and post on loneliness and destitution and sickness and Mondays!


As a result of my growing weariness of this banality, I have become even more aware of and constrained on what I post.  I try to avoid topics that I see consistently on my newsfeed, because I know that others won't care nearly as much as I do, for example, if I am folding laundry and watching grass grow.


As a side note, I still enjoy The Music Lyrics Status Update, mostly because I like to quote them myself.  Often songs speak to feelings and thoughts so much more profoundly than your everyday-average words.  So I won't knock that girl who only posts lyrics, because I know that as she's thinking of that song, she's also feeling a particularly strong and real emotion.


As an aside to my side note, I find it a cruel twist of fate that I should have a freakish ability to remember song lyrics and love singing, but couldn't carry a tune in a Vera Bradley cross-body hipster.  It's everyone else's fault for not enjoying listening to me.  I'd be a smash hit on a ship in the Vogon Destructor Fleet.


Where was I?  Oh yes, That Social Network.


So my running assumption about Twitter has always been that it's just a bunch of people typing rapid-fire status updates.  Like a stripped down version of that other site, on steroids.


I couldn't have been more wrong.


What Twitter is is a forum.  It's also a conference.  It's a place for me to find My People.  People who have interest in the same random jumble of things as I do.  Knitters who enjoy punk rock, gaming, and chromafashion (first day on Twitter, and I was introduced to someone who fits this description).  


I just made up the word chromafashion.  I use it to mean: incorporating gorgeous color into the personal fashion, i.e. crazy nailpolish colors and bright hair colors.  If I weren't in such a "sensible" career (seems the wrong word for a place that actually dulls the senses), I myself would color my hair like this:





and I would paint my nails like this.  I would also wear pretty much any dress found here.  Every day.  With mary janes AND socks.  And maybe a fascinator in my multi-colored hair.


I've ignored the mathematical statistics of it all.  With however many gazillion people on this planet, how could I assume to find someone precisely like me in such a small radius?  Even if you add up all the people I have met in person, and add to it all the people that I am connected to by one of those people (with the idea that one of the people I know could introduce me), the odds are STILL VERY LOW that I could find even one of My People.


"Butterfly, in all your wanderings, have you seen others like me ... Have you seen even ONE? Tell me that you saw only one!"  ~TLU


It's a wonder I even met Mr. Pi.


However, when you have the ability to make your ideas searchable to others who have similar ideas, you increase the odds of connection exponentially.


This, dear readers, is why I am now a huge proponent of Twitter.


Don't get me wrong, I still only have 15 followers, and I'm not certain that anyone has actually clicked on my link to this blog from Twitter, nevermind actually read it, but the potential for readership is there.


Twitter may be my catalyst to unleash the restoring force, and give me kinetic readership.


And again, I've taken a metaphor too far.


Mrs. Pi


*This excludes the few and faithful who already love me and will read anything I write no matter how arbitrary (you know who you are)