Remember When Twitter Was Useful

The original title of this post is Was It Worth $63 Dollars?

It is a reference to a parking ticket I got while waiting for someone to arrive. It wasn’t my first choice, wasn’t something I wanted, not that anyone really wants a parking ticket.

I certainly didn’t, but the man I had come to see had rescheduled three meetings and was running almost an hour late.

You can call that ticket the symbol of a calculated risk. It is a bet that a small investment of cash and time will lead to a significantly larger return.

If I take the man I met with at his word than I can tell you it was well worth it because I walked out of there with an agreement that hadn’t existed prior to our meeting.

We sealed it with a handshake and now I wait to see if he meant what he said.

Remember When Twitter Was Useful

I wasn’t going to use that subhead as the headline for this post because I thought there was more magic with Was It Worth $63 Dollars?

But I changed my mind, figured there would be more clicks and traffic with Remember When Twitter was Useful and well, here we are.

And after seven years of being an active user I have seen Twitter rise and fall.

I remember the days when Twitter was like a giant cocktail party, a never ending conversation with people all over the world.

All you had to do was ask/answer a question and you could almost guarantee that you would engage with and be engaged by people.

That changed along the way.

Can’t say when it was or blame it on a single thing. I can just tell you it went from feeling like your favorite bar/restaurant to something noisy and chaotic.

A place filled with noise, chaos and clutter and I am probably part of the problem.

When I agreed to automate some posts I did so with good intentions thinking it would help me engage with people when I wasn’t around and build influence.

But you can’t really engage when you’re not there, now can you and as my kids will tell you, good intentions don’t always yield good results.

I have tried to adjust how I use it, modified my behavior so that there was a better balance and for the most part it has worked well.

But the secret of that success requires me to be present and very active. It requires engaging with people and because it is more crowded, cluttered and noisy it is not as easy as it used to be.

Or maybe it is as easy as it ever was. Maybe it is not Twitter that has changed. Maybe it is me.

I don’t have the same amount of time I used to have and now I have less interest in spending it all on Twitter.

I love quotes like the one above from Newton because they remind me that the more things change, the more people stay the same.

Speaking of change and people one of the things I love/appreciate about blogging is how it enables you to look back at moments in time and see where you were, what you thought and how things were.

While I was waiting for the $63 dollar man something happened that made me think of Is It Intuition Or Desire?

Don’t ask me to describe the thought process that led me from the present to a post from the past because it will make as much sense to you as the Lewis Black bit about the woman who says if it wasn’t for her horse she wouldn’t have graduated college.

Some time ago I thought I was bearing witness to something unraveling and now I see it differently. It wasn’t unraveling, it was unwrapping.

It is time to go deep again. Time to go further than before and to push harder. Into the stillness and into the deep to find the answers that must reside within.

My 11 going on 30-year-old daughter told me she knows that grownups don’t know everything and that sometimes she thinks we just make stuff up.

I told her she was right and that there are no maps or guidebooks. We’re all on our own individual journey as well as a collective one.

I think she was surprised by that. She squinted at me and asked if that meant I was going to tell her I was moving out of state or if we are all moving this time.

It made me smile because it was a mix of accusatory and “I trust you dad.”

“Baby girl, we’re not moving today. Can’t say it won’t ever happen, can’t say it will.”

“Daddy, you have that look in your eyes. The one that says you are thinking about something else. I am old enough to know, just tell me.”

“I am always thinking. I think about stories I have heard, stories I want to write and stories I don’t know. I think about taking care of you guys and wonder where life will lead.”

“Daddy, that is not an answer.”

I hugged her and told her I wasn’t holding back or messing with her.

Sometimes you have a feeling inside that life has been preparing you for something but you can’t always identify it.

At best you can sense it coming but it is hard to prepare for what you can’t see so if you are smart you keep living your life until the mist clears and then you just roll with it.

It is after midnight now and I haven’t a clue if my $63 man has any idea how important our meeting was to me.

Chances are he is not sitting in a chair writing about the experience or trying to figure out if it is tied into the unwrapping of other events.

He is probably not wondering if his words moved anyone or thinking about his air. Since he hasn’t a clue that his lack of timeliness led to a parking ticket he certainly isn’t wondering if the $63 is/was worth it.

Was it worth $63 dollars?

I don’t know, but I’ll find out. I go the distance, no risk, no reward.

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