Microblogging

It’s been two weeks since I last wrote a blog post. This, for me, is pretty freakish behaviour. There is an explanation however, one which is pretty hard for me to admit. I’m remorseful, I’m ashamed, I’m embarrassed.  But I feel the time has come for me to confess…

I’ve been cheating on my blog!

I never thought of myself as the cheating type, but sometimes in life we’ve all got to face up to inconvenient truths. Instead of writing considered detailed reflections on the events I’ve attended recently, I’ve been microblogging: Twitter has won my heart! In the past month instead of blogging, I’ve reported in real time with 140 characters and lightening fast fingers on Féilte, the Blog Awards and the INOTE conference.

It all started a few weeks ago when I got home from Féilte completely wrecked. Some kind of ingrained habit told me I had to blog it out to the universe so I briefly wrote about it here but it was the most photo-filled post I’ve ever typed. Looking back, I wish I’d done more to capture just how incredible the day was; just how incredible the students we worked with were; just how fantastic I think the whole idea of a Youth Media Team is. But I let the moment slip through my fingers, seduced by the lure of instant tweetification and worn out by our antics together. Now I have to turn to other sources online to get my fix but it’s like the difference between writing your own notes on a play or novel you’ve studied and using your teachers’ notes – they’re great but they’re not yours!

The cheating continued at the blog awards, which if you think about it is pretty unforgivable – cheating on my blog at the blog awards? What kind of monster have I become?

Maybe I was just bitter that I’d made it to the shortlist but hadn’t become a finalist. Maybe I thought one day I’d wake up ready to return to my first love, my blog. Maybe I was just tired of living a double life, bouncing from twitter to blog to twitter not really knowing where my loyalties should lie. Who was my first priority, my twitter feed or my blog??? I didn’t even know anymore.

But my worst tweeting cheating of all happened the day of the INOTE conference in Kilkenny. I posted 82 tweets. 82 tweets in one day and that’s not counting retweets. No wonder we trended! Yet when I look back on the conference and on the tweets, it’s all so fragmentary. Without a blog post I won’t be able to reminisce on the day and have a coherent sense of how it all unfolded and what it all meant. It’s like looking at the world through an insane kaleidoscope instead of seeing the world clearly and calmly as it really is. It’s exciting and addictive but it’s also blurry and fleeting, a little like this photo, taken at the end of that very long day.

Perhaps it’s not too late for me to fight the lure of faithless, transitory, fragmentary microblogging; for me to return to my first love, my blog. The time has come to decide. Pick one? Do both? Do neither? Perhaps I just need a break from it all and two weeks just isn’t enough! Either way, rest assured oh dearest blog & tricksy tempting twitter: it’s not you, it’s me!!!