Believing my twittering was simply inappropriate.

I haven’t posted here since Jan 7^th and my last two tweets were separated by five whole days – during that five day period, my father in law passed away and was laid to rest

The above photo is copyright Bart Verstockt from Belgium who kindly sent it to me via email.

Since the afternoon of Jan 7th, my full attention has been with my wife and children, my extended family, close friends and those kind and generous people who shared their time, sympathy and support with my wife’s family. At such times of loss and grief, twitter, technology, PCs and pretty much everything except family and friends, become superfluous and totally fade from view. Now that those sad events have passed, should it simply be back to business as usual for me?

I’ve become a big twitter fan and have been very fortunate in terms of followers and consequent networks of their followers and friends, I tend to use twitter a bit like an occasional asynchronous delicious but with added humanity + pretty much instant interaction – my twitter stream is a tremendous way to explore common interests and I’m fortunate to be offered daily insights, advice and direction into various areas that interest me. (Which I may get to list in my next post)

My own use of twitter, is entirely and totally non-commercial, I haven’t anything to sell anyone and yet I can see my (clevercelt on-line persona ) non standard sorta smart arse identity starting to conform to various marketing models of ‘personality brands’ which kinda scares me a bit.

Let me be 100% honest, as a writer and digital creative, I’m sure I may eventually get around to producing something of value to others at some point that may need to be externally funded, financed or in other ways have creation costs paid. The easiest way to do that is to maybe ask people to buy some kind of end product or invest in a business plan. Yet there is more than likely an even better way. If and when the time comes I’ll ask my twitter friends and followers about all that.

Twitter is just riddled with advice about how to sell stuff, whether through social media marketing, affiliate programs or whatever, for me that’s irrelevant or so far into the future as to not be a consideration. Yet that knowledge, experience and wisdom (Can you be wise about marketing Mick?, yup course you can) feeds my twitter stream with intelligence, insight, cleverness and so many generous people, sharing links, advice, across so many areas, these generous folk are my own personal pile of polymaths.

I follow a lot of people who are writers, creators, editors, designers who are transitioning from traditional to new media, I follow experienced social media users, those versed and proficient in traditional and digital literacy, I follow people who make stuff, people who dream and I follow a lot of people who ‘believe’. What exactly they believe differs from one to the next but all have some kinda faith in common, even those that believe that traditional beliefs have no attraction, these I follow for their conviction and honesty.

I follow funny tweeple, clued in tweeple, buzzed and vibed tweeple and sometimes just sitting back and observing the collective creativity of these tweeple fills me with belief in People.

I’m just not a volume tweeter, I have shed loads of stuff to do daily, I do tend to offer answers to people in DMs and also try to help out where I can without actually broadcasting that fact, I’m delighted that despite my enforced absence, my own followers have stayed with me, I think only ten or so of my 1400 plus followers actually stopped following in the last five days.

My experience of the last five days will stay with me and I’m possibly more aware of my own mortality than usual, I’m also more acutely aware today that I believe in people but also believe in Tweeple.