re-reading and un-liking stuff on twitter and elsewhere

yesterday I did some re-reading. first, I re-read six months or so of things I've liked on twitter. a confession: sometimes as I skim through things I once liked on twitter, I end up un-liking things I once liked in the past. liking never has to be permanent, does it? nothing is permanent. some twitter things are not things I feel like my likes need to stay on-record for. is that okay?

second, I re-read three months or so of my file of semi-daily meta-scholarly writing. it was good to remember some of the fun, inspired conference notes and see little inches of progress on projects. that file is 370 pages long now. messy, and not truly daily, but still an accomplishment.

I'm sure most of the stuff in that file is sixteen thousand times more boring to the world than most of the stuff I've liked and not yet un-liked on twitter. if we could quantify boringness, anyway.

the twitterings that I like on twitter seem to fall into pretty clear categories:

1. there are links to things that exist and that just seem wonderful--

A Searchable Database for Every Bob Ross Canvas from Joy of Painting https://t.co/lryPrbN95J I WILL MISS YOU PRODUCTIVITY.

— Lee Skallerup (@readywriting) March 30, 2017

A librarian has matched @librivox audiobooks to his community’s walking trails! So clever! https://t.co/dqzCDh17O7

— Kara Shallenberg (@kayray) May 14, 2017

2. there are lovely impressive and/or brave pieces of micro-blogged inspiration--

Happiness is the capacity to be surprised. pic.twitter.com/cN2Jt5kxoj

— Edward Tufte (@EdwardTufte) March 9, 2017

A Writer, I Think, Is Someone Who Pays Attention To The World. -Susan Sontag #AmWriting pic.twitter.com/dTXp6WEInS

— Writer's Edit (@WritersEdit) April 20, 2017

white people using their privilege to educate, a concept! pic.twitter.com/6ugbTtxSOH

— con(no)r (@ctfuconnor) May 12, 2017

Here's the cheat sheet for the 4 conundrums of the universe that our brains attempt to solve with what we call biases: pic.twitter.com/cMwHJhElVL

— Buster (@buster) January 8, 2017

or do some of these count as lessons? instructions, perhaps?


3. there are cool, amusing blips of nothing all that important--

My next d&d character may or may not work in service of a deity modeled after Donna Haraway.

— Mike, but furious (@mikerugnetta) June 6, 2017

Word of the day: "undersong" - the underlying sounds of a landscape; the ambient murmur of an environment, often hard to hear or tune in to. pic.twitter.com/BHxQUS5X4y

— Robert Macfarlane (@RobGMacfarlane) June 6, 2017

4. there are attitudes and ideas that I find myself agreeing with, resonating with--

One more thing: No matter what we write, we write as a witnesses to our time. We do it involuntarily, like sap trapping bugs in amber.

— Alyssa Harad (@alyssaharad) February 7, 2017

My new teaching goal in life is to make sure everyone knows how to delete the blank extra page of that document they send out to everyone.

— Casey Boyle (@caseyboyle) January 8, 2017

that is a valid life goal, right there. don't leave blank pages at the end of your documents, people. it's all part of that "paying attention to the world" thing.


and 5. there are links to longform stuff that I imagine I'll go back to read later--

“...people are changing public space for their own purposes ... because they want to create something.” https://t.co/gooRfsyzU9

— Chris Jordan (@mantweed) February 20, 2017

.@edwardsdusty Dustin Edwards has brought home the 2016 Hugh Burns Best Dissertation Award! Wanna read his diss? https://t.co/Zz8NDmiW2c

— UCF Writing&Rhetoric (@UCF_DWR) June 6, 2017

sometimes I do go back and read them. sometimes I change my mind when later arrives. sometimes I forget entirely. I can't read everything. and twitter is not really meant to be a bookmarking service. but I'll use twitter however I want, okay?