Bird by Bird

Hey y'all.  Guess where I've been?  You know, where I've been since last........Monday?

Yup. On Twitter. 

I haven't been posting that many tweets actually.  Every once in a while I open my little tweety-beak, and RT (re-tweet) something, or comment on someone else's Tweet.  But heck - if you thought using Facebook to comment on the status of the sister-of-your-best-friend-in-junior-high was strange, try commenting on the status of an uber-blogger that you follow. 

The main surprise I've found over there in Twit-land is the sheer volume of links posted - links to other people's amazing blogs.  Links to other people's articles being published in some on-line journal.  Links to fabulous sites where the contributers write/produce/manufacture The. Most. Fabulous. Things!  Twitter can keep you clicking all afternoon long.

Great site designs.  Inspirational connections, insights, and writing - oh, the writing!  There are some amazing people crafting the language out there on the Internets. 

And with each click, with each link followed, the anxiety levels rise......rise......rise.........RISING!!!!!  Looming above me, in fact, with scary thought bubbles that say really helpful things like oh wait, what? you thought you might write a blog after reading all this? ha. HA! Or something like that anyway.

Now I know it ain't cool to whine that the cool kids say all the cool things, and what am I going to say, poor small Winona-Ryder-in-Lucas blogger that I am.  I'm just sayin: Twitter makes me anxious. 

So I'm sort of processing where I go from there.  What do I say when confronted with evidence that it's all been said before, on a site with a cleverer domain name.  Do I go serious? Get all philosophical and perhaps [gasp!] theological? Do I go funny, and talk about how my kid got a black eye from falling off the front of the toilet? Do I stay RANDOM, and leave my readers wondering what the heck is going to pop into my brain that day?

So here's the little thought I have to repeat to myself throughout the day to keep the crazy scary thought bubbles at bay and then collapsing in a heap of hyperventilation:  you're just writing. 

I'm writing because that is what I do.   I'm writing because I made a promise to myself that this little voice o' mine wouldn't get swept under the floormats like so many Goldfish crumbs.  (Remember that?)

It would be nice if my blog had a swishy design, if I could figure out TrackBacks and TweetDeck and Mr Linky.  Actually, it would be nice if I had enough content, you know - stuff to read -  that would justify all the high-speed upgrades.

I am writing because I am a writer. I will keep doing this thing, this putting one word after another here in this space, because that is what I do.  Same way as you get back to running by putting one running shoe in front of the other (preferably with your feet in them), this is the way you learn to write: by putting the words down.

It took me until this very point in the post to suddenly bring to mind Anne Lamott, and her wonderful introduction to Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life:

Thirty years ago my older brother, who was  ten years old at the time, was trying to get a  report on birds written that he'd had three months to  write. It was due the next day. We were out at our  family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen  table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper  and pencils and unopened books on birds,  immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my  father sat down beside him, put his arm around my  brother's shoulder, and said, 'Bird by bird, buddy.  Just take it bird by bird.'

And with that, I will leave you with a post about this very topic, by someone I've discovered on Twitter of all places, and who said all that I just said, right up there, a whole lot more eloquently. 

It's Official: I'm a Twit

So I dived into the Twittersphere today.  I tweeted? I twote?

I can't make it work.  Not at all. I mean, I get the rough idea, that I write inane things about my life in exchange for inane information about your life, and we feel like we know what's going on in each other's lives and blogs.  I get that. 

But how do you find who to follow? Why do you want to follow 587 different peoples' lives?  Do you really want to know what's going on in 587 lives? 

I want to be New Media, folks.  I promise.  I love blogging, I love that you're all out there, and that I can write the silly things I've always written but that now I can do it, publish it, and make all nine of you laugh.  I like Facebook, in fact I'm a little bit obsessed, but I've always joked that Facebook is like the old person's Twitter - there's only so much in my life that's worth updating the world about.

I guess I'm just a Luddite at heart.  Me and my fountain  pens, my aerogrammes, and my compulsive collection of fine stationery products.

So guess what I did, my first night on Twitter? I played with ink colors, and background 'paper' and fonts.  You can take the girl out of the stationery shop, but you can't take the stationery obsession out of the girl.

Only Connect

I can't remember when I started making my own Christmas card list, but it must have been sometime in college when I'd collected a fairly eclectic bunch of friends all over the world.  It was such a joy for me to spend hours in the stationery shops and bookstores, testing the weight of papers and smoothing my fingers over letterpress shapes to find cards to send that felt like 'me'.

The year I lived in France I made my own cards from thick red stationary, an opaque white ink and a new quill pen that gracefully scrawled Joyeux Noël across the top.  One of my favorite cards ever was an Eric Gill woodcut of the Nativity scene:

As soon as we had Cecilie I needed no further excuse to send out a photo of my charismatic little one.  She's had some cracking photos in her time.  In subsequent seasons we've enjoyed reviewing photos of the kids to find one that might work on a printed card.

For most years of our marriage, Torbjorn and I have worked together, drinking mulled wine and eating clementines whilst we made small notes to friends in the margins and addressed envelopes to send around the globe.  These are some of my happiest memories of Advent seasons past - the joy of preparation.

And yet.  And yet.  There is no card awaiting dispatch here in the Nilsen house this season.  There are only two other Christmases when we let this happen:  one was The Worst Christmas Ever (naturally), the other was the Christmas Annika was born (I kept hoping I could combine birth announcement with Christmas card, and neither happened.)

Every time this thought runs through my mind - just forget it - send the cards next year - it is immediately followed by E.M. Forster's quote: Only connect.  (It's very unsettling actually, to have this insistent thought pairing pop up again and again through the day.)

Only connect.

This process, this ritual in which we participate, the sending of the cards?  Some might sigh over it's 'rote' factor - that we do it because we feel we ought to.  Some might feel that sending anything other than an e-greeting is irresponsible and eco-un-friendly.  Certainly a printed card is not the only way to connect - it's just one method that this stationery buff happens to loooove.

But the connection is what seems to be slipping away from us.

This urge to let friends far and near know what has happened in your lives this year, to let them know they are in your thoughts, to let them know they're not forgotten in the busy pace of your life:  this is connecting.  And yet, how often are we mindful that we do this, or mindful of how central it is to our relationships?

I've thought to myself that perhaps a constant connectedness with each other via Facebook, email, cell phone - even Twitter - might simply override any connecting that involves more traditional holiday greetings.  But I will tell you that one of the most meaningful holiday cards I received this year was from a friend I've never met in person:  we've connected daily through Facebook, so much so that it absolutely feels natural that I should have a photograph of her gorgeous boys on my shelf.

There are many many ways to connect these days.  What I want so much for us to remember, though, is this:  with the surfeit of options open to us, we must be mindful of what we are doing.  We are reaching out to what is mutual, what is shared between us, and no matter what form the connection takes,  let us always be conscious that the meaning in our lives comes from connecting, and knowing, those around us. 

My Christmas New Year's cards may yet go out.   Whether they do or not, as we enter 2010, only connect.  What else is there?