unfollowing rampage

I began twittering without a sense knowing what I wanted out of it. I was just another person trying it out. I signed up with some trepidation. I thought "Twitter"? Sounds like "fritter" or "twit". Sounds like the opposite of what I need to be doing. You see, at the time, I was spending HOURS a day playing various word games on Facebook. I already had a way to waste time. But I signed up anyway. Nothing happened. Twitter is not exactly intuitive, is it? A conventionally attractive female with a headset does not pop up and say WELCOME TO TWITTER! Even MySpace had Tom!

I had to figure it out on my own. And so I started following everyone. People followed me back. I started Twittering, and people started noticing me, following me. Etc. When people followed me, I usually followed them back. Eventually, I had a bunch of people following me, but I also had a page that was cluttered with stuff I didn't care about: SEO bullshit, what's in some dude's breakfast burrito, people telling each other "YOU ROCK!"

I'm not saying these people are "Doing it wrong." When people say that, I feel like they miss the WHOLE POINT. One of the most amazing things about Twitter is that you can use it any way you want to. THERE IS NO WRONG WAY.

Everyone has their own answer about how they want to use Twitter. That is the beauty of the whole thing. I love Twitter, and I now feel like I have an idea of what I want to do with it. For me, Twitter is a tool for me to find my people. By that I mean people that appreciate me or that I appreciate. Some day, I would like to stop driving to a windowless room and working with databases. I would like to start making a living by writing. Twitter is going to help me accomplish that.

So it is time to cut back on the amount of people I'm following. I know that this is going to piss some people off, and that it will get me unfollowed. I'm OK with that. If you got unfollowed, try and understand. It doesn't mean that I dislike you. In fact, I still follow many people that dislike. Total assholes! It's just that they manage to do it in a way that is entertaining and/or informative/useful to me.

I probably seem like a one eyed giant, drunkenly staggering across the tundra and clubbing baby seals willy nilly. And yes, I will admit that I am taking a certain amount of delight in all this unfollowing. When I come back to my page, and it's filled only with what interests me, it is delightful. But HEAR THIS: it is a bittersweet delight! It feels like breaking up. Feels terrible at the time. But, afterward, you realize it was for the best. I hope you can see that.