The problem with Twitter, for me anyway, is that after using it for awhile, I tend to start to think in 140-character blocks. For example, if I had been able to Twitter this weekend, it would have gone something like this:
“Wow! the Sewickley Farmers Market is amazing. Why haven’t I come here before?”
“Going to the playground was a giant mistake. Hot slides + hot swings = no fun.”
“DearDR just offered to make dinner! OK, brinner. But still! Mama’s not cooking tonight.”
“Nothing is funnier than watching a 4yo trying to jump rope. Not funny? Convincing her that she doesn’t suck at everything.”
“Vantage Point is pretty badass, right until the end. And then it’s crap.”
“Matthew Fox speaking Spanish is hysterical.”
“Too hot to be outside again. We’re going to the Children’s Museum.”
“Went to the Children’s Museum for the waterplay room. Guess what room the kids didn’t want to go to?”
“We’ve been members of the Children’s Museum for more than two years. This is DearDR’s first visit. He sez, “I work a lot.” Boo!”
Admittedly, I am weird. The narrating voice in my head (what, doesn’t everyone have one of those?) tends to reflect the tone of whomever I am reading at the time, for example, Margaret Atwood or Stephen King or Neil Gaiman. So as a Twitter user, I am parsing my life into 140 characters in my head. Even without an iPhone or a laptop. It’s kind of odd.
Also, I think it’s affected my blogging, resulting in less. I’m trying to think up clever tweets instead of entire posts. I’ll sit down to post about something, and get caught up in the immediate gratification of Twitter. It’s like a drug! (No, really.)
Anyway, it was a nice, uneventful weekend. I got a good handle on the laundry, and the general cleanliness of my house. DearDR was around a lot, which was also nice. We ate as a family, twice. Almost everything we ate was from the Sewickley Farmers Market: green beans, corn on the cob, a fruit salad of blueberries and nectarines, even DearDR’s brinner of sourdough French toast — so delicious. So going back there.
The winning tweet this weekend would have been: “Monkey to DearDR: I love you. DearDR: I love you, too. Monkey: I’ll always care for you. Me: Dude, I think she just broke up with you.”
Red Pen Mama 
There are lots of little things that I would normally blog about that I now reduce to a 140 character tweet. Its a good and bad thing.
I’m starting to get distracted by it. It’s the same with the blogging thing, though. Instead of “being in the moment” (a phrase I intensely dislike), I’m thinking of how to Twitter something, or thinking, “I have to remember that for the blog.” I’m annoying in my own head now. Gah!
ciao,
rpm
Hmmm. I think that way too sometimes, but I see it as a good thing– it makes me look more closely at what’s around me and try to find the story.
I do the SAME THING. I’ve had to start forcing myself to save things for full blog posts, otherwise I have nothing to write about. LOL And I constantly have that Twitter Voice in my head, narrating everything I’m doing. FREAKY.
Yeah, the twitter voice is starting to freak me out, too. When I do it with authors, I think it’s funny (or, just, me being weird). With the twitter thing, though… I’m limiting my voice! Darn it.
😉
ciao,
rpm
Oh. My. Had you tweeted the last one, @jayesel would have so added it to her Tweets of the week!
And yes, I have a narrating voice, too, it just doesn’t write very well. I used it in college to write papers when I walked to campus and walked between classes so when I actually sat down to write a paper it was already written, I just had to type it.
Another killer? Twitpics and UberTwitter pics. Not only can you tweet a mini-thought but you can add a photo! I wouldn’t say this leaves less for my blog, though, because little events like that are rarely still in my head when I sit down to write.
Oh and I read the Slate article you linked. Ooooh a scientific, biological reason why I love genealogy! 🙂 The finds are GREAT but the search is over half the fun. Getting a little hint that I might find ancestor and a direction to search is oooooooh so good :).
Thank you, dopamine! And if ADD/ADHD is related to a deficiency of dopamine, then now wonder getting a fix of it is so great! Like being deprived of chocolate, perhaps. Yes, the 1880 US Census is my chocolate. GIMME!
Now if only I could find a worthwhile genealogy app for my crackberry…
You’re such a cute geek! 🙂
thanks for the comments.
ciao,
rpm
I think the exact same way.. except I don’t even have twitter. Sad.
I stopped tweeting or twatting or whatever the heck it’s called a couple of months ago. It drove me nuts. Frankly, I haven’t done much blogging either. I think I need a break from it all. I personally never walked away from a day of reading and writing tweets or twits and thought something useful had been learned or accomplished.
But that’s just me. On the other hand, I spend probably too much time on facebook, but I have reconnected with members of my family, which has been wonderful.
I do think it’s a trade-off, blogging, tweeting, facebooking. It’s very time consuming, and you just have to prioritize it with all the other stuff you do with your life.
When I stopped plurking when I was with my children (over Lent), I got some needed perspective. I don’t spend time on the computer when I should be spending time with my kids. (Or cleaning the kitchen.)
It’s cool that you’re reconnecting with family. I think facebook can be a great tool for that kind of stuff.
thanks for the comment!
ciao,
rpm