(NOTE: I consider myself a good writer, but good only gets better by practice. So I’ve signed up for the WordPress Everyday Inspiration schedule to prompt me to write something different every day. This is the result of today’s nudge.)

So today’s point of inspiration is supposed to come from Twitter. That’s kind of tricky for me. While I do find Twitter occasionally inspiring, it’s also the source of many headaches, ranging from feeling it’s a colossal waste of time to a serious fear of missing out on the funny, important and sometimes inane conversations happening there.

Recently a Tweet by Rick Klau inspired this short story and that’s really it at its best. I like reading what people post – I hesitate to use the word “write” for extremely snobby reasons – there, but overall it feels more like a place to vent or get something off your chest or out of your head than a place to actually be inspired.

Mostly for me Twitter is a supplement to my news reading, which is mainly done via RSS. I like seeing what people are posting, particularly if it’s to stuff that’s not their own, which is increasingly rare. In that way it’s kind of like a good aggregated email newsletter in that it will surface stories that wouldn’t be found as part of my regular reading. Those stories can fill in holes in an upcoming MMM column or be the source of a post all on their own.

This may not be coming out as coherently as I’d like it to. On the one hand Twitter inspires me very little, on the other it does sometimes serve as the inspiration for new thoughts or essays. It’s a mixed bag, largely depending greatly on my personal usage, my frame of mind on any given day and other factors. How about you?

One thought on “Everyday Inspiration – Twitter Inspiration

  1. Interesting, you use Twitter to break out of the bubble. I’ve been strongly trying to shape my Twitter lists to show tweets that have unique thoughts from the author. I actually block all retweets in my Tweetdeck streams, because I want to know what that individual thinks. That’s a better way of putting it–I want to follow interesting people who tweet interesting thoughts. But that is very hard to shape a view of Twitter to do that.

    Your method is actually really interesting–and how most people probably use Twitter–as a general firehose source of news. And in your case, it’s especially helpful to break out of the bubbles we live in. Almost like @holden’s pinned tweet: https://twitter.com/holden/status/767861952643145729

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